It's Hard to Like 'Ye' When You Know Better
Kanye West was supposed to be canceled, and so was his eighth solo album, Ye. For many fans, the dismissal happened the minute a blond-haired, bland-eyed Ye stood side by side with then President-elect Donald Trump back in December 2016. With all that Kanye had previously spoken out against ("George Bush doesn’t care about black people") and the audience he was thought to represent, that photo op with Trump caused many fans to rethink their allegiance to Yeezy.
Kanye has always been a man who pushes boundaries and laughs in the face of cultural gatekeepers and authority. His brash behavior and unrestricted opinions were once amusing and inspiring, whether he was wearing a kilt on stage or making a statement that landed outside the mainstream. He thrived in otherness, in "devil’s advocate" land. "When [Trump] was running, it's like I felt something," Kanye told Charlamagne Tha God last month, explaining why he felt inspired by Trump's victory. "The fact that he won, it proves something. It proved that anything is possible in America. That Donald Trump could be president of America."
That statement isn't quite as twisted as some of the things Kanye's been saying recently, but there's no question that he's spent the past several years going too far. From relationship-damaging rants about Jay-Z to selling merch bearing the Confederate flag, Ye’s "expressive" antics have drifted into the extremes as his celebrity has risen to Kardashian-Jenner heights, and this year, supposed to be about his return to music, has also been the nadir of his toxic spiral. Anyone on the fence about continuing to support him after the Trump Tower visit was shoved off the railing when Kanye, a black man, told a packed TMZ newsroom that 400 years of slavery was "a choice." For people of color and people with sense, it was a slap in the face. Now that it's album time, that bitter coating on our tongues hasn't worn off. We're not supposed to want to hear art from someone with such distorted views of reality and such blatant disregard for his black following. But how long can disappointment stand in the way of curiosity?
Personally, I lost the battle against FOMO, because I did indeed want to hear what this troubled man had to say. The guilt weighs heavy on my computer keys as this assessment comes to fruition. Ye the man may be unforgivable right now, but Ye the album actually isn't half bad, and it's difficult to shake the disappointment of that pleasant surprise.
Let's be very clear here: Ye is nowhere near the level of The College Dropout or Graduation, or even 2016's The Life of Pablo. Ye is more comparable in tone to Yeezus, another brooding album that split Kanye's fan base in half when it arrived, but sonically speaking, those isolated Wyoming sessions did him some good. Kanye called on a diverse assortment of vocalists - Charlie Wilson, John Legend, Ty Dolla $ign, etc. - to build upon soulful samples from Slick Rick, Juvenile, and gospel singer Shirley Ann Lee. Based on instrumentation and musical engineering alone, the knock of "Yikes," grandeur of "No Mistakes," and melancholy harmonies of both "Wouldn't Leave" and "Violent Crimes" are the kind of musical achievements that let Kanye get away with calling himself a genius.
That said, problematic Yeezy is still alive and well on this project. Ye begins and ends with violence, in the hypothetical sense, at least. On opener "I Thought About Killing You," Kanye smugly reveals in plain speech that he has thought about offing himself and others in the past. It's fitting, given the death of his reputation, but more than anything, the spoken-word-performance-turned-song is a fair starting point to dissecting the New Kanye:
Just say it out loud to see how it feels
People say, "Don't say this, don't say that"
Just say it out loud, just to see how it feels
Weigh all the options, nothing's off the table
Today I thought about killing you, premeditated murder
I think about killing myself, and I, I love myself way more than I love you
Bookended between these blunt thoughts are admissions of strain within his marriage to Kim Kardashian West and prime Instagram quotables that could easily distract from the unsettling assortment of boastful lyrics he sprinkles throughout the LP ("If I wasn't shining so hard, wouldn't be no shade").
Much to my chagrin, Kanye brushed off his slavery comments with two dismissive bars about how that was only the mildest line in his stash of wild words. Like TLOP, Ye reeks of smarmy viewpoints about men's perceptions of women. On "Yikes," he claps back at Russell Simmons's concern for Kanye's mental well-being by referencing the recent sexual assault allegations against Simmons and using #MeToo as a verb. "Wouldn't Leave" glorifies ride-or-die women who stand by their men despite their reckless behavior, despite that not being a viable (or safe) option for everyone who's ever dealt with a mercurial man. Ye uses "All Mine" to put his wife on a bizarre mantelpiece, praising her for being a cross between model Naomi Campbell and porn star Stormy Daniels.
Even more annoyingly, "Violent Crimes,' which was intended as a protective ode to his daughters North and Chicago, supports the trash theory that only when a man becomes "a father of daughters" will he reconsider past, present and future ill-treatment of women. "N***as is savage, n***as is monsters / N***as is pimps, n***as is players / Till n***as have daughters, now they precautious / Father forgive me, I'm scared of the karma / Cause now I see women as somethin' to nurture / Not somethin' to conquer," he raps. Too little, too late, Papa Ye. Common decency and respect towards fellow human beings should always precede doting daddyhood.
What was refreshing, however, was that save for a quick political quip about North Korea, hardly any of Kanye's perceived Republican alignment made it onto the final cut of Ye. That is the glimmer of hope I hold on to even as I feel conflicted about doing so. Is this the end of Kanye West as we knew him? Maybe not. The same Kanye that made classic album after classic album and inspired dozens of today's artists is still somewhere in the mix, and the best moments of Ye imply that Old Kanye hasn’t completely disappeared. Beneath the rag-tag Yeezy garments and that damn MAGA hat is the man who could once compare himself to Steve Jobs without sounding totally off-base.
It all goes back to our decision - or maybe inability - to separate the art from the artist. If you can put aside what you know of his off-album antics for 23 minutes, then Ye is a mostly enjoyable, occasionally brilliant piece of art. But if you (very reasonably) can't or won't, then you'll sleep soundly knowing that you were never part of enabling the problem.
Follow Stacy-Ann on Twitter.
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