There comes a time when someone who is considered great needs somebody (or some bodies) that he/she can trust to tell them “No.”
Kanye West has become that person.
The past couple of months have been an interesting study on the man responsible for some of this millenniums’ best Hip-Hop albums. He’s been kind of all over the place lately. One minute he’s brilliant (the Kendrick Lamar assisted “No More Parties In LA”) and the next he’s pretty awful (the Nike diss “Facts”) but then there are those outbursts that are downright bizarre that range from his rant on Wiz Khalifa to his completely random tweet proclaiming Bill Cosby’s innocence.
And there’s that whole Taylor Swift thing that defies logic.
“Suggesting Bill Cosby is innocent with no context is a slippery slope.”
Let’s not even bring the album into this just yet. Because this is more about Kanye West the person than it is about the artist.
But one thing is for sure, Kanye West is all over the place right now. And what he lacks is a series of checks and balances that will protect him from his worst enemy: himself.
Has he fallen off or gone mad? Perhaps. And if he has, he doesn’t realize it. He’s become so self-absorbed with everything Kanye west that he cares little about what is going on around him. And because of that, he’s seemingly unaware of offending people and comprehending that perhaps there’s more to talk about than Kanye West. But who is going to say “Hey, you probably shouldn’t do that” when he wants to drop some bars about sleeping with Taylor Swift because he made the “b*tch” famous? Nobody. But what Kanye doesn’t realize is the damage he’s doing to himself.
Let’s start there, shall we?
When Kanye decided to include the line “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that b*tch famous,” did he consider how offensive that may come off? Sure, he’s stated that Swift approved the line (which sounds like a really bizarre phone call to begin with), but does he not understand how being a Black man who suggests that he made today’s white pop princess famous and he should sleep with her after calling her a b*tch could maybe rub a whole lot of people the wrong way? Maybe he forgets that he lives in America where people are still up in arms about Beyonce’s Super Bowl performance because she paid homage to the Black Panthers.
Bottom line is that it was unnecessary.
But to make matters worse, Kanye felt the need to justify it on Twitter. After stating that he cleared it in an “hour long convo” with Taylor Swift, he decided to suggest that the word “b*tch” is “an endearing term in Hip-Hop like the word Ni**a.”
Let’s stop right there.
First of all, Taylor Swift is not Hip-Hop. And it is tone deaf to suggest a word that is offensive to women when said by men is endearing to them in any culture. But Kanye felt that it was necessary to justify his stance on something that is pretty unjustifiable. Hell, Taylor Swift’s team firing back and saying that the conversation didn’t happen is even worse for Kanye.
But somebody should have stopped him a long time ago. There comes a time when Roy Jones needs to stop boxing and Kobe Bryant can’t shoot all the time because the only person it is really hurting is their own brand. Kanye needs to be checked and told no. Saying that George Bush doesn’t care about Black people without context was okay because everyone hated George Bush. But suggesting Bill Cosby is innocent with no context is a slippery slope. Defending an accused rapist without any rationale as to why is irresponsible for an individual of his stature. It’s not like he explains himself. He just blurts things out. And then he acts like his feelings are hurt when someone like President Obama calls him a jackass.
It’s possible that his mother was his voice of reason before she passed and Kanye finds little trust in anyone else. It takes a lot to psychoanalyze someone the stature of Kanye West but something feels off about him. Even the music has taken a hit as of late.
Maybe Kanye should have settled on an album title before doing what seems like an entire song and dance of names before settling on the #KanyeShrug worthy The Life Of Pablo for reasons that are completely unknown (sort of—see his Twitter praise of St. Paul). Again, it’s too soon to judge the music but even that seems to be randomly put together without any true rhyme or reason. But if there is one thing that he has been able to hold on to regardless of what’s going on around him, it’s his music. Everything else just seems like a mess.
Honestly, I don’t think he knows what he’s doing anymore and how it affects him.
Hopefully he figures it out.
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Photo: Felipe Ramales/Splash News/Corbis
