February 13, 2024 - 1:00pm
After almost three years Kanye West (or “Ye”) has released his latest album, Vultures 1, in collaboration with Ty Dolla $ign as part of a planned trilogy. One might expect that, given the end of many commercial relationships due to his previous antisemitic statements, this album might underperform. But it has reached the number one spot in at least 100 countries on the Apple and iTunes charts, despite the fact it was independently produced and wasn’t initially available on Spotify and YouTube.
The implication here is that West has gained a level of success and fandom that cannot be erased or reversed. Kanye is, so to speak, uncancellable. He still has tens of millions of listeners and daily streams on Spotify alone. And that was before his most recent album.
Vultures 1 is already proving contentious, with its original album artwork accused of carrying Nazi connotations. On the lyrical front, Kanye raps, in reference to artists convicted and accused of sexual abuse respectively, that “I’m Ye-Kelly bitch…Now, I’m Puff Daddy rich (Ha), that’s ‘#MeToo me’ rich (Ha).” And in a nod to accusations of antisemitism, another West lyric goes: “I’m not antisemitic, I just fucked a Jewish bitch.”
While these lyrics are hardly the most shocking to have come out of the rap genre, it does point to a level of confidence that West holds concerning his status in popular culture. Indeed, because the rapper is now so famous he can withstand more shocks (and cancellation attempts) than most other artists. Take, for instance, Azealia Banks, who had a promising beginning to her music career. She quickly attracted controversy for using homophobic slurs, lambasting trans women, endorsing Donald Trump and publishing erratic posts on social media which dented her mainstream reputation and career prospects. Ultimately, Banks was sidelined from major shows and festivals, which resulted in diminishing sales. The same, as the success of his latest album shows, cannot be said for West.
More broadly, however, Kanye’s relative success can be attributed to the death of monoculture. Before, most of the general public listened to the radio, watched the same TV stations, read the same newspapers, and consumed the same news sources. But the growth of the internet from the 2010s onwards gradually segmented this culture. Nowadays, more people are consuming news, media, and music from narrower, more niche sources. This means that a song could be a smash hit among an online community while most of the public offline would be unaware of it and may never hear it in their lives.
It’s therefore possible that those who are not chronically online or deep into social media may not really care that much, even if they are aware of his scandals, since they just see him as a gifted rapper. The fact remains that Kanye is only as “cancelled” as his next album. If his albums have at least some high-quality music in them, they will be streamed and downloaded, he’ll be talked about and thus make more money.
A true cancellation does not come from elites in the media, music or fashion industry. Whether we like it or not, it comes from the bottom: West will only truly be “cancelled” when people stop listening to his music and the demand for it fades. Until then, Kanye isn’t going to disappear any time soon.
Ralph Leonard is a British-Nigerian writer on international politics, religion, culture and humanism.
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SubscribeHis audience are of course aligned with his disgusting values and are therefore inclined to celebrate him as oppose to cancel him – being rejected by the ‘elites in media’ only serves to boost his popularity as an apparent rebel as we have witnessed with other social media degenerates.
What values? A big part of his audience is made up of white teenagers and young adults who often have only faint values of their own, outside of whatever might have clustered together and taken hold from their parents, peers, teachers, and the internet? I don’t think it’s plausible that most of his listeners share his brand of hedonism nor his expressed views about women and Jews in particular.
I personally think he has some real talent but not much of it can break through his colossal ego, which often breaks into grandiose delusions. He is so volatile and disruptive that even DJT is wary of Kanye’s endorsement, maybe thinking: now some of that rant was a bit much.
Maybe they just like his music and can ignore his personal views?
A criticism often correctly aimed at the woke is that they can’t seperate an artists work from their personal views after all, perhaps it’s a trait not confined just to them
Good point. I doubt many who agreed with his antisemitic rants were waiting for his new album to “drop”. But some people who are rather tame or conventional themselves like controversial lyrics that can deliver a vicarious thrill.
Now that overt, shameless anti semitism is once again fashionable with the left. I imagine Kanye West has gained lots of new fans.
However Kayne doesn’t mean it, and holds no malice towards Jews. Unlike the left and its islamfacist allies.
Kanye has always thrived off controversy. He famously got his first break from crashing his car then had a couple of years of notoriety from making two classic albums then it became all the “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” and “I am a god” or “greatest artist alive” stuff to the utter madness we see now.
He has had to evolve as the political sphere and online world have become increasingly crazy and he has had to do more to grab attention.
Just claiming to be the greatest artist alive and relying on all the ensuing online and press arguments to do all you publicity for you just doesn’t cut it when we had in President Trump someone whose entire lexicon is built on such hyperbole.
It kind of makes you wonder what future artists and politicians are going to have to do and say to stick out above the fray.
I would imagine because I don’t know, that if West’s fan base are mostly teenagers, white or not, that those who pay money for this stuff are the parents. So how can he or anyone be cancelled if those that can cancel him are hostage to the whims of their little darlings.
Kanye West has been around for 20 years, why would most of those buying his albums be teenagers?
Also why wouldn’t teenagers have their own money to spend how they see fit? Didn’t you buy any music as a teenager?
Really, this drug-addled man is just a musical tribute-act version of Trump. The more he outrages the majority of thinking people with his unhinged nonsense, the more his most devoted supporters will see him as their saviour from all the others who demean and disrespect them.
I think he is just another symptom of the degradation of societal mores, by people dedicated to the normalizing of an Idiocracy – and it’s coming to fruition before our eyes.
I’m pretty certain that the majority of “thinking people” aren’t thinking about Kanye, and the people “dedicated to the normalizing of an Idiocracy” are not his, nor Trump’s “devoted supporters”.
Kayne is bipolar and his crazy behavior is when he is manic. He was treated for awhile, but like other sufferers, he missed the manic high. Bipolar people often do outrageous things when they are manic and are deeply distressed by their behavior. I feel sorry for the guy and hope he can be convinced to seek help. That said, rap music is awful.
Round Midnight and Kinda Blue to ‘I Fucked a Jewish b***h’ in three generations. Oh dear.
He’s a musician, and not just a musician, a rapper. Those type of people often tend to be trashy personality types who self-destruct and live desolate lives it who can hardly be thought to be examples of moral virtue. Kanye is definitely one of those types. I don’t take people like him seriously whenever they try to seem serious and thoughtful, it’s either a shallow publicity stunt or pretension. Just another celebrity with his head up his ass.
Yes, it is a tendency. But also a stereotype and one that gets romanticized too often. In my opinion, it’s a more valid generalization to say that creative anomalies tend to be both inspired and troubled, “carried away” or “haunted” by inner forces over which they have only partial control. (Then again, so are many people who aren’t notably talented).
But for every lonely Beethoven we can find a comparatively joyous Bach, father of twenty children, whose enduring fame seemed highly unlikely during his own lifetime. And anyone who’s listens to much of Old Ludwig Van knows that there is great, even transcendent joy amid the sturm und drang.
Your generalization does seem closer to accurate when it comes rappers, and I don’t place Kanye West alongside those German giants, nor with Louis Armstrong or Jimi Hendrix.
Still, hip-hop standouts like Jay Z, KRS-One*, and Mos Def (born Dante Smith, now called Yasiin Bey), don’t fit your mold. I admit it’s easier to come up with a list of well-known rappers who do.
*A little light research shows he doesn’t support my claim very well. I wouldn’t call him “desolate” or “trashy” but he’s made some insane and indefensible public comments. I’d like to replace him, for rhetorical purposes, with Missy Elliot.
He’s another fearsome American radical who has it in for the Jewish community.
Disgusting lyrics. Disgusting ‘music’. Disgusting individual.
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