Takashi Murakami Loves ‘I Love It’

Kanye West and Lil Pump’s instantly legendary music video for “I Love It”—which was visualized and executive produced by none other than Spike Jonze—attracted more than its fair share of attention when it debuted, but the collaboration got a late-in-the-game endorsement today from none other than Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami.

Murakami praised the video in no uncertain terms, writing on Instagram, “It’s like you’re being served a raw, contemporary human being, delivered straight to you via YouTube, iTunes and Spotify. I felt as though I was served a fresh platter of ego sashimi.” (“Ego sashimi” is certainly one way of describing Kanye West's oeuvre.) Not content to merely admire the video, Murakami dressed up in his own giant, unwieldy couch-like contraption, writing, “...All I can do is to bow down, and so I did this cosplay in my studio.” Murakami's innovative couch cosplay featured his signature rainbow-bright prints from the 2013 work “The Future will Be Full of Smile! For Sure!”

It makes sense that Murakami, who coined the term “superflat” to describe Japanese graphic art as well as the spirit of the country's consumer culture, would be a fan of West and Lil Pump’s playful, purposely bizarre collaboration, which debuted at the Pornhub Awards. Murakami even rounded out the look with a pair of Yeezy slides similar to the ones Kanye wears in the original “I Love It” video. Could this homage spark a wave of influential Japanese contemporary artists dressing up in tribute to Kanye and Lil Pump? We’d definitely like to see Yayoi Kusama rock a couch.