10K People Don’t Want Kanye West To Make David Bowie Tribute Album

After a rumor that always-controversial rapper Kanye West has plans to release a tribute album to late singer David Bowie, a petition to prevent that had almost 10,000 signatures as of Wednesday evening.

The “Yeezy” rapper has not confirmed the plans to make the album, which are only speculative at this point, but that hasn’t stopped a petition emerging to stop him from capitalizing on the death of the Thin White Duke.

The rumor got started because of an article in tabloid The Daily Star, which claimed that West has been busy recording some of the singer-songwriter’s legendary hits such as “Rebel Rebel” and “Heroes,” creating his own take on the classics.

“Some are straightforward covers with Kanye actually singing. On others he is rapping with his own lyrics over Bowie’s music,” said an unnamed “source.”

Kanye supposedly said that Bowie had passed “the torch” of musical innovation to Kanye, which isn’t sitting right with many of Bowie’s devoted fans. He tweeted about Bowie in the aftermath of the British musician’s death, remarking upon what an inspiration he was.

Protestors have called Yeezy a “talentless arsewipe” who “couldn’t lace David’s boots”.

This wouldn’t be the first time Kanye had riled fans of a music legend by putting his own spin on a song. He performed Queen’s hit “Bohemian Rhapsody” at Britain’s Glastonbury festival to almost universal scorn.

The petition, posted by a user named Peter Piranha on petition site 38 Degrees, reads: “Stop Kanye West from being allowed to record covers of David Bowies music!”

The description goes on to read:

“Why is this important? David Bowie was one of the single most important musicians of the 20th and 21st century, it would be a sacrilege to let it be ruined by Kanye West.”

However, on Wednesday, a rep for West denied the reports in an interview with TMZ, saying it’s totally false that West plans to record a Bowie tribute album.

However, even though Yeezy had a ton of respect for Bowie, the two never had any actual plans to work together.

Sources told TMZ that the rapper is hard at work on an album of his own new material.

Reaction on Twitter to the Kanye rumor was predictably negative.

Another Twitter user decided that West-Bowie collaboration would be just what the doctor ordered, and even did a mashup of the two stars’ faces on a hypothetical album cover:

Not everyone agreed to sign the petition or agreed that it was a good idea. Commenter BVH_Brighton wrote: “What a load of nonsense. Upon what authority does this call to do the stopping? Like everyone else, Kanye is free to play Bowie songs if he likes. Thank goodness.”

For now, Kanye’s plans to record a Bowie tribute album seem to be mostly rumor, but if he does ever decide to channel Ziggy Stardust–beware.