Kanye Omari West has officially been granted the right to change his name to Ye – that’s full name, Ye – marking the occasion with a clipper-happy haircut. Having travelled to Venice to perform at Tiffany exec Alexandre Arnault’s wedding last weekend, Ye’s unusual hairstyle had otherwise been concealed by a bevy of latex caricature masks, but now, the rapper has unveiled a new look to Instagram, shaving his hair to resemble skid marks on a racetrack. 

With sparse flecks of lint sparsely covering his skull, Ye’s latest attempt to provoke outrage has baffled pundits. “Yo! Can I get the ringworm cut fam,” one said, while some saw it as evidence as to why “Geminis shouldn’t get haircuts during mercury gatorade”, “he’s that rich”, another concluded. Like a boiled sweet which has been trodden into and peeled off the carpet, perhaps the rapper had given his daughter, North, free reign with the trimmers. Or maybe it was Kim.

Though the rapper has spent the last few days looking like a fantastical Fantômas or Michael Myers, Ye has seemingly taken his beauty cues from the natural world. Be that moss growing from a pavement stone or fibrous bits of algae clinging to a rock pool, West’s erratic public persona has consciously been amplified by these kinds of unusual, and somewhat alarming, visual gestures. Consider the grieving, divorced dad sleeping on a mattress in the galleys of an Atlantan football stadium, or his near-constant rotation of face-obscuring balaclavas, made by Demna Gvasalia.

Just yesterday fans spotted the rapper, complete with new trim, in a Swedish train station. Only his hairstyle looked less intentional, leading some to speculate as to whether it was a result of hair loss. Although we cannot know for sure, it seems an unlikely hypothesis given that engendering worry (and wonder) seems to be an increasingly well-worn tool in Ye’s PR armoury. Click here to see more of the rapper’s bewildering fashion choices.