Jesus Is King Is Empty, Much Like All Of The Kanye Discourse In The Past 3 Years

Caleb
Caleb
Nov 4 · 4 min read

Unless you’ve got really good mute filters and preferences that protected you from all the constant discourse, you’re probably aware that Kanye West dropped a new gospel album last month.

Let me start this by saying the following: Kanye West is an amazing artist. College Dropout is a classic. And I enjoyed Kids See Ghosts when we’re talking about more recent stuff. But please, no. No more Kanye West albums.

Why?

The discourse.

Leading up to this empty mediocre album that includes lyrics like “Closed On Sunday / You my Chic-Fil-A / You’re my #1 with the Lemonade” I was subjected to constant over-analyzing and a more powerful, concentrated version of an issue social media and the current news landscape has in general: racing to be the first to have an outrageous take.

I saw my fair share of them.

The predictable “person smugly looks down on how gullible everyone else is” take that’s something like “Kanye is doing this gospel album to distract all of you from his Trump support. You’re going to love it and be fooled into thinking he’s black again, but not me!” for example.

Which, maybe. It’s good to be skeptical of Kanye West and celebrities in general. But it’s giving Kanye West The Thinker too much credit. The thing is…Kanye West is not a calculating person who thinks about his actions much, and for the most part, never has. More recently, he’s lived as a reactionary thinker more than ever.

His support for Trump is possibly simply because Trump’s enemy Barack Obama called him a jackass after he erratically got on stage and ruined Taylor Swift’s moment.

He claimed he’s bipolar, backed off, and claimed it again. And I mention that not to imply he’s stupid, (which he is by the way) but to imply that this isn’t calculated behavior. Speaking of those diagnosis, another take you’ll also see about Kanye West and his recent theatrics is about how we don’t do mental health discourse correctly and make it worse by making fun of him. The joking side of me says: SO. The serious side says since when does mental illness exonerate you from any type of responsibility whatsoever?

Did mental illness lead Kanye to ally himself with right wing prosperity gospel-esque forces that benefit him monetarily? I mean, if you don’t count his losses to “the culture” or whatever you wanna call it, this behavior makes sense for him in the long run, after all. And what about the people who don’t have the resources to get help for mental illness like Kanye does? What about the steps taken by the very administration Kanye has loudly given his support to that makes it harder for people with mental illness?

“Whoa, the Illuminati is LIT”

Jesus Is King is fucking empty. Somehow more empty than the song I imagine Jeff Bezos partied to with Lil Nas X while his Amazon workers’ mind and bodies further degraded in the cruel punishment we have today that is called Capitalism. The mediocrity of Ye and this album don’t make subjecting ourselves to any of what comes with it worth it.

And just like this album, all of the discourse about Kanye: empty. We don’t need to analyze Kanye’s behavior in detail. Right now, he’s a reactionary idiot who runs a fashion/shoe company that brings in millions who benefits from all of his right-wing alliances.

I’m sure many of us were inspired and touched by Kanye, the young and rebellious yet down to earth rapper who rapped “So I don’t listen to the suits behind the desk no more / You niggas wear suits cause you can’t dress no more / you can’t say SHIT to Kanye West no more!” at one point. I know I was.

But sometimes, you gotta move on. Sometimes, friends you’ve had for a long time switch up and you have to reevaluate what you get out of your relationship with them. Does the good outweigh the bad? Was I overlooking this red flag the whole time? Am I being complicit in their abuse? No more excuses. No more good faith. No more using him as excuse to call everyone but you stupid.

Fuck Kanye West.

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