A skull wrapped an a Confederate flag, the Grim Reaper, a praying skeleton, and a dead Native American—these images that appear on the merchandise for Kanye West’s Yeezus tour, and they have unsurprisingly stirred up some controversy among fans. Kanye found Wes Lang to create his new tour merch, an artist who looks like he might be more comfortable on a motorcycle than at a gallery opening. He’s made his career of these kind of charged images and his work is full of skulls, crosses, Native Americans, and even blackface. “I like to take American history and then completely ignore it,” he told Interview Magazine in 2009. “I come at it visually, taking images and telling my own story. It comes out of criticism and great love. There are problems [with America], and we all know that, but I’m attracted to the dark side of things.” Lang has now taken his dark version of the US on Kanye’s tour but Mr. West himself has yet to explain his reasoning but given his racially charged lyrics in the new tracks “New Slaves” and “Blood on the Leaves,” the symbolism shouldn’t be too surprising. SNL joked on Weekend Update that West had said about the controversy, “When I see things that upset people, I make them my own.” while showing a picture of Kayne and his fiancé Kim Kardashian. Ouch. (photos: Instagram, via Exhibition A)