Watch Kanye West Pay Tribute To Virgil Abloh With A Heartbreaking Adele Cover

Earlier this week, the world mourned Virgil Abloh, one of the most extraordinary fashion designers of his or any era.

Across his varied and acclaimed career, Abloh worked at Louis Vutton, putting his indelible stamp on the brand’s menswear line, and later became the chief executive officer of Off White. Off White changed fashion as we know it, collaborating with the likes of Nike and Jimmy Choo, and pioneering a new and frequently outrageous style.

Behind the scenes, Abloh had been battling cancer for a number of years. He passed at a devastatingly young age — only 41, with years of game-changing that should have been ahead of him torn away.

Since his passing, he has been memorialised from within the fashion industry, and culture more broadly, with tributes pouring in. “The teachable lesson here is disrupt,” wrote Questlove on his Instagram page, honouring the departed artist. “Provoke. Be controversial. Push buttons. Be a conversation piece…live as a true artist…Virgil Abloh was art.”

Now, Kanye West, a longtime fan of Abloh’s work and his collaborator, has presented his own deeply beautiful eulogy to the man.

West and Abloh worked with each other for more than two decades, with the latter serving as his creative director. He is also acknowledged as “the creative director of Donda,” the latest Kanye West album.

The tribute arrived in the form of a beautiful cover of Adele’s ‘Easy On Me’, a stripped down version of the song that lets the melancholy and beauty at its heart shine through, performed as part of West’s Sunday Service series. At the end of the clip, when the music fades away, a heartbreaking message appears onscreen: “IN LOVING MEMORY OF VIRGIL ABLOH.”

Truly, it’s a fitting testimony to a man who never once stayed still; who pushed, whenever possible, the very boundaries of his art.

Watch the cover in full right here:

Photo Credit: Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images