Ask people if they think Kanye West is a musical genius, and nearly everyone will agree that he is. Ask people if they “like Kanye West,” and you will get a very different and complicated response.
Kanye’s likability as a person is constantly in question. A few highlights of his egregious social faux pas are related to Taylor Swift. First: When he interrupted her when she received an award at the VMA’s. And more recently? When he released a song on his new album, The Life of Pablo, that contained lyrics calling Taylor Swift a b***** and stating that she wouldn’t have become famous without him.
Even when not focusing on Kanye’s disrespectfulness and rudeness towards others, he is simply difficult to admire. On his album titled, Yeezus, there is a track called “I Am God” which, although somewhat debated concerning its meaning, is an indisputably bold and egotistical title. Personally, I would never want to encounter or deal with someone who had that big of an ego.
Separate from him seeming like a difficult person to be around, and he also may be downright immoral. Recently Kanye tweeted that Bill Cosby is innocent in all caps with exclamation points for seemingly no reason at all. There was no need for him to weigh in on this issue, but he did. Why, Kanye, why?
Currently, Kanye is claiming that he is 53 million dollars in debt from his new album and is begging fans to download Jay-Z’s new music streaming website, Tidal, so he can start making some of his money back.
Kanye’s pleas beg the question: Should we be supporting this man? Perhaps Kanye being Kanye provides an anomalous reason for why listeners would have an excuse to download music illegally. We want to hear his genius, but do we want to support the man behind the music? Can we feel content with our moral selves supporting a narcissistic, misogynistic, rapist-defending man?
Is it responsible to support an artist who goes to such great efforts to be horrible? For example, imagine how much less of an effort it would have been if he just sat down at the VMA’s and didn’t humiliate a nineteen-year-old girl.
Countless times we as a society have tried to reconcile our love of Kanye with his controversial actions, but I’m not sure how long we can all keep this up. Kanye will clearly never stop being Kanye, and we shouldn’t expect anything less. Will he eventually push us over the edge? I want Kanye to suffer some kind of consequence for being a terrible person, but I never want to live in a world in which Kanye West is no longer a spectacle and phenomenon. Yeezy’s got us in a Catch 22.
