Kanye West

What's good all? Glad to see all this interest in me and my new joint "Late Registration." I can tell ILN has a lot of love for this record and my career. Man, this is a real tool to jump your shit up the charts, nahmean...

But I got to say, my name is the name my mama picked me -- that's Kanye -- true to the heart right... So no need to be postin' all these wise answers man. I'ma just keep doin' as I been doin', right...

That's your boy,

Kanye

I'm also a homosexual and a personal shopper, so shoot me a line cuties

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003534982

Do we have a thread for this new record yet?

http://img404.imageshack.us/my.php?image=westbj9.png

I think everything about this dude will age about as well as a gallon of milk. He's like a walking time capsule.

kyla biah, don't listen to'em, you'll age fine.

his real name is: haunted zangs

Darn, the image didn't post. I don't really feel like opening photoshop to change it to a jpeg, so I guess you'll have to use your noggin' to imagine Kanye making an embarrassingly nerdy and almost nearly pretentious fashion statement. The images you'll find on Google search were nearly as bad anyway.

The Carrie Bradshaw of Rap.

^^^ quality revival, dom et al take note

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30949487/

Rapper Kanye West does not read books or respect them but nevertheless he has written one that he would like you to buy and read.

...

His book is 52 pages — some blank, others with just a few words — and offers his optimistic philosophy on life. One two-page section reads, “Life is 5% what happens and 95% how you react!” Another page reads “I hate the word hate!”

His book is 52 pages — some blank, others with just a few words. . .

Why write a book? Just Twitter it.

anyone who buys this deserves it, IMO

I wish I was famous enough to get a publisher to put out 50 pages of gibberish; I could use the extra $$$.

helgo already turned it into a screenname but i still can't get over that "I would never want a book's autograph" quote

i would never want an mp3's autograph

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3654/3570396089_20b2ab1f28.jpg

loooooooooooooool

“Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed,” West said. “I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph."

This guy should stop while he's (barely) ahead and try to pass this book off as a tribute to e.e. cummings or something.

It's kind of funny how the last few months Kanye's been earnestly admitting he needs to stop being an embarrassing logorrheic trainwreck all the time, but he's clearly incapable of being anything else.

808s was my favorite album of last year but this 52 page "book" sounds like complete and utter shit.

i usually rep for the dude but that sounds awful

what is Kanye West real name?

Rigatoni Loupshank.

What if Kanye West is Retarded?

tl; dr thy name is cracked magazine

kanye says the same thing

i wasn't serious, stuff like i just posted are just little thoughts i come up with, i call them "h3lges0on-isms"

the h3lges0on dialectic.

why does he say hen fap on gold digger?

okay I only watched a little bit of "Paranoid" but it was amazing how unsettling it was; the backstory behind Rihanna/Chris totally makes the video and really casts the song in an unsympathetic light

Sometimes I think Kanye is very, very lucky and sometimes I think he's smarter than everyone realizes.

Kanye kinds deserved this, though the piece itself could've been funnier:

"Whoever said life is an open book probably didn’t have any friends. Sure, he probably liked the people in his book. But did they like him? No. Why? Because they aren’t real."

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/11/09/091109sh_shouts_cowen

KANYE THINKS PILOTPRIEST TRACK IS UNRELEASED DAFT PUNK

On January 28th, hip hop artist Kanye West’s blog posted an unreleased Daft Punk song called “The Crash” and offered it to fans for free download on kanyeuniversecity.com. In actuality, the song was not authored or performed by Daft Punk, but by Calamity Jane Recordings artist Pilotpriest, and its not called "the Crash," its called “Body Double.”

The song can be found on Pilotpriest’s Myspace page, and is the first song on the player. When Pilotpriest heard about Kanye’s post, he commented, “Really, really flattered, but this is just a Myspace rip or Sendspace hack of my track.” Likewise, Dani Deahl, co-owner of Calamity Jane Recordings says, “We love the comparison of our artist’s production to Daft Punk, but the claim simply isn’t true. The song was composed by, and belongs to Pilotpriest”.

The post by Kanye spurred rumors that Daft Punk produced the song for their upcoming project – scoring the remake of Tron. Several commenters on the blog assert it as fact and videos have appeared on youtube.com with combined hits of nearly 30,000 in three days. In the wake of the song’s popularity, Calamity Jane Recordings is rushing release of “Body Double” on iTunes.

Calamity Jane Recordings discovered Toronto-based Pilotpriest in 2007 through his bootleg of Run DMC’s “My Adidas”. Since then, Calamity Jane Recordings has worked with Pilotpriest supporting him in developing a sound that straddles the spectrum between the dance floor and more musical productions. The result has been a string of acclaimed remixes, including re-released Pilotpriest vs. Run DMC: “My Adidas”, a remix for American Idol’s Blake Lewis, and debut single “Zipper”.

Links:
Kanye West Blog Post:
http://www.kanyeuniversecity.com/blog/?em3106=244159_-1__0_~0_-1_1_2010_0_0&em3298=&em3282=&em3281=&em3161=

Pilotpriest Myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/pilotpriest

Calamity Jane Recordings:
http://www.calamityjanerecordings.com

Youtube “Tron” Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsex5IKU5LM

Canadians do it better.

Have we talked about this yet?

http://twitter.com/kanyewest

sometimes I push the door close button on people running towards the elevator. I just need my own elevator sometimes, my 7 floor sanctuary
about 10 hours ago via web

kanyewest
Kanye West

otm

anyone who doesn't push close on ppl running to the elevator is a disgusting savage

i have done this and then they make it, v. awkward.

haha sometimes i make a big production of fumbling for the door open button in this situation, but i rarely find it in time

why would you run anyway i mean

unless ur in a romantic comedy or something

Don't you hate it when you say bye to someone then yall get on the elevator together and it's like, now what?? Awkwaaard
about 10 hours ago via web

kanyewest
Kanye West

In life... Sometimes you gotta just wait for the next elevator
about 10 hours ago via web

kanyewest
Kanye West

i am not sympathetic to elevator runnaz here cuz THERE ARE FIVE ELEVATORZ in my building. half the time two more arrive before our doors close.

and don't even get me started on ppl who take the elevator to the 2nd floor!!!!

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/8757510

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L53gjP-TtGE

what the fuck

(admit i may be way late to the party on this one, dunno)

what is "you n***** got jooooooookes" that funny voice?

is it a raaaaandy thing?

his album is called dark twisted fantasy. lol.

facepalm til infinity

21st century shitzoid plan

Friend just posted this on fb and made me lol: "The Kanye/Kardashian thing upsets me because I feel like I was really mislead regarding his thoughts on gold diggers."

p sure Kim does just alright financially w/ or w/out Kanye

True, but you're ridding my afternoon of humor. Thanks a lot!

lol, sorry.

During his show in London, Kanye West had to speak about a few things:

On Justin Timberlakes collaboration with Jay-Z:

During Kanye’s rant in London he said, “I got love for Hov, but I aint ****ing with that suit & tie.”

On Barack Obama:

“I don’t give a **** what the president got to say” – Kanye, during his rant.

On The Grammys:

According the Kanye, Grammy’s promised him he could open the show 4 years ago,
then Gaga got hot and he was bumped. The rant goes on LOL

The grammys can suck my dick

I’ve never won a Grammy against a white person

http://defpenradio.com/kanye-west-rants-about-jay-z-on-suit-tie-obama-and-the-grammys/

So, any night.

He's not wrong.

yeah he is, he won a Grammy against the Beastie Boys in 2005!

On Barack Obama:

“I don’t give a **** what the president got to say” – Kanye, during his rant.

otm

Kanye and Lupe 2013

i don't really think Kanye has much of any political convictions, he's just dealing with the fact that the first black president, who is from Chicago, called him a jackass on multiple occasions.

+ likes jay more

haha yeah

Lyrics to new Kanye song sound, er, awesome.

Stop everything you're doing now/ Because Baby, you're awesome / Don't let nobody get you down / Because you're awesome / You don't need to listen to your manager ... / You must be tired of running through my mind / Can I come inside? ... I'm also awesome ... / I'd rather do nothing with you, / than something with somebody new / Because Baby you're awesome.

I'm happy to have no clue what this album will sound like
I.e. happy to be surprised

Lyrics to new Kanye song sound, er, awesome.

Stop everything you're doing now/ Because Baby, you're awesome / Don't let nobody get you down / Because you're awesome / You don't need to listen to your manager ... / You must be tired of running through my mind / Can I come inside? ... I'm also awesome ... / I'd rather do nothing with you, / than something with somebody new / Because Baby you're awesome.

damn i was gonna post the youtube but it's been taken down already. even funnier as audio, though, trust.

Yo Kanye, keep runnin' up that hill, playa!!!
― Kate Bush (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, February 25, 2004 9:43 PM (9 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah it's hard to describe how funny it is when he finally goes "...also i'm awesome"

i was kinda really into that song tho

Hats off to Kanye for making a lyric out of the old pick-up line "Your feet must be tired because you've been running through my mind all day."

I hope he does something with "Apart from being sexy what do you do for a living?" and "You must be Jamaican because Jamaican me crazy."

i missed this song! is it still up anywhere?

i can't even express how much i want a kim kardash feature on his album, it'd totally redeem him in my eyes

Hats off to Kanye for making a lyric out of the old pick-up line "Your feet must be tired because you've been running through my mind all day."

lol that's kind of what Frank Ocean's "Forrest Gump" was

yeah the "also i'm awesome" turn is incredible

all i can offer you is a vine https://vine.co/v/bEinpmHxMdE

lex you can hear the full thing here http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/videos/kanye-west-sings-kim-kardashian-ode/

i really like this song, honestly

this is kind of like when i first heard "love lockdown" via a shitty live recording and was blown away, except self-parodic and farcical

given that we can't really hear it properly i'm not going to say it sucks yet but what precisely do you like about it j0rdan? you can barely hear it

at least a thousand tiiiiiiimes, at least a thousand at least a thousand times, alriiiiight alriiiight alriiiight

he really should've gotten some help on this from a more capable songwriter, like farrah abraham

I'D RATHER DO NOTHING WITH YOU, THAN SOMETHING WITH SOMEBODY NEW

oh my god kanye feat. farrah abraham would be EVERYTHING

Are we talking a song or a porno?

for the love of ray j!

Okay, I just heard this song and it has made my day. It is...awesome?

i dunno, you should check your manager

WITH your manager

holy shit

given that we can't really hear it properly i'm not going to say it sucks yet but what precisely do you like about it j0rdan? you can barely hear it

― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Thursday, May 16, 2013 9:40 AM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark

well for one i was at the show so i could hear it pretty well

but i don't know i found it kind of really powerful. like, him standing in front of a crowd and with barely a beat singing this naked ode to a woman/relationship regardless of what the crowd or his peers or gossip magazines think. my biggest problem with kanye is that he's moved from the most relatable rapper (for middle class kids anyway) to the LEAST relatable rapper for anyone who isn't jay-z. but this kind of levels him again, even the lyrics are perfectly dumbstruck in a really sweet way. like, he sings about wanting to make kim a huge dessert.

like, he wants to make a huge dessert for her to eat, or he wants to lap her up like a giant bowl of Hagen-Daas, because

like, him standing in front of a crowd and with barely a beat singing this naked ode to a woman/relationship regardless of what the crowd or his peers or gossip magazines think

this is kind of why i compared it to "love lockdown" but that really was kinda whoa-wtf on a musical level

Kanye & Macca - Only One

https://soundcloud.com/bitemeapplesign/only-one

i love that there can be only one post about this song on ILM in its first 8 hours of being out

"Cut Me Some Slack" > "Only One"

it's the first of the month! it's the first of the year!
anyways, it's off soundcloud, here it is on youtube for the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES0Q5p4QF-8

it's fucking incredible

stevie wonder is gonna be like "uh" when he hears it, and i wish kanye didn't do his overload thing on the chorus, but i was surprised how affecting i found it even after giving the "making of" story on pitchfork an eyeroll

I dug it, how spare and emotional it was - not what I anticipated. Was not at all surprised to find Kanye dropping new music today tbh.

really lovely
his voice has shifted into this real rich mode, too

nice! keyb outro esp gorgeous, but i like the whole thing. vocal processing does undercut the intimacy somewhat.

Absolute garbage. Worst thing I've ever heard from Kanye.

^^^

Pretty shit. Reminds me of why I stopped paying attention to him.

Ya this is shit.

nah nah nah the vocal processing is what takes it over the top

and what's up w/ all the grinches itt xmas is over find a soul

Just like everything else in the 2000s it would be better with 100% less Paul mccartney, really whenn is this guy and his 2nd grade music class keyboard / rubber band guitar noodling going to die

really whenn is [paul mccartney] and his 2nd grade music class keyboard / rubber band guitar noodling going to die

new board discription

wonder if this is indicative of the album's overall sound or if it's just gonna play the bound 2/hey mama emotional climax role on the new record. either way, pretty damn good.

as long as mccartney's voice doesn't ever get involved I spose he can't fuck it up too much

"as long as mccartney's voice doesn't ever get involved I spose he can't fuck it up too much"

thinking this will prove wishful thinking. kanye could make the juxtaposition cool, but it's a tall order...

haha, fair point. I mean if it ends up working it ultimately won't matter, and I think it does work on this song. kanye almost always weaves the contributions of his collaborators into his own specific musical aesthetic in a way that seems organic (keef on "hold my liquor," fergie on "all of the lights," jon brion's arrangements and instrumentation all over late registration, etc.), so even bringing in paul mccartney doesn't worry me. yet.

paul vox on this, & the accompanying processing, are a neat thing i think

Omari and Ivory

so this song is probably the best vocal performance he's done so far, although the song itself is a bit corny, but then I went and read the story of how he came up with it and now I'm all choked up

probably didn't hurt that I just had my pre-dinner cocktail...

are paul's vox on this though? i think the backing vocal voice, when not doubled kanye, has been IDed as being ty dolla $ign

nah pretty sure Paul's just on keys on this

outro on this thing never fucking ends

just the idea that kanye has worked with paul mccartney makes me lol a bit. it gets better as it goes along. his vocals at the start seem quite bad. also, the 'and if you knew how proud' part comes in a bit suddenly. its just a rough demo right? it could be good but i hope this isnt on the finished album.

it seems like with the whole thing about how the song 'captured a special moment' they probably just wanted to leave it at that spare original recording. could be a good album closer, interesting first thing to release but i suppose it operates as a pretty dramatic palate cleanser after Yeezus.

it deserves hidden track status at best

rappers' songs about their kids are mostly terrible iirc

what about rappers' songs about grandmothers singing to gran kid?

this is sweet i guess but i have no real desire to hear it again

...and about a minute too long

this is sweet i guess but i have no real desire to hear it again
--lex pretend

this was basically my reaction

it seems like a decent album track, i'd never skip it but wouldn't actively seek it out

I could see it being a powerful album moment depending on sequencing, but yeah I am surprised by how minor it is.

The sentiment is so simple that it isn't served by the song length; it's a powerful two minute track drawn out to a lukewarm 5 min one

Not mad this exists but it's more of a one off single, isn't it? Maybe slap it on a deluxe edition of whatever the new album is called.

Works as a 180 from Yeezus.

that's what's so great about kanye. there really aren't that many other songwriters who present as comprehensive a portrait of themselves in their music as he does.

I don't think this makes a songwriter great...? Lots of'em present portraits of themselves. What made him for me a pleasure til 2010 was his attitude and how the beats abetted it. For electric piano tinkle and sighing, Bon Iver's around.

still soty

I mean, everyone has their own criteria. I like kanye for the compositional boldness of his music (this song is 't so bold though) but I also like his unflinching confessionalism. He is willing to be both embarrassingly hateful and embarrassingly corny and sentimental, and you never get a sense that he is disavowing any one of these moods as aspects of a persona or mask a la eminem. A kind of artlessness pulled off artfully

i don't see how he's unique in that

There does seem to be a lack of Kanye filter as of late, pretty inchoate in his targets and anger and vitriol. This side of him really seemed to pop up after his mom died, so I wonder if she had a significant tempering effect on the guy. Listening to "The College Dropout" and then his most recent stuff, back to back, it sounds almost like someone took this nice guy who liked to smile and locked him in a room for a decade, forcing him to raise and then kill a puppy a week.

it's almost like fame turns people into assholes. who knew

there's absolutely no pre-fame Kanye interview or anecdote that gives any indication that he was less of an asshole before he was famous though haha

Keyboard outro is very McCartney II.

Idk if he is an asshole though. He seems like a sensitive guy who somehow got the (mistaken?) impression that it's virtuous to have no filter.

not virtuous so much as ~artistic

i don't think he's an asshole either, or at least any more of an asshole than any given famous pop star, which is why making it the focal point of his artistic persona feels uninteresting & reductive

that's well put lex

In this clip, Kanye is being silly and smiling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylT16QB6Uig

With Anna Nicole Smith, the ur Kardashian.

lol "The New Workout Plan" probably prompted the closest thing to a backlash he got for any record before 808s

just the memory of that video is o_O

Ooh girl your breath is harsh!
Cover your mouth up like you got SARS

silly and smiling

I've always maintained that Big Sean's whole rap style is jacked from Farnsworth Bentley in that video.

i like this song but the sparse keybs totally remind me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hSK8GmGooM

bentley's verse on that song is secretly kinda fire

is there a fonzworth bentley biography?

Forrest Gump

this was pretty cool iirc

http://www.livemixtapes.com/mixtapes/13748/fonzworth_bentley_colours.html

Oh yeah COLOURS the song was the shit, great Pimp C verse and Weezy in that 2006-2007 stretch where he killed everything. Prob for the best that Ye stayed off that one.

oh shit, tracee ellis ross is Fifi LeBeouff in that Workout Plan video; must've blocked that

Workout Plan to me always sounded like Kanye West trying to make an Eminem song.

Or was that a pretty common criticism of the song at that time?

Now that you mention it the "it's been a week without me" chorus does sound a lot like Slim.

holy cow that sounds like a (post-greatness) eminem song. actually sounds like D12 more than anything. awful

College Dropout: the gift that keeps on giving

"My Band" >>>> "The New Workout Plan" (i like them both tho)

Anyway I wrote a thing. Not really about the song.

http://thequietus.com/articles/16966-kanye-west-paul-mccartney

https://vine.co/v/OdPTlYV0WYY

Anyway I wrote a thing. Not really about the song.

http://thequietus.com/articles/16966-kanye-west-paul-mccartney

― Ned Raggett

In short:
https://twitter.com/AesopDekker/status/552169207731724288

Who are the people making these claims? Was there a printed piece about it? Tweets?

Posts like this.

Shades of Grammy night "Who is Arcade Fire," except broadened to include every doofus on twitter, which probably skews young (and doofus), anyway.

No, I was asking who are the people making the claims that those who don't know who PM is are ignorant.

lol Workout Plan was the song/video that sold me on Kanye tbh. was it really so bad and hated?

I think the song is funny. It was my wife's fave from the album, iirc.

Now that it's mentioned, it is really Eminem-esque, isn't it?

maura had good words on the whole thing http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/television/2015/01/06/kanye-west-paul-mccartney-and-ever-present-past/uHT46Dh1lpDxfaYk4y7GUP/story.html

yeah that piece is v good

2015 and autotune still sounds like shit.

^

http://oculos.blog.br/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/t-pain-carrera-safari.gif

I was just under the impression that a lot of the Twitter comments were jokes because I have a hard time believing that there are people out there who listened to that track and thought "Man, that guy playing the piano in the background of this song is going to blow up huge. I'm going to go on Twitter to find out who he is, instead of Googling it". It just doesn't feel like the type of song where his contributions stand out enough to warrant a comment like that sincerely. And do people usually make comments about that for people that are actually unknown? I don't pay enough attention to social media to know if people thought Mr Hudson was going to blow up huge circa 808s and Heartbreaks.

lol i'd wager that most of them were jokes. some were actual young person dumbness im sure, and well, who cares about that. the indignance stemmed from ppl either not getting the jokes or being offended that filthy rap loving millennials were daring to joke about his OBE twatness macca

I def had that feeling Kanye was going to blow up huge after 808s and Heartbreaks.

And do people usually make comments about that for people that are actually unknown?

i mean...sometimes? i remember sorta thinking that when lupe fiasco showed up on touch the sky, back when he was fun

https://vimeo.com/139496933
continuing the trend of kanye being the least interesting element of his own music

bummer the video is down

pitchfork was right. kanye is going to brick

yeesh if Post Malone is supposed to be an interesting element

"wolves" sounded like a not-very-good version of a modern kanye song, this one sounds more to me like something you would write explicitly for a runway show or smoething

on the bright side "Wolves" has still never been released all these months later so maybe this won't either

yeah & at least w/ this one they didn't like say which track number it was going to be on his album

i didn't say i liked the song! only heard it once before it got pulled!
but as far as i could tell, the kanye vocals were the least interesting element.

when is this album suppose to drop anyway

If Kanye's bringing classic Chicago House back into the mainstream I'm not mad at all.

oh kanyepaws

https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_908w/2010-2019/Wires/Images/2015-09-16/Getty/488589090.jpg&w=1484

It's classic New York house, it couldn't be more back in the mainstream, in Britain at least, and Deep Inside in particular seems to be everywhere right now.

lol i still can't find anywhere to hear this tune, all the sites i found link to the same vimeo takedown page

https://vimeo.com/29560944
cameo from 6:18 so weird
would love to at some time hear that russell tape...

https://pitchfork.com/news/kanye-shares-new-song-xtcy-listen/

really gross

well I guess he (braggingly) wrote it on ecstacy, but the rhymes show it, v poor writing: "U GOT A SMART PHONE BUT A DUMB ASS (OMG) I THOUGHTA ALL DIS ON XTCY"

just bad taste, hardly controversial to find your sister(s) in-law attractive

stop paying attention to this bozo

thats not nice, bozo brings joy to people

... is he now called Ye ?

the being formally known as Kanye West

I am YE

— ye (@kanyewest) September 29, 2018

Ye suck

Ye? Nay!

Why does it always have to be about Ye? Why can't it be about Me?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6EoRBvdVPQ

^interesting new direction

I'd also like to read your hypotheses regarding this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rJfSHnOZeY

https://people.com/music/kanye-west-trump-speech-saturday-night-live/

After the show ended, Kanye continued with a song and speech onstage:

Wearing a Make America Great Again hat, he then delivered an unexpected speech in front of SNL performers like Colin Jost and host Adam Driver as some audience members booed. “Actually, blacks weren’t always Democrats,” he started. “It’s like a plan they did to take the fathers out the homes and promote welfare. Does anybody know about that? That’s the Democratic plan.”

After receiving sparse claps, West continued, “And what this shows is we can’t be controlled by monolithic thought. You can’t always have when you have a black subject matter like Cosby that you have to have a black comedian talk about it.”...

Motioning to SNL funnyman Michael Che, West said, “You know what I mean?”

West, who replaced Ariana Grande as the musical guest after she had to drop out, said, “It’s so many times that I talk to a white person about this, and they say, ‘How could you support Trump? He’s racist.’ Well if I was concerned about racism, I would have moved out of America a long time ago. We don’t just make our decisions off of racism. I’ma break it down to you right now: If someone inspires me and I connect with them, I don’t have to believe in all they policies.”

He also grumbled about people saying he was in the sunken place.

Still no new Yandhi album yet too...

There’s no fun in saying “told you so” about this guy, is there?

I hope all the idiots who still cared about him after 2014 keep buying his important music I guess. The man’s got to eat

i like the bottle costumes, but that song is complete garbage and I'm shocked that any of this shit is getting airtime.

my feelings exactly ^

the life of pablo was a fun, compelling mess. everything since has been embarrassing. five years after Yeezus and he's here. Sucks

ghost town is an amazing track

there were moments on ye and the other few albums he produced recently have been good too. i don't think his output has been embarrassing.

re. the trump stuff: it doesn't seem like he understands what he is talking about. he uses his trump support to signal that he's not "controlled" by the pop culture consensus that surrounds him. he doesn't say that he wants to stop immigration or anything like that. not that what he is doing is harmless, just that i have no idea how to interpret it.

i will say that he doesn't seem very happy and his kind of frantic grasping at platitudes -- "choose love," "escape the sunken place" -- are kind of heartbreaking. i doubt many people have embraced trump bc of kanye.

If anything it just enforces the idea that people supporting Trump are morons.

just that i have no idea how to interpret it.

it doesn't really require much interpretation, you can take him at his word

his words are all over the place

sometimes he hits on conservative talking points, but then he goes to generalities about how needs to choose love and escape monolithic thought, and then he talks about the sunken place

he's at the very least an idiosyncratic conservative

stop

Let's leave the um-ing and er-ing to the click baiters. Digesting the twaddle he's offered since 2010 isn't worth separating from the grotesque political statements, i.e. there is no formalist divide between the fascist apologizer and the third-rate producer.

It’s been said a million times, but I don’t think dissecting guy’s behavior will lead to anything worthwhile. Seems apparent at this point that he’s dealing with some sort of mental illness.

if you follow the gleam to the bottom of the sunken place you just find a red hat

i feel bad for him. he made music that was meaningful to me when i was young. he is clearly struggling with something and he never struck me as a bad person but then again i don't know him so who knows.

he just said he wants to abolish the 13th amendment.

idek what to make of the fact that that song is probably going to be his biggest hit in the greater part of the past decade (not counting the weird rihanna/paul mccartney collab). like, it's sticking. i would say there's something ~interesting~ going on with the adele givens clip and how she is presented in its video + i guess the performance but otherwise the song is ass from top to bottom.

i like the video

with the 13th amendment i think he clarified and said it was the exclusion clause he wanted to get rid of. he doesn't think prisoners should be used as forced labor.

noted constitutional expert Kanye West

You and he should realize that when Scalia, Bork, Alito, and the rest of the Roberts Five and their fellow travelers espouse "original intent" they mean "a Constitution without the Reconstruction amendments." Take this bit of advice to Facebook and wherever our gargoyle relatives chew on their spite: when they say "states rights" respond, "The Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil War made states right the cry of separatists and traitors."

every SCOTUS since Hughes has incorporated the Bill of Rights through the Due Process Clause. Conservatives want to return us to the Taney era.

i'm obviously no friend to constitutional originalism

i was just saying that kanye wasn't advocating we bring slavery back

yet when he endorses Trump that's what he's doing

fair enough

with the 13th amendment i think he clarified and said it was the exclusion clause he wanted to get rid of. he doesn't think prisoners should be used as forced labor.

Did he say more (in addition to the original comment where he explicitly called for the abolition of the amendment) than this?:

the 13th Amendment is slavery in disguise meaning it never ended We are the solution that heals

not abolish but. let’s amend the 13th amendment We apply everyone’s opinions to our platform

i felt like it was implied in the first tweet when he said "We will provide jobs for all who are free from prisons as we abolish the 13th amendment. Message sent with love.” He unites the idea of abolishing the 13th amendment with something to do with freeing prisoners and giving them jobs. and then said that the way the 13th amendment is, it is "slavery in disguise," which made me think that he was talking about how the 13th amendment currently doesn't cover prisoners, who are often made to work for way under minimum wage.

admittedly, i'm filling in some gaps here, but i think that's what he was saying.

that is what he's saying, but he's also taken by a grifter who flatters his own grandiose sensibilities and makes time for him in a way that obama did not.

oh for sure

i mean it's a dumb comparison but if u remember the movie hook, kanye is peter's son, obama is peter pan, and hook is trump.

like fuck you dad, evil man believes in my baseball dreams and all you wanna do is work/not let me in your cool magic group.

he was incredible during the yeezus tour. didn't stop for over two hours.

pfft, stevie wonder plays three hours straight and he's in his 60s.

yeah but kanye kept jumping up and down on this mountain. and then he stopped for a half hour and lectured us about how he designed the mountain. "this shit is, like, well thought out."

Yeah, two hours? Um. Macca does 3, and he's 100.

yeah but kanye kept jumping up and down on this mountain. and then he stopped for a half hour and lectured us about how he designed the mountain. "this shit is, like, well thought out."

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, September 30, 2018 10:04 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so kanye does really disorganized ted talks

i don't think you realize how much he was running and jumping around and there wasn't anyone on the stage with him.

sign me the fuck up

also, yeah, kanye wants to be a thought leader but he is too scattered to do a real ted talk. however, he's a champion so he turns tragedy to triumph, makes music that's fire, spits his soul through the wire.

this isn't even making fun of him. i connected with the college dropout when i was in high school and got C's in math and spanish. being a nuanced thinker was never really the point with him, i'm sure he'd be the first to tell you.

i wish his life went a different way. the braggadocio at first seemed like kind of a heroic response to deep insecurity and i loved how, compared to other rappers, he never really attacked other people to build himself up. at a certain point, though, believing in yourself isn't enough... this is in the music too, i feel, but there does seem to be a lot of magical thinking in his public statements. like, all compromise is weakness; the MAGA hat can just mean what he wants it to mean.

there is definitely something there in the music that people respond to that goes beyond just his skill as a producer. doesn't excuse his support of trump. the whole thing is just a bummer.

there is an explanation: he doesn't read/watch the news and is totally isolated surrounded by sycophants identifying with Trump, another raging delusional narcissist that ascended to power in spite/because of it. it was linked in the other thread, but one of the people that worked with him recently said he didn't know about ICE or anything that was happening at the border. I know what you mean Treeship, it is a bummer.

He’s a producer first and a rapper second. Most of his lyrics are ghostwritten.

This is to say, I wish he was trying to be more disruptive and out-there with his productions instead of trying to do it with his words. He’s bad at the latter and he could be brilliant at the former.

At least get one of his ghostwriters to help him writing those insane speeches. I’m sure a good writer could’ve organized and phrased the whole ”slavery was a choice” fuck-up into something perhaps meaningful and interesting. Something something about how when your mind is free your body can never truly be enslaved or some other fighting words mumbo jumbo that could sound inspiring instead of troublesome.

Mad genius Kanye isolated from the world at his studio in one of his mansions or on a ranch in the middle of nowhere with a laptop creating albums that alienate his fanbase is a better look than Crazy Kanye isolated from the world wants to express his take of what the country should because he half-read a conservative thinkpiece while getting high in one of his mansions, and procedes to make uninformed statements on twitter that alienates his fanbase.

Ironically this is the year he has released the most music but most of it feels half-cooked ideas. He’s not into doing the thing he’s actually good at and seems to prefer the attention from making tunnelvision comments. By the current standards he’d make a good president.

At any rate what a waste.

https://pitchfork.com/news/lana-del-ray-confronts-kanye-over-trump-support/

then he stopped for a half hour and lectured us about how he designed the mountain. "this shit is, like, well thought out."

why is that good?

Had a laugh at local anchor Rhonda Walker following a report his name change this morning with "maybe we should start calling him Perri-ye"

The Kanye album finally dropped! I guess he changed the title and cover at the last minute pic.twitter.com/To7WQih11V

— pixelated (something halloween-related) (@pixelatedboat) September 30, 2018

then he stopped for a half hour and lectured us about how he designed the mountain. "this shit is, like, well thought out."

Ah, the rambling mid-concert diatribe: the mark of the truly great artist.

I never said he was a great artist or a genius, I said there is “something there” in the music that’s compelling and it’s a shame that the grandiosity has squeezed out other aspects of his personality. The yeezus tour, speech and all, was compelling — back then there was something to admire about his creativity energy and willingness to risk embarrassment, even if the whole thing was ridiculous.

There are worse things than being ridiculous.

Embracing right wong talking points about how democrats are the real racists is an example of a worse thing.

100% agree.
If anything, my appetite is always for more ridiculousness in art. Or, rather, what might be perceived as ridiculousness by folks who get upset when something changes.
Also, the Life of Pablo tour was probably the best arena show I've ever seen. There's def something incredibly special there at times.

Fuck all the right wing bullshit and historically misinformed ignorance though.

Honestly, West's transformation into a clownish MAGA provocateur is just funny to me. I used to be baffled by his music, because I never liked any of it and couldn't figure out why anybody else did. And sometimes he was actively annoying. Like, to pick one petty example, calling his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy really bugged me, because those adjectives are things you wait for someone else to use to describe your work. Calling something you have created "dark" and "twisted" is adolescent try-hard bullshit; it's one step short of posting a picture of yourself wearing the makeup from The Crow. But whatever. He's getting older, he's running out of ideas...this is how it goes. Rap is cruel to the elderly.

I never liked any of it and couldn't figure out why anybody else did

...

From the guy who brought you "Buy any jeans necessary"...

Had a laugh at local anchor Rhonda Walker following a report his name change this morning with "maybe we should start calling him Perri-ye"

― BrianB, Monday, October 1, 2018 10:09 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmfao Rhonda!

I never said he was a great artist or a genius, I said there is “something there”

― Trϵϵship, Monday, October 1, 2018 5:20 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://img.fireden.net/v/image/1453/45/1453450105743.gif

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/WelloffEvenEmeraldtreeskink-size_restricted.gif

Jerry otm

i apologize profusely for ever liking kanye west's music and expressing concern for him at a time when he is, by his own admission, suffering from mental illness

such a horrible horrible thing

I never said he was a great artist or a genius, I said there is “something there” in the music that’s compelling and it’s a shame that the grandiosity has squeezed out other aspects of his personality. The yeezus tour, speech and all, was compelling — back then there was something to admire about his creativity energy and willingness to risk embarrassment, even if the whole thing was ridiculous.

― Trϵϵship, Monday, October 1, 2018 5:20 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There are worse things than being ridiculous.

― Trϵϵship, Monday, October 1, 2018 5:21 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Kanye is ridiculous but that's ok because mental illness? That is you "expressing concern" for him?

we're talking about him = mission succeeded

I heavily suspect this is all a PR stunt, after all he is married to a family that know how to make headlines out of nothing.

Him being an eccentric and him having mental illness are different things. Right now he is not making any sense and seems out of control, which is different in the past, when he had a willingness to embarrass himself in the course of trying new things. Different traits, different phases of his career.

im with treeship, i agree that the megalomania and ridiculousness is compelling, and was a big part of yeezus & tlop obviously. ymmv but it doesn't strike me as any different than rockstars posturing or destroying their gear, the spectacle is fun. artists don't have to be moral leaders

So you're giving him a pass? Because he was "willing to embarrass himself in the course of trying new things"? That's a free hall pass he doesn't deserve imo. Is his slavery denying crap also part of this "different phase"?

Y'know I heart u Treesh but you bring me down, man.

ymmv but it doesn't strike me as any different than rockstars posturing or destroying their gear, the spectacle is fun. artists don't have to be moral leaders

― flappy bird, Monday, October 1, 2018 8:21 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Really? "The spectacle is fun"?! Wow...

The confused musician with serious issues, wearing a MAGA hat and a Kaepernik shirt at the same time, ranting about his love for Donald fucking Trump: no problem, the spectacle is fun!

Jfc

US Politics October 2018: The Spectacle Is Fun

LBI, how is different than Silverfuck in 1996? or I Am One during the Siamese Dream tour?

Exactly. I’m not selling kanye 2020 merch and i never use the word “genius.” But there has always been something honest about his music, for all its groanworthy moments, and, even now, this tendency isn’t totally gone. Flawed as “ye” was as a statement i felt like it was very kanye to trust his audience enough to try to talk about his mental illness.

You misunderstood how I meant “ridiculous” bc you assume I believe the highest human aspiration should be to have some grim victorian dignity. Kanye never had that. He never claimed to—on his second album he made self deprecating references to “throwing tantrums” like he is “three years old.”

Clearly with the MAGA stuff he is lost and the vulnerability that’s always been there has a darker, more concerning edge. I feel like that’s regrettable and I hope he can sort it out.

the spectacle i was referring to was the yeezus & tlop arena tours, which Treeship cited as compelling and JCLC asked why. xp

Xp flappt, i didnt think there were other posts bc i am on mobile

I have nothing positive to say about post-MAGA kanye. now even the music fucking sucks

xp u good

And yeah as flappy said i dont find anything fun about what is happening now.

LBI, how is different than Silverfuck in 1996? or I Am One during the Siamese Dream tour?

― flappy bird, Monday, October 1, 2018 8:27 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Uhhhh.... You are beyond kidding me.

the tour merch that had the fuckin stars and bars on it was 2013, dude is the rap version of Boyd Rice doin the "oooh...am I a nazi, or just ~interested in their iconography?" shit

Otm. Which isn't all that interesting.

ymmv but it doesn't strike me as any different than rockstars posturing or destroying their gear, the spectacle is fun. artists don't have to be moral leaders

No, they don't. But when they declare themselves to be moral leaders they're open to criticism as such. And West is attempting to declare himself a moral/philosophical leader - at one point he was planning to turn his tweets into a self-help book, remember? So it's perfectly OK to point out that his political philosophies are bullshit and that he seems like a dude who's genuinely fucked in the head and has no idea how to read a room or really to relate to anyone but himself, in a way that you wouldn't do with, say, Thom Yorke.

“I love it” is a banger

“I love it” is a banger

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Monday, October 1, 2018 12:01 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol after i heard it i was like "i bet deej will like this"

sorta kanye's ultimate "making a dumb idea way dumber" moment

the clean version is butchery

I’m still laughing about “Yilbert”

/ymmv but it doesn't strike me as any different than rockstars posturing or destroying their gear, the spectacle is fun. artists don't have to be moral leaders/

No, they don't. But when they *declare themselves to be moral leaders* they're open to criticism as such. And West is attempting to declare himself a moral/philosophical leader - at one point he was planning to turn his tweets into a self-help book, remember? So it's perfectly OK to point out that his political philosophies are bullshit and that he seems like a dude who's genuinely fucked in the head and has no idea how to read a room or really to relate to anyone but himself, in a way that you wouldn't do with, say, Thom Yorke.

maybe you should wonder why you're giving a pass to/supporting tinfoil hat right-wing conspiracy theorist jerk narcissists

esp when it's right there front and center in their work

I'm really looking forward the meeting of Kanye West and Jordan Peterson. That's a collision bound to happen.

I never defended Corgan or Kanye's right wing rants, Shakey. I defended delusional narcissism in service of great rock spectacle. Kanye wasn't right wing in 2014, and Corgan was completely apolitical until like 6 years ago. like I said YMMV with that kind of energy from a performer!

it's true, I have no use for dragon energy

yes. we both know that. we know that I like it. I ain't right wing tho!

although I do have two wings...

what other delusional narcissists do you find fascinating

That's a good question...

I'm actually looking at my records & books & movies and drawing a blank. Lots of one or the other but not both. PKD maybe.

I don’t understand what condemning kanye will accomplish.

he's one of the most famous musicians alive and he's supporting Trump with very little information or understanding or context. he should stop. being pissed at him might work

Maybe. Seems like he has become more of a joke than a dangerous pro trump voice.

PKD was def delusional but I don't think he was a narcissist

fwiw

I dont think kanye is a narcissist

who caress?

cares too

He seems really contrite whenever he is confronted eith the fact that his outbursts hurt someone else. By all reports he truly loves his family even though most of us see kim kardashian as some kind of human metaphor; her getting robbed precipitated his breakdown last year. I think he’s a guy with manic tendencies that in the past fueled creative work but have now taken him to a dark place and i just can’t look at this and shrug him off as an oportunist. For one the antics don’t seem to be helping his brand.

PKD is the only one that made me stop and think about it. even with the Exegesis & info from the few bios I've read, still don't really think so.

Kanye is wielding his dragon energy irresponsibly

I care to the extent that he has made music i connecred with at an impressionable age. Don’t like seeing him all incoherent and making himself a pariah. Of the things that i care about, it’s number 10,000 or something but it’s the thread topic.

We should lock the thread tho bc i am no longer enjoying sharing unpopular opinions

Him being an eccentric and him having mental illness are different things.

are they? these seem to be the dots you are failing to connect

I think it’s tough with bipolar bc mania is known to fuel creative work but it is a double edged sword. I don’t have bioolar so i can’t speak that eloquently about it. Also I am graduating from this thread.

I posted this on my FB wall earlier tonight, though I'm well aware that nobody really cares.

"There is something alluring about a car wreck; I know. And there is an impulse or magnetism to gawk at famous people who do and say upsetting things.

Our president is one of them. I would argue that we've gotta pay attention to him, even if we don't want to. Until he is no longer president, we're stuck.

There is another very famous person, an American rapper turned pop star, who - particularly in recent years - has gotten more mileage out of being a public jackass than for his music.

Some people enjoy the show, and make a point of defending him. If you're one of those people, this post isn't for you.

If you are tired of this person I'm pointedly not naming - as I am - can I make a suggestion? Turn away. Focus on other things. And most meaningfully, stop clicking on links to stories (that aren't really stories) about him.

Just don't do it.

The less you click, the less of a commodity he continues to be for so many outlets at the expense of more deserving artists of all genres - and the better the chance that he pursues a long, quiet period of reflection and the professional help he desperately needs."

There’s nothing more maddening than debating someone who doesn’t know history, doesn’t read books, and frames their myopia as virtue. The level of unapologetic conjecture I’ve encountered lately isn’t just frustrating, it’s retrogressive, unprecedented and absolutely terrifying. https://t.co/4jCFwB4T5U

— Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) September 30, 2018

Let's face it, Captain America vs. Kanye was the third act that 2018 needed.

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) October 1, 2018

kudos to Anne Laurie from balloon juice whom I just copied those tweets from btw

https://www.yahoo.com/news/kanye-west-gifts-white-sneakers-ugandas-president-145338936.html

i guess i shouldn't be surprised at this point that Kanye and Kim are going to cozy up to all of the world's worst leaders...

Drake's account of what went down w/the Wyoming situations, Pusha-T's diss and everything on Lebron's new HBO show was pretty damning of Kanye, he's a manipulative little shit

Very real talk (lol @ "he did not excel in debate class")

https://youtu.be/aTEgMy8q1wA

The fact that he met Yoweri Museveni really broke my heart and mind and I'm done with this man

Drake's account of what went down w/the Wyoming situations, Pusha-T's diss and everything on Lebron's new HBO show was pretty damning of Kanye, he's a manipulative little shit

didn't see the show but the recap on Stereogum certainly makes a good case for Kanye being a shit and Drake being sensible https://www.stereogum.com/2018640/drake-says-he-shelved-a-pusha-t-response-track/news/

but then of course the last paragraph has me rmde:

At his show in Los Angeles last night, as Pitchfork reports, Drake brought Chris Brown to the stage as a special guest. “I want to share this moment with y’all tonight. This is something I waited a long time for. I got the utmost respect — I think this guy’s one of the most talented human beings on the planet,” he said before Brown performed “Party.” “I never really got my chance to show him. So I figured tonight — in Staples Center, with each and every one of y’all — it would be the perfect time to share this moment.”

Honestly what a shithead

https://www.okayplayer.com/music/xxxtentacion-new-song-with-kanye-west-leaked-one-minute.html

yeah, i'm out

[bad Italian accent] https://t.co/QYHjRm0CV4

— Churlish (@Cryptoterra) December 14, 2018

lol

seriously been laughing about that since yesterday

tweet of the year imho

ok lol

Haha, well done.

I had no idea he got sued for uncleared samples so often

Once again: asshole or idiot?

https://pitchfork.com/news/kanye-and-pusha-t-sued-over-daytona-sample/

Did they credit Yes for the "Heart of the Sunrise" sample.

doesn’t seem like him to carelessly ignore important details like that...

lol

kanye forever

stealing from old soul artists is so cool

I hate to admit it but this week I’m revisiting Kids See Ghosts and I didn’t hate it. I even think that the last three songs in there are some of the best stuff either one of them has been involved with in quite some time.

I think I’ve even played Reborn once every day. I’m a monster.

Yeah, I don't really care about Kanye anymore (roughly since MBDTF... wow almost 10y !) but that album is not bad and "Reborn" is good.

reborn is great.

to be clear, he's done many awful things in the past few years--the thing i hated the most was the photo he used for the cover of daytona, extremely exploitative. this is also bad and i hope that george jackson wins the lawsuit.

i don't really understand how he continues to release music this good though, given what a mess he is. the stuff he put out last year was a mixed bag but mostly good.

new album 'jesus is king,' coming out sept. 27th. per kim k's instagram.

https://www.complex.com/music/2019/08/kim-kardashian-teases-release-date-tracklist-kanye-west-album

...cool.

Kanye feeling penitent all of a sudden? Too much of a naughty boy the last year? Gonna break into that alt-right God market with a Christian rap concept album? What now? Changing his nickname from Yeezus to Jesus and the album is him slovenly rapping about how he and all of you should worship him even more now?

for the "i love" theme on this website...man the members here sure are negative! ;)

It’s “I love” not “I stan”

Trump posting on ILX at last

can't believe it's been over a year since everyone pretended to like the last one

i dont think anybody liked it

he's been shit since 808s and Heartbreak

i enjoyed the stuff about fantasizing about killing his wife and hoping his daughter is ugly so men don't want to have sex with her when she grows up

he plays the consequential artist/charlatan thing like a knife-edge. i can't decide but the kidz all seem pretty sprung

somehow people still seem to like kids see ghosts but i don't think even the die-hards really liked ye much. it still manages to seem overrated though when compared to the absurd backlash that chance's new album got

kids see ghosts was fine, mostly the songs where kanye was least involved (vocally, anyway)

cudi is kind of a cult figure among people who were in high school/college in 2010

chance backlash was more at the chance brand than the album itself imo

xp Can confirm

he's been shit since 808s and Heartbreak

― Οὖτις, Friday, August 30, 2019 9:32 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

finally a hardline shakey opinion i agree with. there have been good moments here and there though. i weirdly loved “i love it”

808s and heartbreak was a high-point imo.

is that gourmet hot-take or quite weak?

i love 808s, one of my favorite records

when i first heard 'ghost town' i listened to it non stop, like 40 times in a row.

canceled

the stuff about 'stealing samples' upthread is kind of dumb, the deal is he takes losses on the back end to make sure he clears his albums when he needs them to and they dont get bogged down in delays. In other words, he makes way less money in the long run in order to use what samples he wants

sacrificing the bottom line for his art, what a heel!

I like "I Love It" and "Real Friends" the most of his recent stuff. Yeezus is interesting and there's a good drum n bass remix of bound 2 lol

first half and last two tracks of yeezus are pretty great i should’ve said

pablo’s rough and often bad but i love “fade” etc.

>the stuff about 'stealing samples' upthread is kind of dumb, the deal is he takes losses on the back end to make sure he clears his albums when he needs them to and they dont get bogged down in delays. In other words, he makes way less money in the long run in order to use what samples he wants

I find the developing narrative about uncleared samples being 'stealing' a little bit too easy as well. I think it's fascinating how increasingly reckless he's become about licensing while on a major label. It's part of the statement of the last few releases, mastered seconds before being uploaded. I kind of respond to it -- make sampling dangerous again! But from him it's also inevitably a statement about power, the Robert Fripp & Richard D James interviews about negotiating with his team are intense.

Do you have a link / interview about the deal he has with his label in which uncleared samples discovered later are handled?

he didn't become shit until Ye, that record was horrible. Yeezus is a masterpiece imo but Brad's breakdown is closer to the truth. totally disagree about Pablo though, that album has so much to offer and belongs in the same class of beguiling double albums as Lulu, Joni's Don Juan, and The Fragile. the plummet he took from the heights of Pablo - Real Friends, 30 Hours, Ultralight Beam, Feedback, I Love Kanye - is stunning.

MBDTF has some good moments but is way overrated everywhere else, most tracks start out decent enough but then wear out their welcome way before their generally ~6+ minute run times are up

Yeezus is still pretty great

The Life of Pablo is just a mess, for every good track there's another two that seem very unfinished and it doesn't hold together as an album at all

I don't really liked twisted fantasy

If it’s like the Pablo rollout, guessing half the titles will change and the album will be back to Yahndi by the end.

wld take the two after 808s over the two before it but idk if there's anyone else in the "late registration is esp boring" camp besides meaghan garvey

the thought of the Discourse regarding a new Kanye album is exhausting

it doesn't hold together as an album at all

i think it holds together ridiculously well, honestly, at least until 'wolves,' which is where the original album was supposed to end (according to the first draft of ye's notebook). the transitions between songs are seamless, and imo each individual song sounds wrong without the one before or after it.

i agree that the last few tracks are very haphazardly assembled, but weirdly, those are the ones that sound good on their own!

what is Kanye West real name?

Kayne West

"No More Parties In LA" is easily in my top 10 tracks for the decade.

This was well said.

https://eugenesrobinson.substack.com/p/fuck-kanye-west?utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2NvNeJeOocHKQAOFrFRCw5o8KLqYhYkqHfbjhTehZGRVyK2s5Sokj9pbU&s=r

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/kanye-west-donda-academy-school-1234593961/

things are going great!

I love how into parkour he is

once again wondering whether taking away all of this guys money might be better for everyone

i should think taking all the money away from all the rich assholes would be better for everyone

pretty sure being rich at the billionaire level and an asshole are synonymous

Why is this guy not getting Congressionally investigated for his fake presidential campaign he was coordinating with Jared Kushner?

why doesn't Kanye have a rocket yet?

xxp The owner Patagonia is an exception.

*owner of Patagonia

https://www.gq.com/story/outdoors-companies-policing

Giving away a 3 billion company for a good cause you believe in is next level.

Wow this is very fucked

“People choose to bring their kids to Donda Academy for a sense of privacy,” he adds. “A sense of care, a sense of concern, a sense of love, an environment of health, and an environment of wealth, an environment of learning, and putting God as a focus.”

you know all those parts in the bible where jesus talks about how important it is to be surrounded by wealth

How else can you follow Him? (Meaning Kanye.)

Fuck this guy forever.

he’s a white supremacist

For anyone not up on his Tucker Carlson appearance, he thinks (among other things) that the news media, Matthew McConaughey, and "people at the Gap” knew about the Uvalde shooting before it happened.

Sure would be nice not have to hear about this guy.

I feel better now!

https://i.imgur.com/38iq4Ck.png

what a contemptible jackass. I would say I hope this ends his career, but I know better

Tweet was removed so this is his latest

Who you think created cancel culture?

— ye (@kanyewest) October 9, 2022

Really wanted to reply with a Khaled GOD DID gif

Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do, we do
Who keeps Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
We do, we do
Who holds back the elctric car?
Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star?
We do, we do
Who robs gamefish of their site?
Who rigs every Oscar night?
We do, we do!

Hopefully jmm doesn’t mind if I clip and save this for every future mention of this person, who never seems to go away for long

Sure would be nice not have to hear about this guy.

― jmm, Sunday, October 9, 2022 11:10 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

what a moron, Deathcon 3 happened years ago

I just saw someone refer to him as Yedolf, that's pretty good.

Leave to Kanye to bring back old school hip hop antisemitism

If cancel culture keeps failing to cancel this absolute imbecile, then I’ll do my part and never speak his name again.

Godspeed.

xpost From what I gather, it never really went anywhere. I mean, there was that Ice Cube thing last year or so, Jay Electronica, Grime guy Wiley, that Nick Cannon thing ... lots of "we can't be anti-semitic, we are the true semites" sophistry.

It's not like it used to be in the late 80s, early 90s but a lot of that stuff is remnants of the 5 percenters

I was ignoring the news about West per standard practice, but even people I know who never talk about him were outraged so I had to look. I wasn't even aware of some of the older stuff he did (spurring others to send death threats to his ex-wife and Peter Davidson, etc). It's unbelievable, you think he's sunk as low as possible and he finds some cartoonish way to be even worse.

(To clarify I was aware he was going through a bad divorce, but not to that extent.)

(I shouldn't even say "going through" when he's instigating so much of the horrendous parts of it.)

I’m a bit sleepy, but when when I wake up

I'm not gonna even concern troll with being worried about him anymore, I'm worried purely about him hurting other people at this stage.

wish he'd just lock himself away in a mansion and swear off of electronics forever.

So he should just stick to designing shoes?

shoes like these?

http://media.gq.com/photos/628bc33e6aebe72e8ecf0c9e/3:4/w_1998,h_2664,c_limit/GettyImages-1398676968.jpg

limited edition yeezy jackboots

the Death Con 3 ($2000, only 1,000 made)

Kanye about to give Bart Simpson a "booting"

Seriously though what was with the whole "sleepy" thing, if I was Mike Lindell I'd be trying to work up a partnership ASAP

I want to see a beef between Kanye and MC Paul Barman

Oh boy:

Alex Jones took credit for Kanye's "White Lives Matter" t-shirt: "We woke up Kanye West, folks.” pic.twitter.com/yAQURcnncr

— Madeline Peltz (@peltzmadeline) October 10, 2022

he released some weird ass "documentary" today where he starts playing porn on his phone during a business meeting.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/kanye-west-tried-intimidate-adidas-173250592.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFLlMdx5SqQSUl6KR-XyC-RudE12kn7tDf0VFbiZTmnLgoAkbMqRRJXsUxSPCCvJ4AMH0U4xFJobpw41m-m8lm_GFACxjk9DXsxyrCfAppohR_dsvLZzUuMHWjx3MTzHlM8bIqAaihk4qZqlQof2Ngv240oxbO1lGRKw8bkU5elM

One of West’s associates chimes in: “What you’re feeling right now is extreme discomfort, and that is exactly the point. Because when someone steals this man’s ideas, his creations, it’s like you’re stealing a child. These are all children of his mind, and you’ve kidnapped them.”

Wont somebody please think of the children (ideas and creations) (of this nazi cunt)

Elsewhere in Last Week, West previews new music, including the lyrics, “You a fake bitch/You don’t really love Ye, go listen to Drake, bitch/You don’t have no idea what it take, bitch/Go listen to Lil Baby, go listen to Future, bitch.” At another point, he visits a prospective location for a Donda Academy, his controversial Christian prep school with mandatory prayers and non-disclosure agreements.

I like these two sentences next to one another.

is the rest of the song him saying "Go listen to <rapper that premiered after 2010>" for ten minutes

it really sucks with Kanye because I do think there was a time where even though he was definitely weird and occasionally o_O, race played a factor in a lot of the heat he got (like there was no white equivalent that got clowned like he did for largely innocuous things back in 2010-2011, not to mention the pearl clutching about "George Bush doesn't care about Black people", still an all-time moment), but within the next five years, he began saying/doing things I couldn't defend any more, and now he's an outright far-right fascist. like how is this the guy that did College Dropout?

none of it surprising exactly given everything he's done after his mom died but good lord, where is the floor

Apparently in the Tucker Carlson interview he suggested that the Gap had advance knowledge of the Uvalde shooting.

https://www.sacurrent.com/news/kanye-west-spins-conspiracy-theory-that-the-gap-had-prior-knowledge-of-uvalde-shooting-30055507

He is like Trump in that he seems to think the world revolves around his private grievances. What I don’t understand is why Americans are attracted to this kind of mind. These are like the two most famous people in the country.

It’s also worth thinking about how two or three years after becoming a conservative Christian, his ideas have devolved into this kind of antisemitic, conspiratorial poison. A similar thing seems to have happened to *many* other Americans.

From Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita on Sunday evening: “The constant hypocrisy from the media is at an all-time high. They have now gone after Kanye for his new fashion line, his independent thinking, & for having opposing thoughts from the norm of Hollywood.”

Just a few hours later: “My post was specifically and clearly aimed at the hypocrisy of the media and Hollywood elites, not anything to do with other comments,” he wrote. “I have an obvious, clear and substantial Congressional and public record of being 100% supportive of the Jewish community and Israel.”

Early Sunday morning, Fox News hosts Will Cain, Pete Hegseth and Rachel Campos-Duffy were similarly outraged at West’s treatment.

“We’re in this weird era where people can’t just say what they want to say,” Campos-Duffy said. “This idea you have to just shut down his account is just, it’s totally totalitarian, totally anti-American. It’s just wrong.”

They made an about-face later in the segment.

“We talked about it earlier without knowing about these tweets and saying of course they’re going to put a target, after what he said with Tucker, there’s going to be a target, no doubt,” Hegseth said. “But in this particular case, he brought the target.”

nowadays you can't threaten to kill Jews, what the fuck is happening in this country

Much like with Trump, it's amusing to see any brand/journalist/etc. aligning itself with Kanye then be stuck holding the Kanye bag when he crosses a new line.l

otm

Balenciaga execs shaking in their clownishly large boots

esp given once upon a time, Fox hated him and would put out actual hit pieces on him after the "Bush doesn't care about Black people" moment. even criticizing his album that they of course never heard, calling it a 'sham' because he 'doesn't sing' (that's...rap?)

xpost

Much like with Trump, it's amusing to see any brand/journalist/etc. aligning itself with Kanye then be stuck holding the Kanye bag when he crosses a new line.l

― The self-titled drags (Eazy), Monday, October 10, 2022 3:46 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

What’s amazing is that he is the one who released the video of himself sexually harassing the adidas executives by waving pornography in their face as an intimidation tactic. He thinks this makes him look good—this is a good and Christian way to act.

Always
Be
Projecting

Kanye could write Mein Kampf but Hitler could never make Graduation

— Louis. 😼🍷 (@MarxInCrisis) October 9, 2022

lol, there's always one

im not trying to be a contrarian or whatever but yeah he could

— Pariah The Doll (@DollPariah) October 10, 2022

there's a whole hell of a lot more than "one" p.o.s. internet damaged anti semitic weirdo in every response to any kanye related tweet so could we not post them?

...is this one saying that Hitler could write Graduation?

Adolf Hitmaker

lol treesh

Goebbels walk with me

Neue Workout Plan

Goldberger

Dude already made a song called Black Skinhead, guess we know what kind he meant now

not to drag this out more, but have we discussed "donda academy," his christian school in California? it seems extremely ominous. from photos, it seems to be set in a minimalist, warehouse-like space with concrete floors and exposed rafters and the children's uniforms are all black. teachers also wear these all black baggy outfits:

https://www.sis2sis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Fbp94k3XgAARo0V-745x570.jpg

https://staticg.sportskeeda.com/editor/2022/09/3b204-16633459537704-1920.jpg

parents need to sign an nda before sending their kid to the school.

Yes, up above a bit.

can we never talk about him again

I'm really creeped out by this school.

It's not accredited. WTF is he up to?

and what is up with parents sending their kids to a cultish school that looks like a prison and is run by a lunatic?

For $15K a year

There is theoretically a lot to say about Kanye and Herschel Walker as right-wing Black Man avatars, but who wants to hear it really.

Basically Get Out already did it, kinda.

who wants to hear it really

Larry Elder listeners?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63226918

However, medical experts and people who share West's condition have warned that mental health problems do not go hand-in-hand with anti-Semitism.

"There are many people who don't have mental health issues who are racist and bigoted. And there are people with mental health issues who are not racist or bigoted," clinical psychologist Carla Manly told USA Today. "We want to see those as two very different issues."

"I think Kanye is honestly just an idiot," Sam, who has bipolar disorder, told BBC World Service.

I wonder if this new footage in the article will be leaked

Normal editing work, keep things moving, alternate between Kanye speaking and Tucker grimly nodding, cut the clip about the KKK and planned parenthood working together to control Jews, use a brief medium shot, tucker grimly nods, reverse angle of Kanye, cut the clip about “the Jew”, back to tucker smiling, long shot of interview setting, this is normal editing

(Second assistant camera operator, to himself: “I bet this is how Leni Riefenstahl got her start!”)

Good ole Sam.

all will be forgiven if Tucker Carlson is vivisected on a new revival of Mr Wizard

What is the YouTube talk show The Shop: Uninterrupted?

It’s an HBO series where LeBron James and others get haircuts while talking with a guest. I love it. Like a high-production podcast.

ahh ok, thanks. It must be bad if they wont release the footage.

i really do imagine tucker just grimly nodding along to all of it, whatever kanye said. even the stuff about the lost tribes of Judah...he has a face for that kind of situation which is very similar to the kind he deploys whenever his guests say something really weird and he knows he's not going to do anything about it because it's good for ratings (as long as it's not so horrific that even his own show can't air it). it's this

https://i.imgur.com/Z27BGeW.jpg

He always wears that expression, though. He wears it like a pair of dirty knickers.

Only the permanently placid "I'm listening" look of Jesse Watters is more disturbing.

chicken or the egg though - he wears that expression all of the time because something incredibly fucked up is always being said by someone else or about to be said by him

What reportedly Carlson removed from the interview:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ad77y/kanye-west-tucker-carlson-leaked-footage-antisemitism-fake-children

Carlson's laugh when he's pretending to find something ridiculously funny is one of the most unnatural I've ever heard.

Xps Donda Academy seems like a pretty obvious successor to the T. M. Landry scam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRewodHw-8E

obv The Shop didnt expect the antisemitism, but what DID they expect when they booked him - some time-travelling Kanye from the era when he wasnt a monster? were they gonna go deeper into the music video where he decapitates Pete Davidson, or get his thoughts on terrorizing his ex wife and kids? i'm sure they introduced him as "love him or hate him, the always-controversial kanye west" or some dumb shit like that

These include numerous antisemitic sentiments from Ye, a strange and lengthy digression about “fake children” he claimed were planted in his house to manipulate his own children, and a statement that he’s vaccinated against COVID-19.

tucker and kanye are both vaccinated. gotta take that out of the show so that more of the old people who watch it will die

i think i would pay like $250 to see unedited footage of lebron squirming in his chair as kanye goes off for 3 minutes about how the jews didn't let him attend his son's bday party and killed virgil

Sam OTM

obv The Shop didnt expect the antisemitism, but what DID they expect when they booked him - some time-travelling Kanye from the era when he wasnt a monster?

I wonder if, especially in the case of some of these places like The Shop, there was an element of hope going into it like, "maybe we can bring Kanye back down to earth a little with the right conversation". Fucker Failson clearly just brings him on to push his hate-filled agenda, so that's not a surprise at all.

$15k a year is actually very low for a private school in Southern California. Even some of the higher-tier Catholic schools cost more than that

Sure, it's low for most markets. But the school is not accredited.

And it looks like a prison and is run by a lunatic.

accreditation is tyranny, who is the government to say what a real and fake school are?

Ye's disorder clearly prevents him from distinguishing between "good attention" and "bad attention".

his buds Trump and Elon have the same affliction, which I think is what makes them the 3 most "popular" people in America

Kanye. Elon. Trump.

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) October 7, 2022

Stiff competition for history's greatest monster these days

his buds Trump and Elon have the same affliction, which I think is what makes them the 3 most "popular" people in America

― frogbs, Wednesday, October 12, 2022 4:04 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah I think our civilization is malfunctioning. These three people are actually insane and very impulsive, constantly saying things that make no sense. And they are the most famous and celebrated Americans.

They’re not just bad people, they don’t just support destructive things and cater to people’s worst impulses (although these things are true). That much would be understandable. They are chaotic and unpredictable, forcing the public to make sense of their weird actions and statements. And this latter piece is the most important part, as attention — sheer attention — has become the most valuable commodity.

HJGOP still not on first name terms with 45 huh

They mostly call him sir

batman (1989)

Rolling Stone
Ben Shapiro: Kanye Declaring War on Jews Is Bad, But…

More from Rolling Stone

White Supremacists and Right-Wing Extremists Are Doing Backflips Over Kanye West's Antisemitism

Carlson's laugh when he's pretending to find something ridiculously funny is one of the most unnatural I've ever heard.

― Chris L, Wednesday, October 12, 2022 9:49 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

yeah here it is again. it sends a chill down my spine. if this was a Joker movie the director would probably be like "uhh dial it back a bit"

Tucker: We’re supposed to accommodate Greta's disability, pretend her words are profound. Just like the fake poet at Biden's administration. Oh, she was so great. We dare you to say she wasn't. She was ridiculous pic.twitter.com/AemQ4X7WOK

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 13, 2022

I'll never understand how anyone, even a RW twat, could watch this guy and not think, "Hmm, he's not very well, I think I'm going to steer clear"

How can they when most of them talk like that sober?

hoo boy

Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, has entered into an agreement to purchase Parler, a social media site popular with Trump loyalists, the company announced on Monday.

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/17/1129405942/kanye-west-ye-twitter-ban-parler

probably a good thing because he will surely make completely baffling decisions that hurt it at some point

Ha, that's not even the best/worst/most repellent thing from him in the last 48 hours:

IN ADDITION TO railing against “the Jewish media,” Kanye West spent some time on Drink Champs regurgitating what he gleaned from the George Floyd “documentary” made by alt-right firebrand Candace Owens, his partner-in-White Lives Matter. Most notably, West said that fentanyl, and not being suffocated by a police officer’s knee, caused Floyd’s death.

“I watched the George Floyd documentary that Candace Owens put out. One of the things that his two roommates said was they want a tall guy like me, and the day that he died, he said a prayer for eight minutes,” West told Drink Champs. “They hit him with the fentanyl. If you look, the guy’s knee wasn’t even on his neck like that.”

(During the trial against Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin, medical experts testified that even though Floyd had traces of fentanyl in his system, Floyd died from a lack of oxygen caused by the knee on his neck, which a coroners’ report affirmed in deeming Floyd’s death a homicide.)

West then compared Floyd, whose May 2020 death by police helped sparked the Black Lives Matter movement, to the late designer Virgil Abloh. “This white company Louis Vuitton is now making statues of him as a martyr, and we don’t know why exactly [he died], they said it was cancer,” West said.

Immediately after his Floyd comments, West asked N.O.R.E., “Can you even run this interview?,” noting how his appearance on HBO’s The Shop was axed over “hate speech and extremely dangerous stereotypes.” After being uploaded to the Revolt TV website Saturday night, West’s Drink Champs interview was pulled late Sunday morning.

xp
that's probably the most optimistic take. I hope you're right, plus I do think it is likely he will fuck it up.

pessimistically, this will shine a big spotlight on something that only real diehard assholes knew about before. I also just find it generally ominous that someone as famous as him is embracing far-right extremism & racism & advocating genocide so publicly, hard not to conclude these ideas are spreading and sticking in unpredictable ways

I'd hate to be the person who has to wade through the direct messages in Kanye's Parler inbox

rob otm

Key context here is that Candace Owens’ husband George Farmer is the CEO of Parler. https://t.co/guF9ByFyLQ

— Jared Holt (@jaredlholt) October 17, 2022

Did not know this. I mean, why would I? But suddenly the mega/maga grift comes full circle.

this explains a lot

hard not to conclude these ideas are spreading and sticking in unpredictable ways

― rob, Monday, October 17, 2022 10:09 AM (fifty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Otm. Twitter is absolutely rife with white supremach and antisemitism right now. Have no idea why Elon Musk thinks Twitter is too heavily moderated because white supremacists pop up like mushrooms in every reply thread.

pessimistically, this will shine a big spotlight on something that only real diehard assholes knew about before. I also just find it generally ominous that someone as famous as him is embracing far-right extremism & racism & advocating genocide so publicly

i don't think parler is quite that niche & the republican party is already pretty much there as a whole

Isn’t truth social splitting this market? Will those two merge?

Gotta admire the hustle of Candace Owens offloading her husband's useless company. Whatever he's paying for it is too much obv. Always Be Conning.

trump has been saying "you all know the n-word, right?" at his rallies. then, after some people in the crowd say what the n-word is and some of the crowd is thrilled that they get to be even more racist in public than before, he says that the n-word is "nuclear" and tries to connect it to putin.

he also did this on television in march and in april of this year

Jesus Christ

yeah, there have been some recent op-eds that are like "btw trump has been making a joke out of the n-word at his rallies and no one is saying anything about it because the world sucks too badly in other ways, as well"

yikes

It's hard to get useful stats on Parler, but as tipsy alludes, it doesn't seem to have that big of an active user base: <2 million from one site I looked at (Twitter, among the least popular major soc med, has something like 300m). Not sure how that compares to Truth.

I agree this might not do much to increase users and it sounds like an unsurprisingly dumb decision, but I worry that Kanye appeals to both more and different kinds of people than, say, Candace Owens. idk, I'd love to find out that I'm worrying over nothing, but sometimes I think about how much of this new far right movement started with gamergate and I feel dizzy

I've heard from people who have actually signed up for those sites out of curiosity that Parler and Truth Social are like half bots

I think the alt right proliferates well enough on mainstream social media tbh.

that is very true

really nothing distinguishing this guy from every other right wing grifter shitbag anymore

Would really love to see this guy's next album get almost completely ignored by most outlets (like all of Ryan Adams' recent attempts to come back), but I know that's not going to happen.

no, they'll still be the biggest thing for like a week then no one will ever listen to them again like his last few

sure, but I'd like to skip even that week

otm

This, uh, is unlikely to end well for anyone, including the namesake of this thread.

no, they'll still be the biggest thing for like a week then no one will ever listen to them again like his last few

Not if he continues to put out albums exclusively to weird stem devices like he did with DONDA 2. Was there even much of a discourse at all for that one?

I even forgot that DONDA 2 was this year.

so did Kanye

maybe if he disappears for a few years but nah if he puts out an album next year I feel like it'll go down about as well as R. Kelly's last one

So his next album will be a Christmas album?

That's the last thing R Kelly put out.

Donda 3 antisemitic christmas album stem player available exclusively via parler

"White Christmas" may hit differently

Is anyone on Parler going to care about anything non-political that Kanye says on there?

No. The right wing has nothing but disdain for music, fashion, and design — the things he says are his passions.

The mainstream American right wing I should say. There are a handful of reactionary dandies out there I guess, but they’re the fringe.

Milo Yiannopoulos to thread

Exactly, Kanye is for some reason aspiring to be that tier of celebrity.

well, the right wing is good at some kinds of art--movies, for instance

Stand up comedy

It'll be run about as well as one of his album rollouts, it seems.

^^^ Toldja. Parler literally just gave away for free what he was buying. pic.twitter.com/OhvN7DraQ0

— JΞSŦΞR ✪ ΔCŦUΔL³³°¹ (@th3j35t3r) October 17, 2022

Just saw the hashtag Klanye, which may be old but was new to me and made me chuckle a lil.

Was there even much of a discourse at all for that one?

not really because it didn't get a wide release and it was so obviously unfinished that i think people were expecting he'd keep tweaking it & eventually release it for real but that never happened

i pirated it but didn't get as far as double clicking any of the files

Thought this was an interesting read

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/17/damon-young-kanye-west-is-boring-too/

This is the key paragraph from that piece.

Sure, Kanye (who legally changed his name to “Ye” but will stay “Kanye” here for continuity’s sake) says and does things that are dumb, ignorant, ill formed, inaccurate, unsound, unhinged, untethered, misogynistic, anti-Black and antisemitic. But — and admittedly it feels odd to say “but” after that litany of defects — I think we sometimes conflate platform and influence. Despite his cultural ubiquity, I just don’t see how Kanye, in 2022, is still influential enough to sway or even slightly nudge people’s opinions on … anything other than Gap Inc.’s annual report. No one takes him seriously — not even the bad faith right-leaning platforms and people desperate, breathless to amplify him, ecstatic that finally someone with a Q Score above hell is on their side. Their relationship is predicated on symbiotic thirst. He’s thirsty for someone, anyone, to validate his current bluster, and they’re thirsty for Black mouthpieces to validate their hate.

On one hand yeah, he's not commanding legions of followers at this point. But on the other, having anyone as famous as him out there getting attention for saying the kind of shit he's saying still serves as some kind of validation and encouragement for other people who want to say those things or who already are saying them online or wherever.

he's lost even the fans who were stanning albums as bad as donda

having anyone as famous as him out there getting attention for saying the kind of shit he's saying still serves as some kind of validation and encouragement for other people who want to say those things or who already are saying them online or wherever

Yes, but the point is just as with the former president, there's zero conversion factor. People who agree with Kanye West about race, or the pernicious influence of the jooooos, or whatever, thought that already. Indeed, they got there before him. He's not a thought leader, he's a thought follower. So yeah, he's a famous bigot. Big deal. This is America. We have plenty of famous bigots already. He can go stand over there *vague arm wave* with all the others. Ted, this is Kanye. Kanye, Ted.

While I hope that columnist’s hunch is right (about Kanye not being a “danger to the larger culture”), I wish he had written more about these angles:

Kanye used to be my favorite artist and still might actually be because his old music is my favorite music. And I have been trying, for several years, to find the word(s) to encapsulate what he stirs in me now when I’m reading or watching one of his interviews or attempting to decipher one of his tweets (…) How does his behavior affect how we assess his old music? Are we over- (or under-) stating the danger of his words? How should we react to people who are both mentally ill and causing harm?

I definitely have some thoughts in response to those rhetorical questions, but it would be interesting to read an actual Kanye fan wrestle with them (not just raise and drop them).

(tbc, I have thoughts about rhetorical questions #2 and #3… but not #1, only a fan to begin with can get into that one.)

i don't think it really changes anything much about how i feel about his old, actually worthwhile music, its strengths & weaknesses are still the same.

like it's just a depressing reminder that he's like this now rather than anything worse

even when I liked him I always kinda wondered if he was Tommy Wiseauing his way into some of the really cool moments on those albums

Otm. Twitter is absolutely rife with white supremach and antisemitism right now. Have no idea why Elon Musk thinks Twitter is too heavily moderated because white supremacists pop up like mushrooms in every reply thread.

Yeah. Up until relatively recently I would report those posts on the somewhat rare occasions I came across them, but over the last few months the site seems to have become positively littered with comments by groyper-types and far-right bots, to the extent that there are now far too many to take the time to report each one. And lately when I do happen to report one, I will get a response from Twitter saying that the tweet didn't violate any rules, even though the post in question is saying really disturbing/inflammatory and not in any way subtle nazi-type shit.

Yes, but the point is just as with the former president, there's zero conversion factor. People who agree with Kanye West about race, or the pernicious influence of the jooooos, or whatever, thought that already. Indeed, they got there before him.

Is this entirely true, though? I feel like one of the things the qanon phenomenon demonstrated is that there are many people who will hear some outrageous conspiracy garbage and then be inspired to "research" it online and end up becoming converts... hence the stories of distraught family members lamenting how their previously apolitical or at least politically moderate relatives came to believe extreme ideas after being exposed to q posts or to public figures referencing ideas from them. Like, in a matter of months coming to steadfastly believe that reptilian overlords are pulling the strings behind world events.

I wish that Trump, Kanye, et al didn't have that sort of influence on people, but it seems evident to me that they in fact do?

^^^ Toldja. Parler literally just gave away for free what he was buying.

gonna have to [citation needed] that. i got the email in question and it only contained my email address

his buds Trump and Elon have the same affliction, which I think is what makes them the 3 most "popular" people in America

frogbs, Wednesday, October 12, 2022 4:04 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah I think our civilization is malfunctioning. These three people are actually insane and very impulsive, constantly saying things that make no sense. And they are the most famous and celebrated Americans.

― treeship., 12. oktober 2022 23:55 (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

They all got famous for reasons other than that at least - whereas the likes of Alex Jones and Joe Rogan's fame is a direct result of spouting poisonous bullshit

Remember when Charlie Sheen was the most famous person in America for a while

Sheen’s whole moment felt like the start of a decade that led to Trump.

Just saw shared Instagram Reel in my feed with an anti-Semitic Drink Champs clip with the caption “All is being revealed! Watch till the end!”

xps

Today's media operations fail:

Parler sent an email to all users with 300+ of their verified users CC'd instead of BCC'd

Now hundreds of people are replying and everyone has access to the personal emails of many verified users and Parler investors pic.twitter.com/pjjxJtM6dD

— Adam Ryan 🤝 (@AdamRy_n) October 17, 2022

I agree that Kanye is not really "converting" anyone nor is he any sort of thought leader but having a prominent GOP figure go "Death Con 3 on the Jews" sure as hell is affecting the way a lot of these people talk already

Yes, but the point is just as with the former president, there's zero conversion factor. People who agree with Kanye West about race, or the pernicious influence of the jooooos, or whatever, thought that already. Indeed, they got there before him. He's not a thought leader, he's a thought follower. So yeah, he's a famous bigot. Big deal. This is America. We have plenty of famous bigots already. He can go stand over there *vague arm wave* with all the others. Ted, this is Kanye. Kanye, Ted.

I feel like this handwaves away the pernicious effects of this toxic shit being in the public discourse. There's a reason why we are getting more and more younger men and boys buying into these hateful views, because they are exposed to it constantly online. So pretending that (like it or not) a major public figure who gets breathless coverage from wall-to-wall outlets every time he drops new music, one who has *checks notes* 31.5 million followers, spouting hateful bullshit results in "zero conversion" is flat out wrong and, imo, dangerous.

Whenever a friend or relative feels under siege because h/she learns about anti-Semitic cunts like Kanye getting a platform I know this shit has an impact.

We all know how quickly the YouTube recommendation algorithm can go from innocent video to some dark and questionable content under even the most innocent of starting points, imagine when an impressionable mind starts typing some combination of "kanye west" and "Jewish" into the search bar. Obviously that speaks to some larger issues we have to deal with as a society, but another famous person with a massive following providing another entry point to this line of thinking is not something we should just shrug off.

look at the comments on videos, like i was just watching funk flex go in on kanye and there were comments suggesting hot 97 and FF were in the pocket of jewish people, i don't buy that there is zero conversion

i know so many people from my hometown that literally NEVER talked about politics and now drone on about trump on facebook

Even more than anti-Black racism, which has never subsided below dog-whistle level in this country at best, I think there's a sort of forbidden thrill for people dipping their toes into "great Jewish conspiracy" thinking. Post-Holocaust, it's been so drummed out of public discourse that it has something of the allure of forbidden knowledge — especially because of its hints of ancient secrets and all that shit. So when it gets any daylight at all from very famous public figures, whatever their own contexts, it has the capacity to influence people.

i agree with everything being said. even if relatively few people are convinced by kanye directly, his comments add to the visibility of antisemitic conspiracy theories, sending people down rabbit holes. kanye himself was likely radicalized by such a process. it started with getting into christianity, he spends more time in right wing spaces (online and in real life), all of a sudden he starts supporting trump, sympathizing with trump's narrative that he is battling an insidious deep state, that resonates with other, even more pernicious narratives, etc etc

it would be interesting to see a kind of study of this process. so many people who were contrarian or so-called "dirtbag leftists" around 2016 are now extremely right wing in their sympathies. perhaps they are just showing their true colors, but i think they a good number of them were actually pushed into much more fucked up positions.

there's definitely not 'zero conversion', like my mother has friends that she's known for decades harassing her with Trumpian or QAnon conspiracy theories and she's completely shocked by it.

some people are just nutbars and gravitate towards the nutbar - other people are more naive, are angry for various reasons but don't have a singular place to focus their anger. some of these people (Trump, Kanye, QAnon, Joe Rogan) give thing places to focus their anger, and the confidence in which these Dunning-Kruger hall of fame folk espouse their opinions convinces them. especially due to the effectiveness of the gish gallop.

there's a conversation to be had about how much energy YOU PERSONALLY should devote to being worried/invested in what Kanye is saying for your mental health, vs the collective responsibility to show disdain and say "this isn't ok", which are two different things.

Kanye’s audience is very different than Trump’s and there is plenty of space for anti-semitism to grow there. The folks seeing him in concert and buying his shoes might not know anything about Jewish people except what Kanye says.

I guess my personal bar is so low that I’m just happy to see Kanye getting the kind of condemnation he’s been receiving so far. I tend to assume a latent antisemitism (or at least minimization of antisemitism) permeating the culture to the extent that I wouldn’t have necessarily predicted something like this getting serious/sustained pushback.

anti-semitism is hardly a new problem in some segments of the hip-hop community, never mind the stupid obsession with dumb shit like the Illuminati

A whole bunch of OTM here, Cow-Art in particular.

It’d be nice to see some corporations dump him.

akm OTM, one thing I think is interesting is Kanye is still covered a young person would be but he's old! he's maybe the last culturally relevant products of the golden age and that era was riddled with weirdo conspiracy shit, 5 percenter rhetoric, anti-semitism - PE/Professor Griff/Terrordome, Brand Nubian, Ice Cube, etc), Dr Yakub, all that god cipher divine type shit....a lot of what kanye's spewing lines up with the late 80s, early 90s imo

it's also the same shit I heard the Black Israelites preaching on the street in Times Square. that group is usually met with derision, but in hip-hop it's had more acceptance

^yep... right in front of 1515 Broadway

Google’s news search results are giving me the odd subhead “ Kanye West speaks out against anti-Semitism.”

It’d be nice to see some corporations dump him.

it seems like adidas is about to (he's been publicly antagonising them on top of everything else) & who else does he still have deals with

Parler sent an email to all users with 300+ of their verified users CC'd instead of BCC'd

looks like it was their PR list rather than their "all users" list. it's still dumb as heck but a far cry from exposing VIP emails to all users

Ari Emanuel in the FT calls on business to stop working with Kanye West over his anti-Semitic comments https://t.co/XmoMZYRY19 pic.twitter.com/zsZKSwOhsi

— Matthew Garrahan (@MattGarrahan) October 19, 2022

he hasn't toured in ages and idk if he ever will again (certainly not any time soon), adidas is already publicly contemplating ending their partnership with him and lmao at the idea parler would care at all

i really don't think apple and spotify should be in the business of completely removing the music of any artists who are not sufficiently good people though. when they've made a point of not actively promoting some via playlists etc. (which is a much more agreeable position) in the past they still haven't been able to manage that coherently at all either.

Big picture: Conservatives really starting to build alternate media universe
— Elon is buying Twitter
— Trump building his own platform
— Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance are funding Rumble

This take is wide of the mark. Twitter is the only platform in question with any popular significance: All the wingnut Twitternatives will run out of oxygen when their wealthy benefactors grow tired of wasting funds, because only the most unhinged humans will participate at any significant level, including Parler, Rumble, Truth Social, and anything that requires more infrastructure than 8chan. It's not an "alternate media universe". It's a toilet stall-sized well-tiled echo chamber with a very limited supply of terlit rawl.

the problem is all they promise is social media using ripped off interfaces with little to no moderation, once people get over the novelty of being able to say horrible offensive shit without getting banned, they will get bored when they realize nobody is talking there and all of their other friends are on other sites and that requires jumping back and forth.

to peel off anybody who isn't a far-right fascist conservative or douchebag that thinks "everybody's too pussified", you'd need to probably provide a platform that doesn't have the pratfalls of the majors like FB/Twitter, i.e., the heinous designs, overwrought ad displays, frequent bugs and malfunctions, inability to talk to a human to fix a problem. oh, and a fuck ton of money and a major mainstream ad campaign.

otherwise u'll just be Nazi Google Plus

People still use things like 4chan though.

Do 4chan users count as people?

he hasn't toured in ages and idk if he ever will again (certainly not any time soon)

this is otm, touring exacerbates every psych symptom a person has & anybody who's toured knows this, barring a miracle tour would absolutely wreck this guy