What Exactly Are Kanye West and NASA Up To?
by Patricia Garcia
The Web is awash in conspiracies after a mysterious package perhaps sent from Kanye West made its way to MTV's headquarters on Wednesday. According to MTV News writer Hilary Hughes, a cardboard box arrived at her office with a variety of strange contents, including a white credit card—that had West's name, the number 772233688, and "NASA" and "Project-10" written on it—a VHS tape labeled E Pluribus Unum (which means "out of many, one" in Latin) with two hours of static, an old logo of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, and a small pebble.
The box of clues sent Internet users down a rabbit hole. They quickly discovered that a website for 772233688.com exists, branded with the same "NASA, Kanye West, Project 10," another video of unending static, and a date, March 20. A Twitter user later shared a photo of a subway poster in Atlanta containing the same information. Interestingly, the postmark on the package sent to MTV includes an Atlanta return address.
MTV placed calls to NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, which denied their organization sent the package. They also later called West's label Def Jam; a representative also denied the package came from them and speculated the whole stunt could possibly be a hoax.
But fans aren't buying it. West is no stranger to elaborate album release strategies—who can forget the Madison Square Garden extravaganza from last year? It would certainly explain his recent return to SoundCloud. And it seems far-fetched that someone would go through all this trouble just to prank MTV. All that's left to do now is wait for March 20 and see if Kanye truly has anything up his sleeve.