Are we 'over' Kanye West?
VIDEO - Has Kanye West made a mockery of his musical career or does he still have enough creative juices to keep you coming back for more?...
Fatherhood hasn’t mellowed Kanye West at all in the last year.
He’s compared first lady Michelle Obama unfavorably to his soon-to-be wife, reality star Kim Kardashian. He has claimed that President Barack Obama used him to score political points. He’s even co-opted the Confederate flag, arguing the historic symbol of hate belongs to him now.
And this week he has released a new music video which manages to both objectify and demean himself and his fiancée.
He was always an eccentric character, but his latest erratic behavior has many fans questioning his sanity, if not his career management.
Is there a case to be made that Kanye has squandered his goodwill, especially among African-Americans?
The Prosecution
Creatively, some might argue that Kanye peaked with his opus, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, an album that was unjustly overlooked by the Grammys for Album of the Year (as have all his solo releases.)
Despite mostly rave reviews, his latest album Yeezus is a work people admire more than enjoy and this is problematic for an artist whose musical appeal always helped squash criticism of his unchecked egocentrism.
And about that ego.
At first, Kanye’s boasts were charming — especially when he tempered them with a sense of humor. Scattered throughout his early albums — The College Dropout, Late Registration and Graduation — are digs at himself as well as candid admissions of his own insecurities.
This honesty has given way to an off-putting and relentless self-absorption, an emphasis on luxury product placement and an inexplicable undercurrent of hostility towards women. His latest tracks skewer shallow consumerism and yet he has wholeheartedly embraced it and is currently engaged to the poster-child of style-over-substance culture.
While hypocrisy is hardly new to hip-hop, Kayne takes misplaced braggadocio to new heights of epic proportion.
James Brown declared himself the Godfather of Soul. Michael Jackson called himself the King of Pop. But neither of these artists routinely referred to themselves as geniuses both in interviews and in song. Yet their brilliance was self evident. Their music spoke for itself.
For a time, Kanye’s music did the same thing, and few could dispute his dynamism. He was the most creative, interesting voice in hip-hop. But roughly around the time he hooked up with Kardashian, his focus seems to have turned entirely inward.
Lately, he’s appeared to be so preoccupied with the level of fame he’s achieved and the supposed unrivaled celebrity status of his future wife, that he seems to have lost what little shred of self-awareness he once possessed.
But don’t take our word for it. Check out these choice few quotes from the man himself:
“I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means. I am undoubtedly, you know, Steve of Internet, downtown, fashion, culture. Period. By a long jump.” New York Times – June 2013
“For me, I’m a creative genius, and there’s no other way to word it.” – Jimmy Kimmel Live, October 2013
“If I were to write my title, like, going through the airport and you have to put down what you do, I would literally write ‘Creative Genius,’ except for two reasons: sometimes it takes too long to write that and sometimes I spell the word ‘genius’ wrong.” – Bret Easton Ellis podcast – November 2013
It would be hard for a lot of artists to overcome just one comment displaying this kind of tone-deaf narcissism — and these are just three examples of signature Kanye self love from the past six months.
With the advent of the “Kimye” era, the “New Slaves” rapper’s antics have threatened to reach the over-saturation point.
For many of fans and observers, Kardashian was already an overexposed personality. Their larger-than-life union threatens to dominate the tabloids for months, yet he doesn’t seem to see how this development could irrevocably tarnish his brand.
In fact, their literal engagement has already inspired an embarrassing debacle. Only Kanye would invite one of the founders of YouTube to witness his marriage proposal only to be outraged when footage of his cloying “PLEEASE MARRY MEE!!!” request at San Francisco’s AT&T Park was surreptitiously shot by said co-founder and then leaked online.
West’s insistence on exalting a woman whose rise to fame is basely almost entirely on a sextape she made roughly 10 years ago may grab headlines but it also just might alienate his predominately black fanbase.
And if that doesn’t, claiming the Confederate flag is suddenly cool now surely will.
The Defense
For African-Americans of a certain age, Kanye West provided the soundtrack to their adolescence.
He has been the single most interesting voice, in the single most interesting genre of music, for nearly a decade now.
He singlehandedly changed hip-hop’s style (we’re talking verses and fashion), introduced more sophisticated and daring sounds into rap and has made stellar albums (worth a listen from start to finish) consistently.
When Kanye West first arrived on the scene with The College Dropout, there was no one else in rap who sounded anything like him and although there have been endless imitators in his wake, none of the Drakes, Wales, Kid Cudis, J.Coles, and Kendrick Lamars can touch him as a creative force.
His album releases are events — and even when the reaction is mixed (808’s and Heartbreak anyone?), his work has an ability to grow in stature with each encounter. In some ways, he is similar to one of his professed idols, the late director Stanley Kubrick. Almost all of Kubrick’s films (2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut, for example) were met with either critical indifference or outright revulsion upon first release, only to be hailed as masterpieces after subsequent viewings.
While Kanye has had his share of mainstream hits, he has never existed within the ringtone-friendly constraints of the pop hit-making machine. He has, for a lack of a better phrase, “marched to the beat of his own drum” with compelling results.
His live performances (albeit with the occasional emotional outburst) have set a new standard for hip-hop showmanship. His creative forays outside of music, into film and fashion, are ambitious and sincere.
Kanye West likes to compare himself (some would argue far too often) to Michael Jackson. One way in which they are similar is that their fanbase respects their musical output so much they are willing to look past their individual eccentricities.
It also isn’t lost on fans that West’s rise to the top was anything but easy. Dismissed for years by record executives until he finally got his big break, much of his outlandish self-praise felt like someone just reveling in their good fortune. The tragic loss of his mother, Donda West, in 2007 also revealed a depth and compassion underneath his Louis Vuitton persona.
Still, the self-proclaimed “Black Skinhead” has come a long way from those early emo days.
Pop culture is riddled with creative geniuses who make questionable life decisions. Has Kanye transgressed any more than R. Kelly or the late Michael Jackson or James Brown for that matter?
The Verdict
So what do you think, Grio fam? Has Kanye West made a mockery of his musical career or does he still have enough creative juices to keep you coming back for more?
