Open letter to Kanye West from a Kanye Fan, you’re not the same anymore.

Dear Kanye West,

I was a huge fan of your music, but my, have you changed over the years, it’s like I don’t even know you anymore.

My ex-bf (an African American/Black DJ, spoke word poet, and emcee from the East Coast) and I used to make hip hop with a heavy influence of yours, Lupe Fiasco, Wale, Lauryn Hill and many other greats, I even made recent graphic designs for college mentorship programs in tech that are inspired by your Graduation album art and lyrics, “Good Morning” video with the teddy bear characters by Takashi Murakami — but what happened to making good music and making good money the old fashioned way? Much of your music post-Kim, has been lackluster to say the least. I understand much of your lyrics in African American/Black style fashion got some ‘ego-trippin’ styles that cannot be paralleled by other communities (in fact, like many Asian and Filipino American artists, we imitate the Black communities’ art who has pioneered the way in having such a dope swagger and confident style), at the same time, your tweets are atrocious.

While the music industry has failed to figure out how to make money within the new paradigms of technology (a la Sean Parker, billionaire and investor of Facebook, advises Spotify), many platforms (including Tidal before until your tirade) have suffered for years or are currently (think Pandora, SoundCloud etc.). Derek Sivers, creator of CDBaby.com talks about in several of his posts on his website about paying independent artists and this has been lost in the age of piracy, torrents, and whatnot — even people don’t want to subscribe to Apple Music and complain they can’t play their playlists without subscribing — this has been an utter problem of artists the last decade. I’ve played around with other startup ideas in music, even Justin Kan of YC and Twitch is trying to create something meaningful to help make independent artist money with his startup, the Drop.

At the same time, a rant on twitter given your fame, has had a huge impact (Tidal now a top app, tons of news with Mark Zuckerberg trending since your post). While all this is true, making an appeal from $1B while you are $53M dollars in debt is almost appalling to any new or struggling artist trying to make ends meet and pay bills, who still work odd jobs while pursuing their dream. It’s not Mark or any of Silicon Valley’s fault you’re in debt. Every real tech founder in Silicon Valley before they even try to raise venture capital funding, angel capital funding should be proving a market, prototype, and selling actual product (real hustlers none of this ‘bubble BS) — and I think that should go the same for artists. While you have had a following and I’ve listened to some of your samples, much of the content is not there where it once was in 2008, would I have invested and paid $20 on Kickstarter or some other crowdfunding platform to help pay off your $53M in debt? Had the appeal been made to the masses in this way to your fanbase, instead of making appeals to self-made figure heads in Silicon Valley for money, maybe I would have bought Tidal (more expensive than Spotify, and not much better quality, so why would I buy that), but the content and depth just wasn’t there. Asking for people to invest in you and thereby invest in Africa indirectly is not one I necessarily agree with either. Artists like apl.de.ap of the Black Eyed Peas have created foundations that actually support children’s education surrounding creativity and technology in the Philippines, and I don’t see this in any of your pleas, just whining about how broke you are and asking people for money just to make a rant and rave — it’s almost like Trump tactics, and I really hated to say that, considering you were one of the most outspoken people who I agreed with when you said “Bush doesn’t care about Black people” — something that needed to be said at the time of Hurricane Katrina. But this is different, this doesn’t show or appeal to a larger community cry of Silicon Valley’s wealthy and why they should care about broke artists, instead it sounds like people who are asking for free handouts without the quality of work displayed that actually deserve it. It’s why people hate welfare even if social safety nets and programs are needed when jobs today are displaced by technology.

Dear Kanye West, your music used to have a strong social justice message, since being with Kim, I’ve failed to see that in your music. Asking to share that with the world and instead of letting folks actually just download your album you were to release ages ago, it’s like you’re overtweeting just to get attention and resort to tactics that damage more of your character than help enhance it. Instead of admiring your hip hop swagger, ego-trippin’ overconfidence, I’m appalled by it, it makes you sound so cocky and entitled, instead of calling for concrete needs to support independent artists (who are much poorer and struggling than you) and their ability to make money through putting out their content online thru technology. A wave of YouTube artists, gamers, Twitch.tv artists are making a good living off of great content, maybe some aren’t bajillionaires, but they’re not in huge sums of debt asking for fat checks trying to support their dream before release.

I’ve been an avid supporter of crowdfunding, help friends find investors, and obtain funding where it sees fit. People have asked me to go and raise funding pre-product and pre-traction, and I still don’t think this will be the case, no matter how ‘broke’ I get which in reality, if I were an artist or tech founder, I shouldn’t even let happen in the first place, and do harder things to make sure those bills are paid and then actually create a product, something people want, to gain traction.

Instead of showcasing and putting out there that your art is something people want (I can’t even download the album and have been waiting for it for quite sometime), you’re doing pre-crowdfunding/raising, the kind I usually would go for, but the tactics you’ve pulled make me believe that your intentions are not necessarily coming a place of social justice, but instead coming from a selfish and self-centered place to wreak some havoc and attention where it’s actually not warranted.

Dear Kanye, you used to call out people so that folks would be more responsible for their jobs. But instead, I’m less inspired by you, so many rappers, artists, young kids actually look up to you, and instead of calling out people to be responsible — you fail to be responsible for putting out great art (your job) and target others who have really have zero responsibility to your cause. If making an appeal to Mark Zuckerberg or Sean Parker, I would have liked you to

1. Make a call to create a platform with what staff you do have, work (like Snoop Dogg or Dre with actual tangible product and not promises of it) and invest money into actual product that would empower artists like yourself to actually make money, and
2. Make artists find a way to be financially responsible for instead of squandering it away with tools like Mint.com, and
3. Make/mastercraft an art school in Africa a real ass possibility, not a 120 character tweet in twitter to sound like a bad headline that just makes it sound like white tech founders should do something to help Africa in the most patronizing way by funding you.

Instead of concrete actions and plans to showcase how you could potentially partner with said tech CEOs, or have their investors invest in you and a product the way Jay-Z (Tidal) or other artists work, you fail terribly and instead sound like a Trump rant on Twitter. I now cringe at the sight of reading your words instead of nod my head to your lyricism and wit.

I had to write this because I’m sick of this as an entrepreneur, an artist, a Kanye and hip hop fan, and a fellow Silicon Valley native born and raised. I hope so much that your art that you put out there will change the world again, in its controversy to support people, to highlight injustice, and to make some dope beats. Instead, I get a tweetstorm ranting and raving about your broke ass before allowing a download of tracks of that art that used to that fill my ears with unique lyricism, addictive instrumentals, and clever calls-to-action.