He’s never shied away from courting controversy nor offending people, but Kanye West is apparently taking his love to provoke and shock anyone in his eyeline to new limits. According to insiders, the rapper – who’s normally covered up in heavy, dark outerwear in public while dressing his wife, Bianca Censori, in X-rated, skimpy outfits – has developed a penchant for going fully nude behind closed doors and, needless to say, he’s taking it to a whole other level. Rather than admitting he’s simply more comfortable in the buff, we’re told that – like everything he does – Kanye insists on elevating it to a form of artistic expression that only he, being the so-called genius he is, can ascribe to. But just like the emperor’s new clothes, his self-conceit is getting all the more transparent by the day.

“People assume that it’s just Bianca who walks around without any clothes on, but Kanye is really embracing his own fetish for being naked,” says an insider close to the 47 year old, who, since splitting from Kim Kardashian in 2021 and marrying Bianca the following year, has displayed an increasingly unhinged lack of decorum in the public eye. 

“He has this huge exhibitionist side. It’s actually a shock to a lot of people in his world that he covers up so much when he’s out in public because, the rest of the time, he hardly wears clothes. He and Bianca are fascinated by the idea of going to nude retreats and they’ve even expressed an interest in starting their own nudist colony. Kanye’s always talking about how being naked makes him feel more in tune with his emotions and his art.”

The fact that Kanye loves to control the images of the women in his life is nothing new – nor is the fact that he prefers to keep them in a state of semi-nudity. While married to Kim, he famously threw out her clothes, before dressing her in a wardrobe of barely-there, nude-coloured bodysuits. He likewise encouraged his next girlfriend, Julia Fox, to push the envelope with her clothing, which – according to Julia – was one of the many ways he left her feeling disempowered. “I realised pretty quickly I was being used as a pawn,” Julia recently said in an interview.

But it’s with Bianca, whom he married in December 2022, that Kanye seems to have taken his obsession for parading his partner in public to new extremes. Over the past two years, Bianca, 29, has been photographed alongside Kanye in barely-there ensembles, while he himself has shared his own intimate images of her in various stages of undress to the world. As our source reveals, Kanye enjoys using Bianca to stir a reaction. As far as he’s concerned, it’s proof of the power he wields to elicit controversy. 

“It’s safe to say he does use it as a power trip because he loves provoking a reaction, and nudity makes most people pretty uncomfortable,” says our insider. “That’s for sure a factor in why he’s always getting Bianca to parade around in public with no clothes on. He enjoys seeing how freaked out everyone gets. But it’s also a way for him to show off. He sees Bianca as an extension of himself and gets off on the idea that people are lusting after her because it feeds his ego. He won’t admit to that though – he insists she’s the ultimate artistic creation and displaying her perfection to the whole world is just a way to honour the creator.”

Nevertheless, while Kanye has mostly let Bianca’s nudity do the talking, we’re told he’s increasingly stripping down to nothing in front of those in his inner circle, too. We have, of course, seen flashes of Kanye’s barefaced cheek in the past. In his controversial music video for Famous, he infamously laid naked in a bed next to a line of naked mannequin doppelgangers of famous people including Kim, whom he was then married to, Taylor Swift, Donald Trump and Rihanna. Many people considered it to be in bad taste and vulgar, but he reportedly dismissed the critique, arguing that his detractors simply didn’t recognise good art. 

Then, last year, the world got a sight it didn’t need to see, when Kanye and Bianca were snapped engaging in an “obscene act” on a boat in Venice, in which Kanye had his trousers down and his bottom exposed as his wife appeared to have her head nestled in his lap. The disgraced rapper has since hinted he’s considering launching his own pornography studio in the future, tweeting in a now deleted message earlier this year, “Yeezy porn is a coming.”

Clearly, Kanye’s not prepared to reserve his naked ambitions for the bedroom. As far as he’s concerned, he’s pushing the envelope yet again – and if people don’t understand him, they’re simply not evolved enough yet to do so. 

“He thinks being naked is opening up a whole new side of him creatively, but even for him this is out there,” we’re told. “Instead of admitting it’s just a kink, he has to elevate it to another level, so he insists that what he and Bianca are doing is akin to what the greatest Renaissance artists did. He’ll go on these rants about how covering up the body with clothing is a sin, which is pretty ironic considering he’s got a clothing line. He’s always going on about how great minds will understand that nudity is the ultimate power. He truly believes he’s a genius ahead of his time and that, eventually, the rest of the world will catch up, and nudity in public will be the norm.”