Alongside the trusty Billy bookcase and the Dombås wardrobe, Ikea could soon see the Yeezy bedside table, after Kanye West declared his desire to collaborate with the Swedish furniture giant in no uncertain terms.
“Yo Ikea, allow Kanye to create,” he said in an interview on BBC Radio 1 on Monday. “I have to work with Ikea – make furniture for interior design, for architecture.”
The announcement follows West’s visit to the Ikea headquarters in March, when he tweeted that he was “super inspired”, and that his mind was “racing with the possibilities”, after a behind the scenes peek into the glamorous world of plywood and allen keys.
But those hoping to get their hands on a range of pimped-up flat-packs will be sorely disappointed: West described his vision as “a minimalist apartment inside of a college dorm”.
A glimpse of what the budding hip-hop furniture designer’s range might look like can be gleaned from Twitter, where West has already posted his sketchy scheme for a bed for the master bedroom at his and Kim Kardashian’s $20m Hidden Hills mansion.
It is less MTV Cribs than, well, Ikea. In fact it bears more than a passing resemblance to the company’s spartan Malm range, yours from £165 ($220).
The millionaire rapper is no stranger to design collaborations, having already put his name to trainers for Nike and Adidas, and launched his own Yeezy label. “I’m going to be the first hip-hop designer,” he declared, “and because of that I’mma be bigger than Walmart.”
Clearly sincere in his ambition to conquer the design world, he even dropped by Harvard’s Graduate School of Design to share his passion with the students. “I really do believe that the world can be saved through design,” he told the assembled crowd, “and everything needs to actually be ‘architected’.”
West’s outing into the world of interior decor follows a rich and hapless tradition of celebrities turning their hands to home furnishings, a sector which appears to be the last resort when the sportswear and perfume deals have all fallen through.
Who could forget Justin Timberlake’s folksy homeware range, Home Mint, launched in 2012 and discontinued shortly thereafter, which came complete with daily online design tips? “Lend timeless elegance to any bedroom with French crochet,” he suggested. Nor was he afraid of tackling the controversial topics head on: “Red walls: love them or not for me?”
“I like very clean, almost modern architecture, and the obstacle with something like that is making it extremely warm, because it doesn’t naturally lend itself to that,” Timberlake told Elle Decor. “With everything we do together, we try to get the juxtaposition right. To make pieces and rooms that are multifaceted, that blend different genres of architecture and design.”
West could also learn a thing or two from Cindy Crawford, who has long presided over a vast range of sofas and bedroom sets for furniture megastore Rooms to Go. An accomplished domestic goddess, she has managed to turn her hand to everything from faux-antique timber-panelled four poster beds to wipe-clean beige sofas that would add a touch of functional style to any old people’s home.
Or perhaps he’ll go the full Brad Pitt and develop a learned interest in architecture and design, cultivating friends such as Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaas, and applying his talents to the design of disaster relief housing. Pitt’s so into design he even went on a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house for his birthday.
“I found Wright in college, when looking for a lazy two-point credit to get out of French,” he told Architectural Digest. “It forever changed my life.”
You might wish French had captured his imagination a little more. Beyond his collaborations with Frank Gehry, Pitt has also penned his own furniture range with designer Frank Pollaro, which looks like he’s taken every one of his eclectic influences – “from Arts and Crafts to Bauhaus and Tiffany lamps” – and pulverized them in a blender. Anyone for a white patent leather sofa, or a spiralling gold-plated coffee table?
So what about Kanye’s guiding aesthetic influences, and the key design touchstones that will define his collection?
“My No 1 design rule of anything I do,” he tweeted, “is that Kim has to like it.”