The artist formerly known as Kanye West was once influential, but that never meant he deserved a platform.
Like a lot of fans of Ye — the artist formerly known as Kanye West — I went from just hearing his music to listening to him when I heard his 2004 quasi-spiritual opus “Jesus Walks.” I became curious about his next interview, his next project, his take on who I should be listening to, because once I heard that Arc Choir sample at the beginning of “Walks,” I was in. To date, Ye has sold more than 160 million records, won 24 Grammys and built a fashion/media empire that’s pushed his net worth north of $2 billion.
In May 2009, the Fray and “American Idol” winner Kris Allen both hit the Billboard charts with covers of “Heartless” while Ye’s original was still on as well. Four months later he’s at the MTV Video Music Awards interrupting Taylor Swift to give Beyoncé flowers she did not want, given the circumstances. It wasn’t a gaffe. For 10 years he kept that moment with Swift alive. He did it with music videos, song lyrics and occasionally more directly in interviews. He manufactured the controversy, used it as a muse and then monetized it, all while continuing to produce hip-hop symphonies like “Heartless.”
I’ll leave the debate about his “genius” to others. All I know is Ye has always understood what works.
For the better part of two weeks, he took that understanding and his platform to peddle dangerous antisemitic comments and harmful anti-Black sentiment and to resuscitate debunked conspiracy theories about the murder of George Floyd.
In response, other platforms have kicked him off of theirs. He’s been suspended from Instagram and Twitter. His appearance on HBO’s “The Shop: Uninterrupted” was pulled because the LeBron James-produced show has “zero tolerance for hate speech of any kind and will never allow our channels to be used to promote hate.
