Kanye West has made himself more compelling than the music he makes.<\/b>
\nYou\u2019d think that Kanye West releasing his first album since 2016\u2019s The Life of Pablo would be the biggest Kanye news of 2018. But in the past two months, Kanye\u2019s behavior has overshadowed anything else he\u2019s done and made it impossible to talk about, or listen to, his new Ye without conjuring up weeks\u2019 worth of controversy.
Kanye released Ye on Friday, complete with a listening party in the middle of Wyoming, and within hours, both the reviews and the takes were flying fast. But the furor around Ye is less focused on the album itself \u2014 which, at only seven tracks and 24 minutes, is more properly categorized as an EP \u2014 and more on how it fits into the ever-evolving notion of who Kanye West is in 2018.
In the past two months alone, Kanye has, among other things, publicly voiced his support for Donald Trump, said slavery was a \u201cchoice,\u201d and aligned himself with far-right and white supremacist talking points. Instead of the news being that Kanye West created a new album, the news is that Kanye West, amid this erratic and bombastic behavior, created a new album.
Listening to Kanye\u2019s new album means supporting Kanye. And right now, for many people, supporting Kanye is a dilemma.
This isn\u2019t a unique dilemma; we\u2019re often faced with the separation of art and artist in our culture, particularly in the wake of #MeToo. In some cases, and for some people, that\u2019s easier said than done. But with Kanye West, it seems all but impossible.
West\u2019s past two months have been tumultuous, brimming with political controversy and baffling behavior, all while he was ostensibly putting the final touches on Ye. There are parts of Ye that appear inspired by the recent controversies surrounding West, but even if his behavior weren\u2019t at all connected to the new album, it would be impossible to separate one from the other.
Back in April, after a prolonged silence on Twitter, West exploded back onto the social media platform with a series of tweets professing his love for \u201cmy brother\u201d President Donald Trump and praising Trump\u2019s \u201cdragon energy\u201d:
West also showed off his \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d hat, which Trump signed:
West\u2019s tweets likely would have garnered interest no matter what, but they were particularly incendiary in the context of West\u2019s previous political statements. West is the same person who once said \u201cGeorge Bush doesn\u2019t care about black people\u201d after the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina \u2014 a disaster that disproportionately affected black Americans \u2014 on national television, during a telethon fundraiser for disaster relief. These tweets show him essentially reversing those politics, showering love on a president who called African nations \u201cshitholes.\u201d
Then, while Kanye-watchers were still in the midst of grappling with the implications of this reversal, West made an appearance on TMZ Live in which he said that slavery was a choice.
\u201cWhen you hear about slavery for 400 years \u2014 for 400 years? That sounds like a choice,\u201d West told the TMZ newsroom . \u201cLike, you were there for 400 years, and it\u2019s all of y\u2019all?\u201d
West walked back his statements somewhat, saying that he knew that African men and women were literally shackled against their will. But he doubled down on a narrative that they were \u201cmentally enslaved,\u201d that there was a choice to not fight back.
\u201cMy point is for us to have stayed in that position even though the numbers were on our side means that we were mentally enslaved,\u201d West wrote on Twitter .
That narrative, as Vox\u2019s P. R. Lockhart pointed out, is used to invoke the argument that the Civil War was fought not to preserve slavery but to defend states\u2019 rights. It\u2019s also a narrative that blames enslaved people who didn\u2019t escape for the bondage forced upon them.
With these statements, West has echoed, on a national megaphone, a narrative that erases the injustice inflicted on black men and women, and bolstered lies circulated by white supremacists. If West\u2019s comments are what he truly believes, and not a very poorly conceived marketing ploy, then buying or streaming his new album could feel like supporting West\u2019s beliefs \u2014 not just his music.
This narrative appears to have worked in the opposite direction as well, with West\u2019s support for Trump and MAGA winning his album some right-wing fans:
Instead of leading with an album that makes us curious about where Kanye West is as an artist and person, Kanye has led with controversy, essentially making us curious about an album through the actions of an artist. That puts Ye in the position of commenting on \u2014 and, depending on your position, answering for \u2014 its creator\u2019s behavior over the preceding months. The answers on Ye aren\u2019t evocative or provoking enough to live up to the prelude.
In hip-hop in particular, there\u2019s merit in one\u2019s truth, be it personal or political. This is what makes it so hard for fans to separate West\u2019s new album from his recent statements.
Over the past few years, there\u2019s been an ongoing cultural debate over whether authenticity even exists in hip-hop anymore, or whether it was always a myth. The idea of \u201crealness\u201d has a sliding scale from rapper to rapper: Some use it as a marketing tool, as part of their image \u2014 particularly to push back against perceived posers. In the most extreme extrapolation of this perceived authenticity, rap lyrics have been used in court as evidence against rappers.
But no matter your opinion about authenticity\u2019s place in hip-hop, there\u2019s a perceived worth to it all the same. West tweeted about authenticity\u2019s value in April:
Given the value Kanye places on his own authenticity, it logically follows that Ye is reflective of who Kanye West considers himself to be in this moment \u2014 that he believes his true self is worth the backlash his actions have wrought.
So it\u2019s perhaps unsurprising that a common criticism of Ye is that it\u2019s underwhelming, given the interest Kanye has generated in the past couple of months, that it\u2019s a meager main course that doesn\u2019t live up to the appetizers he\u2019s served in anticipation to it. The New York Times called Ye \u201csurprisingly slight,\u201d while Pitchfork called the album \u201cthoroughly, exhaustingly boring.\u201d The Guardian, one of the more favorable reviews, called it \u201cbold, risky, infuriating, compelling,\u201d but tempered that by noting that it is a \u201clittle exhausting.\u201d
If Ye feels slight, boring, and exhausting, it\u2019s at least in part because West has, through his recent statements, created a context in which the album has to answer for so much, has to give insight into a figure who has raised so many questions and provoked so much discussion. Even at twice the length, it\u2019s debatable that Ye ever could have done that.
If there\u2019s one track that helps unlock what we\u2019ve seen Kanye go through in 2018, it\u2019s \u201c Yikes,\u201d a throbbing, spooky tune in which he raps about his bipolar diagnosis, his anxiety, and how he terrifies himself. \u201cSometimes I scare myself, myself \/ They take me on meds, off meds, ask yourself \/ Shit could get menacin\u2019, frightenin\u2019 \/ Find help.\u201d
He says his \u201cbipolar shit\u201d is a superpower and not a disability. ( Ye\u2019s cover image features mountain scenery with the phrase \u201cI hate being bipolar, it\u2019s awesome\u201d emblazoned across it.)
There are also moments on Ye that speak to an awareness of, or even calculation behind, the discussion he\u2019s provoked that serves to undermine any notion of true self-reflection. In \u201c Wouldn\u2019t Leave,\u201d he addresses those comments about slavery: \u201cI said slavery a choice, they said, \u2018How, Ye?\u2019 \/ Just imagine if they caught me on a wild day.\u201d
Kanye seems to be hinting that he\u2019s capable of being much more provocative, or erupting in a way that\u2019s so much worse. He seems aware of what he said and the backlash it caused, but warns that episode was just a small taste of what\u2019s going in his head. In a way, he\u2019s apologizing, but he\u2019s also boasting for his actions and the boldness that spurs them.
He goes on to rap in \u201cWouldn\u2019t Leave\u201d about how his wife was terrified for the consequences of his outburst, then boasted how she wouldn\u2019t leave him and how she, and all of us, wouldn\u2019t be able to walk away from him: \u201cHad to calm her down \u2019cause she couldn\u2019t breathe \/ Told her she could leave me now, but she wouldn\u2019t leave \/ And I know you wouldn\u2019t leave.\u201d
Here, Kanye\u2019s all but acknowledging that he\u2019s created a can\u2019t-look-away scenario for fans and curious onlookers alike, and while it may have creatively energized him, it leaves Ye feeling unfocused and unfulfilling for those who don\u2019t share Kanye\u2019s current truth. Kanye has become bigger than the music he creates and, specifically when it comes to this album, more interesting than his art. It shouldn\u2019t be a surprise, then, that this album, to many people, is more about what West stands for than what it sounds like.<\/p>\n

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