When Kanye West shows up for breakfast in the central cabin at the ranch he recently bought near Cody, Wyoming, I ask how he’s doing. “Not good,” he says, turning to look at me. Not good? How come? “Because,” he says, “Kobe was one of my best friends.”

Of course. It’s the morning of January 29—72 hours after Bryant’s shocking death. Somehow, in my head, being out here under the limitless unfamiliar sky and rocky alien tundra has made the already unimaginable Kobe tragedy seem even less real. Still, it was a thoughtless question. I have known West since 2003 and have stayed in intermittent contact with him over the years, but it feels like an inauspicious start to what will become an intense series of experiences and conversations across five weeks and three countries.

Kanye West covers the May 2020 issue of GQ. Click here to subscribe to GQ. Jacket, $3,095, by Dunhill / His own T-shirt, by Yeezy / Jeans, $198, by Denim Tears x Levi’s / His own sunglasses, by Oliver Peoples / His own watch, by Ikepod / His own rings, by Cartier

The property—formerly Monster Lake Ranch, now rechristened West Lake Ranch—actually has two lakes across its nearly 4,000-acre expanse. The primary fishing lake has brown trout, brook trout, cutthroat trout, tiger trout, and rainbow trout. There are caves at the back of the property that have pictographs scrawled on the walls by indigenous tribespeople. This time of year, hundreds of antelope, mule deer, and a few elk appear on the property. The ranch is also home to colts and geldings, 160 cows, and approximately 700 sheep.

In its current state, the ranch appears pretty much the same as it did in October, when West bought it. There are some humble sleeping cabins clustered along the main driveway, two big barns, the eating cabin (with an upstairs lounge where West has installed a bare-bones studio as well as a whiteboard with “Yeezy Business Development” scrawled across the top), and out across the acreage, a couple of little un-winterized camp outposts. In fact, other than the name change, the only thing that seems to visibly mark Kanye’s new ownership are the vehicles: an army of Ford F-150 Raptor pickups, painted an intimidating aftermarket matte black, along with a fleet of 10 imposing SHERP ATVs (also matte-blacked-out), a handful of UTVs (matte black), and of course Kanye’s matte black tank.

So it isn’t until I get a Raptor tour from a ranch hand that the radical nature of what’s in store for West Lake Ranch begins to crystallize. We check out the sheep. We drive down by Monster Lake. Then finally we come upon what I’ll just call the Big Dig.

At the foot of West Lake Ranch’s grandest feature—a dramatic cliffscape that looks like it was created when one massive plate of earth crashed spectacularly up against another in some unknowable prehistoric era—is a tremendous excavation of terrain about the size of a sports arena. It is the ultimate spot for Kanye West to mark a big X and start digging. The next morning, while shooting pictures, we will climb up the back side of the cliff. “When we went up on the moon rocks and looked down,” Kanye says later, “you saw something the size of a spaceship.” Clearly this is not Wyoming ranch business as usual. This is the first sign that the strange future of this otherwise unassuming tract of land is already under way.

If you follow any of the Kanye West fan accounts on Instagram, there are a few laymen you might start to notice in the background of the photos—guys trailing West out of his Calabasas office or sitting behind him on private airplanes. These are the Yeezy architects. Over the course of following West for this story, I met up with him in Cody for two days, flew on a jet to Los Angeles, attended Sunday Service—one of the weekly performances by the new gospel choir he founded—in Hollywood the morning of the Oscars, rejoined him three days later at an oceanside house in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and two weeks later, flew out to interview him in Paris the morning after his Yeezy Season 8 fashion show. The architects were within earshot of West every step of the way.