I’m Quitting Kanye
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I have a special place in my heart for Ye, but I won’t be participating in or paying attention to his press coverage after I finish this piece. Like a chick who’s finally over her emotionally unavailable lover’s erratic and noncommittal behavior, I’m bored and done.
I’m pretty sure a bunch of us feel the same way. Look no further than Ye’s most recent album’s sales — the huge elephant in the room, in spite of efforts to distract from it with events like taped-for-television engagements and such — for evidence. Yeezus’ sales plummeted 80 percent after its second week on shelves. Yammer on about “no one selling albums anymore,” but the fact is, the best in the business still sell a whole lot of albums. Ask Eminem. Ask Jay.
Kanye West claims to be beyond the best, so what gives?
The blame could be placed on a strong case of the two-faced gemini, but I’m going to table that theory for now and keep it plain: The Kanye West Chronicles no longer hang together. The conflicting plot lines he’s been pushing for the last couple of years have all added up to one big — Are you fucking kidding me? Even the most naïve among us doesn’t like to be played for a fool. We want to believe. We’ll accept fake, as long as it all makes some sense; as long as our brain matter is respected a wee bit.
Before you dismiss me as a hater (which I am), I’ve tried hard to exclude Kanye from anything I’ve written out of respect for what he may still be going through as a result of his mother’s untimely death (and I’m not even touching the plastic surgery “theme”). I like most of West’s music and fashion choices (for his body type); I loved the one concert of his I attended; and I have nothing against interracial couples (my last big love affair involved a white, married, Frenchman . . . more on that at another time).
But I can’t do Kanye any longer. At best, he’s confusing me and, at worst, he’s playing me.
Let’s take a short walk down Yeezus’s road of implausibility, shall we?
First, if you’ve been listening to recent interviews, you’ve probably noticed that Ye has two different speaking voices. The one he uses for interviews on his future mother-in-law’s talk show, accompanied by diminutive body language (a pap filed a lawsuit just two days prior alleging Ye attacked him at LAX, by the way), can be heard HERE. The one he uses for hip hop audiences, accompanied by bold gestures of strength and confidence, can be heard HERE. And if it’s kicks you’re after, Yeezus can be heard mispronouncing Yiddish HERE (while explaining his “white voice”). Why bother dropping lingo that’s clearly unfamiliar? Smells like an act to me.
I just made mention of Ye’s distaste for certain paps, presumably the aggressive ones. Is the inconsistency missed on him that he’s allegedly marrying into a family that’s partially derived its fortune from aggressively courting the paparazzi? And then there’s the moment when, via Twitter, Ye alluded to running home to have sex with the mother of his child after she threw her side-boob and practically naked ass in the wind for public consumption on Instagram. I mean where’s dear Nori (looking just like her papa) in all of this? What happened to the Ye who was protective of then girlfriend Amber Rose when the paparazzi attempted to take her photo during an intimate interlude on Miami Beach? That was such a sweet, believable moment, because that’s what boyfriends do, don’t they?
Now let us turn to New Slaves, the first and best single released off of his current album. Slavery is trending right now, folks, as it should always be — I’ve already seen 12 Years a Slave twice and you should too — and I was initially sold by Yeezus’s choice of song. It seemed like a nod to Mos Def who, critical of the glorification of the luxury lifestyle in Jay and Ye’s Niggas in Paris, penned Niggas in Poorest. New Slaves is a strong indictment of mass luxury consumption. Preach, Yeezus!
But Kanye’s strong political lyrics and Kanye’s life don’t add up. Rappers have this issue all the time, and if the gap isn’t too wide, more often than not, we mind it and get on their train. The gap is simply too wide now. Let’s go on.
While Ye recently made a public statement condemning luxury and Louis Vuitton, in particular — so far, so consistent — let’s not forget that West was, until relatively recently, the “Louis Vuitton Don.” He and his entire crew sported Louis recklessly for years,culminating in his much-heralded sneaker collaboration with that luxury giant.
And, sure, people can evolve. But Yeezus is far from a convert. While Ye swears, “the concept of luxury is improper,” he drives a Lamborghini (ticket price 750k). His favorite designer and BFF is Givenchy designer Riccardo Tisci, whose clothes he wears almost exclusively (maybe he doesn’t pay for them, but he certainly promotes them). Take a gander at how much a Givenchy sweatshirt sells for these days. Finally, his fiance is obviously the icon of over-indulgence and conspicuous spending. Does anyone ever hear Ye’s Gold Digger and hmmm?
And now, onto Ye’s Yeezus tour merch. It features the confederate flag, because Ye believes that he will detonate that racist symbol overnight, or at least, by the end of his tour. It doesn’t work that way, Ye. I could be wrong, but reversing cultural phenomena, like, for example, subverting the virulently racist word “nigger,” takes generations to accomplish. Incidentally, the first major photo of Ye in his gear was taken as he walked out of Barneys, a retailer currently under investigation for racial profiling. He appeared to be holding a receipt of some kind. Which is it, Ye? Are you buying in or protesting?
In other non-controversial clothing news, after publicly supporting Miley Cyrus’s VMA performance—he even jumped in the studio to record a remix of another single, Black Skinhead, with her right after the show—just a month or so later, he sported a Sinead O’Connor sweatshirt. As Ye was no doubt fully aware, Sinead O’Connor had just penned an open letter to Miley Cyrus impugning the latter’s recent career choices.
The key to being controversial is that people have to believe in the authenticity of a story that they could never tell. You can be as crazy (or, as Ye puts it, “genius”) as you want to be, but when it all comes out in the wash, the story must make sense. Charlie Sheen is a great example of a “crazy” dude who makes a whole lot of sense. Sheen, unlike Yeezy, doesn’t have to tell us his crazy is a form of genius, because I think most of us would gladly offer up the compliment without provocation.Either Kanye West is trying too damn hard or he’s suffering from some sort of cognitive break. Either way, he’s achieving the opposite of controversy at this point.
Truth is, in 2010, when Ye apologized away one of the most brilliant quotes in pop culture history — “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” — we should have known. I’ll leave you with something reassuring now. Kanye wants us all to know: HE NEVER DOES PUBLICITY STUNTS. Guess which voice-cum-body language he employed when he said it? Hint: it’s a trick question.
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