Kanye West plans to make minimalist eight

Kanye West's next album may only be eight songs long. As West proceeds with his Yeezus follow-up, the rapper's love of minimalist design is apparently inspiring a musical minimalism as well.

'I think my next album is going to be eight songs,' West explained as part of a talk at Miami Art Basel via Rolling Stone. 'It's just reducing down the amount of information that you need. People say a design is the point where you can't take anything else away. [Yeezus] was very, very designed. I took a departure from radio and popular music in order to get this seat here. If I hadn't made Yeezus, I wouldn't be sitting here with this cool font at Basel right here.'

For those keeping score, Yeezus was already the shortest album of West's career: 10 songs, 40 minutes, well under the skit-filled 21 tracks and 76 minutes of West's 2004 debut. Most of the MC's full-lengths have had 12 or 13 cuts, plus bonus tracks. This, plus a history of featured guests and musical interludes, has given West a reputation for musical excess.

West revealed in late November that he is already mid-way through his seventh album. He wants to put it out 'by next summer', he said, and is reportedly working with Q-Tip and Rick Rubin as producers.

But not everything is going so well in the world of West. Less than six months after Yeezus' release, there are reports that his tour is far from selling out: at a recent arena gig in Kansas City, 76% of the seats were empty. The record's sales have also been much slower than My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.