who is actually shocked about kanye?
because I’m not. I’m sure you’re not. and I’m getting quite tired of us all pretending to be.
guys. I’m suffering from a serious case of kanye-ennui* and I figured this was the only place I could write about it. I’m so bored of the directionless frustration, the twitter threads, the long IG captions, the breakdowns, the chatter, the fleeting outrage. I’m bored of the thinkpieces, though I’m aware of the irony of saying that at the start of this. but most of all, I’m bored of the cycle.
the goldfish-like memory span of the spicy discourse that makes every new scandal feel like Groundhog Day. what’s he said now? didn’t we just do this? well what was the last one about again? and they still let hi-? nah actually, I don’t want to talk about it.
as West does Provocative Thing #193, enabled by a host of institutions and disciples, the discourse machine starts to whir. Twitter is ablaze with people vowing for the 5th time in as many years that “this is actually it now, I’m finally done with him. this time he’s gone too far.”
it’s boring and it’s getting us absolutely nowhere.
in all honesty, I don’t care to unpack his latest deeply unimaginative and yet actively harmful stunt in any great detail. it’s blatantly obvious why it’s fucked up and there’s no reason interesting enough to make me care about the ‘why’. that’s not really what any of this is about anyway. because if at this stage of Kanye’s slow descent into self-inflicted villainhood you are in any way shocked, surprised or only just reaching the end of your tether, I think you have to live in the truth that you’re just a ride-or-die for the guy or admit that you haven’t been paying attention.
this is a man who publicly declared that slavery ‘was a choice’. who used his colossal platform to endorse a heinous presidential candidate whose campaign was built in all of the worst kinds of -isms. who u-turned on all of his own personal politics - the very same politics that once defined him and helped anoint him as one of the biggest artists we’ve ever seen. who routinely picks up and drops his blackness, only when it’s useful as a tool to spin his own professional failings and further his individualistic capitalist interests. he’s backed abusers and harassed his own family.
he is a person almost unrecognisable from the man he was 10 years ago. to the point where listening to his own early lyrics deconstructing materialism, performative activism, white supremacy, capitalism and more can, at best feel baffling to witness, and at worst seem like a cruel joke in which the millions of fans he accrued along the way are the unsuspecting punchline.
and yet with the years of rapid moral decay that have been proudly showcased on such a global stage - at a time when social justice is ironically expanding its audience - here he still stands! resilient as ever! not just a part of culture but at its epicentre. Bolstered by the continued fawning and conveniently forgetful support of artists, brands, publications and a large contingent of his evangelical fanbase. he drops music? we listen. he makes clothes? we buy them. he shouts awful things into the void? we unpack it. and then we forget it. and then we wonder why it never stops.
I don’t have any grand solutions here. as we go through the motions of yet another round of chastising and guffawing in private and public about one of culture’s most outrageous figures, I find myself rolling my eyes. knowing that whether the shouts are positive or negative, we will continue to pay this man inordinate amounts of attention and interact with every aspect of his life: lured in and then repelled, again and again and again. making empty promises that each time will be the last time we get fooled.
I’ve spent the last few years actively avoiding and ignoring the man who soundtracked my life from the age of 8-16 years, whose verses I could rap backwards if I had to. and given my job is to literally write about music, at times it’s been an awkward boundary to uphold. in theory it shouldn’t be, but in practice it means regularly turning down income and my very own portion of the clickbait pie. even when I have a burning opinion that I can then only manifest in the form of deleted tweets and group chat essays.
and as the headlines inevitably flood in and the empty tweets pile on top of each other, Ye sits somewhere deciding whether to double down or retreat into whatever lair he usually hides out in while the storm passes. (though it doesn’t matter which he chooses, as historically they both work fine.) it serves a sharp, depressing reminder that silence doesn’t travel nearly as far or as fast as it’s equal and opposite force. as artists or as commentators or as people just trying to navigate our everyday lives, integrity and consideration feel like no match for the feverish nature of fame and personal politics are routinely squashed under the weight of commercial gain. so in a landscape that chases down the scent of controversy, is it any surprise that a man who seems to feed on it like a horcrux continues to thrive? the question instead should be, how long are we going to let him?
*editor’s note: tried for a very long time to make a pun out of this to no avail, but it feels like there’s something there? if it comes to you, please lmk xx