Everyone remembers 2018 for the red hats and the TMZ office rants, but the music behind the scenes was shifting in a way that almost nobody expected. Before Ye became the chaotic, seven-track Wyoming project we all know, there was Love Everyone Kanye West. It wasn't just a working title. It was a philosophy that Ye tried to manifest during one of the most volatile periods of his entire career.
He was obsessed. He wanted to forgive everyone. Even the people who hated him most.
Most fans think of the Wyoming Sessions as a singular event, but it was actually a frantic pivot. The original iteration of the album was meant to be a radical, uncomfortable experiment in empathy. It’s the missing link between the maximalism of The Life of Pablo and the gospel-heavy pivot of Jesus Is King.
The Surgeons and the Scrapped Artwork
One of the most jarring things about the Love Everyone Kanye West era was the proposed cover art. Kanye famously texted a photo of Jan Adams to a collaborator. Adams was the surgeon who performed the surgery on Kanye’s mother, Donda West, before she passed away. Ye’s logic was twisted but consistent: he wanted to "love" the person who was technically responsible for his greatest pain.
"I want to forgive and stop hating," he essentially told the world.
It was a move that felt both deeply spiritual and incredibly performative. Adams eventually wrote an open letter asking Kanye to cease and desist from using his face for the marketing of the album. This friction—this weird intersection of personal trauma and public provocation—is exactly why the project eventually morphed into something else. The "Love Everyone" mantra was being tested by the very people Kanye was trying to embrace, and the pressure was clearly getting to him.
What Did the Music Actually Sound Like?
If you've spent any time in the darker corners of the internet where unreleased leaks live, you know the sound of this era was rough. Raw. It wasn't the polished stadium anthems of Graduation.
👉 See also: Kate Moss Family Guy: What Most People Get Wrong About That Cutaway
We’re talking about tracks like "Extacy" (which later became "XTCY") and early versions of "Ghost Town." The vibe was psychedelic. It was messy. Most of the tracks were built on skeletal samples and Ye’s stream-of-consciousness mumbling, often referred to as "mumble tracks" by collectors. He was trying to find a melody in the middle of a mental health crisis.
- "Take Me to the Light" showed glimpses of the soulful Ye we missed.
- "Lift Yourself" was—honestly—the ultimate troll move of this period.
- The transition from Love Everyone Kanye West to the final Ye album happened in a matter of weeks.
The production was handled largely by Mike Dean and Kanye himself, with help from the G.O.O.D. Music inner circle. But the energy was different. It wasn't about hits. It was about an exorcism. He was trying to purge the anger he felt toward the industry, the media, and himself. When he finally scrapped the "Love Everyone" concept, he replaced it with the mountain range cover and the "I hate being Bi-Polar its awesome" scrawl. The shift went from a global message of love to a deeply insular look at his own mind.
The Political Firestorm That Buried the Concept
You can't talk about this album without talking about the politics. This was the era of the "Dragon Energy" tweets.
Kanye was trying to bridge a gap that most people felt shouldn't be bridged. He thought "Love Everyone" meant he could sit with anyone, regardless of their policy or rhetoric. To him, it was a Christian ideal. To the public, it looked like a betrayal. The backlash was so immense that the altruistic "Love Everyone" branding started to feel ironic, or worse, delusional.
Critics like Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote extensively about this period, arguing that Kanye’s quest for "freedom" and "love" was actually a retreat from the reality of his own community. This wasn't just about music anymore. It was about the cultural capital of one of the world's biggest stars evaporating in real-time.
He was lonely. You could hear it in the leaked snippets.
✨ Don't miss: Blink-182 Mark Hoppus: What Most People Get Wrong About His 2026 Comeback
The music was being sidelined by the controversy. Every time he tried to explain the concept of the album, he ended up in a new headline for saying something inflammatory. It’s a paradox: an album titled after universal love becoming the catalyst for universal division.
Why We Are Still Obsessed With the Leaks
Why do we care about a project that never officially came out? Because the Love Everyone Kanye West era represents the last time Kanye was truly trying to be a "pop" figure before he went full-throttle into the religious and billionaire-aesthetic era.
There's a vulnerability in the "Love Everyone" sessions that didn't make it to the final Ye album. Ye was defensive. It was an album about his "superpower" (bipolar disorder). But the unreleased material from the months prior felt like someone genuinely trying to heal.
- Collectors pay thousands for high-quality leaks of these tracks.
- The "Jan Adams" cover remains a legendary piece of "what if" lore in hip-hop history.
- The sonic palette influenced the minimalist "Wyoming Sound" that defined five albums in 2018.
The influence is everywhere. You hear echoes of these sessions in Kids See Ghosts. You hear the stripped-back percussion and the heavy use of 070 Shake's vocals, which were discovered and utilized heavily during this timeframe. Without the failure of the "Love Everyone" concept, we wouldn't have the creative explosion that resulted in the five-week G.O.O.D. Music run.
The Reality of the "Love Everyone" Philosophy
Looking back from 2026, the irony is thick. Kanye’s later years have been defined by anything but universal love. The rhetoric that followed in 2022 and beyond makes the 2018 "Love Everyone" era look quaint by comparison.
At the time, people thought he was being radical. In hindsight, it looks like a man struggling to find a moral anchor while his mental health was in a tailspin. He was trying to use a religious concept to bypass the hard work of accountability. It’s a fascinating study in how "toxic positivity" can manifest in high-level art.
🔗 Read more: Why Grand Funk’s Bad Time is Secretly the Best Pop Song of the 1970s
He wanted the world to forgive him before he had even finished the things he needed to be forgiven for.
That’s why the album didn't work. You can't force a "Love Everyone" narrative when you're actively picking fights with everyone. The music reflected that friction. It was disjointed. It was loud. It was unfinished.
Actionable Takeaways for Music Historians and Fans
If you want to understand this era properly, you have to look past the headlines.
First, go find the "Wyoming Session" documentaries and fan edits. They provide a much clearer picture of the creative chaos than the official press releases ever did. You'll see a man who was genuinely convinced he was saving the world with a "love" message, even as his own world was fracturing.
Second, compare the tracklists. If you look at the rumored tracklist for Love Everyone Kanye West versus the final 2018 releases, you see how much material was repurposed for Teyana Taylor, Pusha T, and Nas. Kanye was essentially the curator of a massive sound-bank, and "Love Everyone" was the reservoir he was drawing from.
Third, acknowledge the limits of the art. Not everything Kanye touches is a masterpiece. This era was a creative transition. It was a bridge. Sometimes the bridge is more interesting than the destination, but that doesn't mean it was a finished product.
To truly grasp the legacy of this "lost" album, you need to:
- Listen to the "Daytona" production: It's the most polished version of the sound Ye was chasing during the "Love Everyone" sessions—dark, sample-heavy, and uncompromising.
- Watch the TMZ interview again: It’s painful, but it's the primary source for his "Love Everyone" mindset at the time.
- Trace the samples: Kanye was digging into 1970s soul and psych-rock deeper than ever before. These samples were meant to evoke a sense of nostalgic warmth to counter the coldness of his public persona.
The "Love Everyone" era wasn't just about a title. It was the moment the old Kanye died and the new, unpredictable version was born. Whether that's a good thing is still being debated in every barbershop and Twitter thread in the world. But as a piece of musical history, it remains one of the most compelling "lost" artifacts of the 21st century.