Our Beautiful Dark Twisted Culture: How Kanye West Turned Us All Against Each Other

Yesterday, 18,000 kids gathered in Madison Square Garden (and another 20 million streaming online) to watch Kanye West unveil the latest season of his Yeezy x adidas collection and play songs from his latest album, The Life of Pablo, from his Macbook. Everything about this moment was a testament to the current condition of our culture, but for bizarre reasons. Kids in head-to-toe Kanye-approved streetwear brands posed while their friends took pictures for Instagram evidence, a swarm of bodies stampeded to the front of my seating section to catch a glimpse of a walking-by Kim Kardashian for their Snapchat stories, and lines for exclusive merch stretched down and around the arena’s concourse. When he finished playing his music and everyone scurried outside, overheard conversations about the album included surface-level reviews like “It was fire,” or “That last joint was crazy,” and I wondered if these people were understanding of the fact that our culture’s frontman just blessed them with a grandiosely significant album or if they were too caught up in tweeting ultra-zoomed-in photos of the back of celebrities’ heads, in some sort of weird, twisted effort to be better than their friends.

It’s impressive how, throughout his career, Kanye has tumbled through the layers of cultural intrigue; an artist who was once the subject of critical fascination and thoughtful consideration is now a cult leader for hypebeasts and a common topic of gossipy conversation among any group of even half-woke millennials with Twitter handles. Through his musical catalogue, he’s brought attention to the torn ideals of the black American, criticized and succumbed victim to materialism, all while dealing with the psycho-social divisions in himself and in American society, but these insights seem only to be relevant in distant history. In now-classic songs like “All Falls Down,” he illuminates monetary spending as a form of escapism from the marginalized economic statuses of many black Americans; his “New Slaves” metaphor illustrates a new type of racial hierarchy (i.e., classism) plaguing America, but these days, we’re more willing to donate organs for a pair of sneakers he’s designed than to think critically about the uncomfortable subjects he confronts through lyricism. There’s little argument that The Life of Pablo is incapable of bringing forth the same degree of socially conscious observations and forward-looking insights, so why is that a subdued factor in the current conversation?

We’d be at a different place if Kanye fans were obsessed with these advancements in cultural perceptions and understandings of interracial relationships, but with the fast-paced nature of media swatting at any trace of consciousness we try to grapple with in 2016, this more politically progressive facet of Kanye gets lost in the sauce. The fact that kids were waiting on line for 45 minutes at a time yesterday to buy merchandise, missing the listening session of the album, says a lot about the ways we long to attach ourselves to celebrities’ glorified brands, use their products as tools to impress others, and broadcast our attendance at their performances and events via social media in an effort to prove we’re up-to-speed with culture-wide endorsements of “cool.” Being a Kanye West fan in 2016, for most, isn’t about unpacking his creative processes while thoughtfully and intentionally supporting his contributions, but rather, it’s a concern of feeling involved, of competing for acceptance.

Arguably, a great album is one that makes us feel something — specifically, like better versions of ourselves, to make us feel a part of something bigger. And through ‘Ye’s past work, with his ingeniously cutting-edge production and provocative commentary alike, he’s created this feeling for millions of fans worldwide. But the mythical concept of celebrity we’ve formed around Kanye is no longer able to produce meaningful vessels of self-assurance. We’ve fabricated this aura on purpose to satisfy our exaggerated expectations of human greatness, rather than use what he’s actually saying as guidance to better ourselves. Instead, the current way we talk about Kanye West is a worrying symptom that society is using celebrity as a means of constructing a new definition of community — one fueled by a superficial, vicious cycle of following trends and seeking approval.