Kanye West does not do quiet album launches. For the launch of The Life Of Pablo in early 2016, he live streamed the listening party from Madison Square Garden in New York on Tidal.

It was beset by buffering issues and then, mere weeks after it came out, it stopped being a Tidal exclusive by landing on other streaming services. By July that year, he was on Twitter saying this about exclusives: “Fuck all this dick swinging contest. We all gon be dead in 100 Years. Let the kids have the music.” Rumours of a huge falling out with Tidal and Jay-Z followed and then West endorsed President Trump, made hugely controversial statements about slavery – and all hell broke loose.

So the launch of Ye, his eighth studio album, was not going to be a low-key affair. On the day of release, he took over Diamond Cross Ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and invited A-list guests and key names in hip-hop along. (He made the album at his ranch in Jackson Hole, hence the odd location for a major album launch.) There were also launch events (under the banner of Project Wyoming) in Chicago and Miami on 6th June and a third one in Brooklyn the next day.

Obviously that was going to generate a lot of media interest, so West had the foresight to turn the album launch into a merchandising opportunity. It is perhaps the first album launch event (certainly that we know of) to get its own line of merchandise shortly after: a collection of six WYOMING hoodies and T-shirts, costing between $65 and $145 from his official webstore, will ship within four weeks of the event, complete with a download code for the album.

Dogged by rumours for weeks that his last album and Beyoncé’s Lemonade had their numbers gamed by Tidal, the narrative here was firmly being swung back to Kanye and his everything-turned-up-to-11 strategy. He knows everything he does will be an event and what some might see as a shameless cashing in is arguably the most “on brand” thing he’s done in years.