kanye west

even Musk, idiot charlatan that he is, has backed off xps

If that’s the case then it’s actually kind of in character for him? He sort of expresses the same theme in “all falls down”.

Examples:

We shine because they hate us, floss cause they degrade us. We trying to buy back our 40 acres. And for that paper, look how low we a'stoop. Even if you in a Benz, you still a n***a in a coop/coupe

I say fuck the police, that's how I treat em. We buy our way out of jail, but we can't buy freedom. We'll buy a lot of clothes when we don't really need em. Things we buy to cover up what's inside. Cause they make us hate ourself and love they wealth. That's why shortys hollering "where the ballas' at?" Drug dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy crack. And a white man get paid off of all of that.

Even if that’s the idea behind it, which isn’t really that controversial, I don’t like that he feels the need to shit on Harriet Tubman’s legacy to make a point.

He's not tearing down Harriet Tubman, he's saying that black people still aren't free

maybe but its still in the sense of "you're not free because you vote Democrat instead of listening to Candice Owens"

Back then he had yet to find Jesus, i.e. himself.

xp

lol

Might as well shit on his adidas deal because he’s making a bunch of white men richer.

This is the first video I've seen that gives more context. It seems like he was going for what Whiney said (although focusing on the ownership of a few major corporations is a bit idk) but it still seems pretty strange, with stuff about how "you don't see the real power" and apparently concluding (?) that it all needs to change with him ending up on the boards of Adidas and Gap.

Here’s more context to what Kanye said. pic.twitter.com/Xv4mMFYqeg

— Raury (@Raury) July 20, 2020

Oh so, he is actually shitting on his adidas deal then? Lol

Based on what he said about meds and creativity in the past, I wouldn't be surprised if he went off his meds to finish his new album. Currently tweeting scary tweets.

Yeah, his tweets tonight are just scary depressing. I genuinely hope he has someone supporting him right now.

this is fucked

He's not tearing down Harriet Tubman, he's saying that black people still aren't free

― The Mandymoorian (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, July 20, 2020 4:44 PM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

even with the added context, this is an extraordinarily naive and tendentious reading

ugh. are his tweets suggesting that Kim wanted to commit him?

Yes, it’s “naive” to not assume someone is saying the Underground Railroad was a hoax

Even if that’s the idea behind it, which isn’t really that controversial, I don’t like that he feels the need to shit on Harriet Tubman’s legacy to make a point.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Monday, July 20, 2020 4:51 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

whiney and moka otm. he's not a very articulate guy but the things he was saying are straightforward and in line with what he has been saying for years. the idea that him, as a black man, being on the board of adidas will help "emancipate" black people from consumerism is pretty dumb but that should just be engaged at face value. instead people accuse him of MENTAL ILLNESS 👻 as if they never heard a social conservative before.

Face value engagement: There's a difference between saying that real racial inequalities still exist in terms of economic power and saying that no one has been freed since the time of slavery. I do not think that an already-wealthy black celebrity being on the board of Adidas and Gap would do more for emancipation than what Harriet Tubman did - that's almost like a grotesque parody of neoliberal identity politics. Lastly, the stuff about the shadowy 'real power' is a little strange and might imply some kind of conspiracy theory, although of the more common (and thus more dangerous) kind than it would be if he had been claiming that the Underground Railroad was a hoax. It's possible that people want to believe the latter thing because it is the less scary option.

fwiw, it's entirely plausible that Kanye has some controversial socially conservative views AND is struggling with mental illness (his twitter breakdown last night being a fairly clear example of the latter)

^ yup

Face value engagement: There's a difference between saying that real racial inequalities still exist in terms of economic power and saying that no one has been freed since the time of slavery.

A million times OTM. Things are unquestionably better than they used to be; that doesn't mean they are perfect or even good, but it also doesn't mean you can handwave the work people have done to get us here.

it's also entirely possible that "social conservatives" are ALL MOTHERFUCKING INSANE

You don't have to be insane to be an utterly unsympathetic dick.

(That is not about Kanye specifically, although I do think people give his abhorrence a lot of leeway because of his public disclosures of his mental issues; I think the solution for him is to a) get medical help and b) stop being such a fucking dick and that separate courses of action will be needed to address both issues.)

Kanye has been saying things like “the slaves were never really freed” for years (e.g. his comments about the Thirteenth Amendment leaving room for incarcerated people being enslaved). I don’t think that part is mental illness talking. I do think the fact that he is going out and making these proclamations publicly in a highly erratic manner is a bit manic, not just arrogant.

xp DJP otm

Sund4r & DJP otfm

he's not a very articulate guy

I feel like a lot of the charitable programs and good things he’s done are overshadowed by his boredom in doing them, or the disinterest in continuing them. There are some good sentiments, like those Moka mentioned, on those early albums and in some of his public appearances at the time (the Katrina live on air call-out is still great), but I’ve always gotten the impression that he does things out of a sense of obligation of what he thinks he’s supposed to be to different people.

I remember an interview with Rhymefest from a few years back where he voiced his frustrations with Kanye putting him in charge of an outreach program that he then ignored. I think the implication was that Kanye’s new Kim-influenced lifestyle was to blame, but I really think Kanye just does Kanye. The presidential aspiration stuff is just him wanting to do the same bullshit at a different scale, and with the current president basically doing that, I get where he’s coming from (and it is a bad place).

I mean, I think this is a bad way to live life and he’s mostly interested in his own self-aggrandizement

the video clip I saw was an actual mess but the sentiment about his ramblings on abortion seems to be “I could have been aborted. Me, Kanye!”

You don't have to be insane to be an utterly unsympathetic dick.

― shout-out to his family (DJP)

...but it helps!

honestly though i feel like there's a case to be made that being unsympathetic enough for long enough will eventually DRIVE one insane

I think we want for that to be true in order to promote the idea that being good to others is a fundamental component of being a rational, functioning individual but I don't think it's a true statement. Or, to put it another way, sociopathy is defined by the norms of society and acting in concert with society is not always conducive to mental health.

I am neither a psychologist or a philosopher so take that statement with a giant mound of salt.

I mean doesn't he brag about never reading books? I don't know why we'd expect his political views to be any more informed or interesting than some random dude you went to high school with on facebook. he's just really good at music and making ugly sneakers.

if there's one thing i wish i could change was this weird baseline assumption that if someone is exceptionally skilled in one area it means this aptitude translates to other areas

For every Condoleezza Rice, there are at least a hundred Ben Carsons/Kanye Wests.

He's long had a way of conflating/collapsing his personal successes and challenges with those of society in general. It worked pretty well on Yeezus, less so in the current context.

hmmm. let me refine that statement.

i think that there have always been successful, functioning people who were utterly unsympathetic pricks. that's pretty basic history, i'd have a hard time arguing with that statement.

i also think that being a "conservative" of any sort in america requires one to exist with truly herculean levels of cognitive dissonance. humans in general are very adept at not seeing things they don't want to see. humans are very adept at compartmentalizing. the president in america... i mean, i try not to use emotionally loaded language, but i struggle to find a better phrase than "insane death cult". less loaded phrases seem to me like soft-pedaling.

I think the issue is that my rando high school friends on FB aren't running for President (or PM).

For every Condoleezza Rice, there are at least a hundred Ben Carsons/Kanye Wests.

― shout-out to his family (DJP), Tuesday, July 21, 2020 2:44 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I would 100% rather have an uninformed person like Carson/West in political office than an informed, unscrupulous, unapologetic mass murderer like Condoleeza Rice

You have that now. How's it going?

I would 100% rather have an uninformed person like Carson/West in political office than an informed, unscrupulous, unapologetic mass murderer like Condoleeza Rice

This is 100% fucking stupid and why we are in the current position we're in now.

xps to Kate:

Being a "conservative" requires you to distrust change. I think you can boil pretty much every conservative stance down to "it's worked so far, why do we need to change it?"

Trump isn't conservative, he is a narcissist and a user who preys on conservative thought. If he thought he could accrue power by and make money off of Socialist rhetoric, he'd do that. The driver for his behavior and a lot of the people running the conservative movement now is avarice, which is why Kanye fits in so well with them and why in the modern age, it's nigh-impossible to interact with at least half the political actors in US politics in good faith. (Do not mistake this for excusing conservative thought, which has its own problems worth several threads of their own.)

I would like to apologize for the redundancy in my previous post and would like to make up for it by calling Whiney fucking stupid some more

i also think that being a "conservative" of any sort in america requires one to exist with truly herculean levels of cognitive dissonance.

I think we all require Herculean levels of cognitive dissonance to get by, but it also depends on your own experiences and environment and the information streams you are exposed to.

why you would choose rice - who is inarguably culpable in supporting a number of actions at least roughly akin to war crimes - as an exemplar in contrast to kanye?

also i have forgotten if i am on the kanye thread or the politics thread

Being a "conservative" requires you to distrust change. I think you can boil pretty much every conservative stance down to "it's worked so far, why do we need to change it?"

― shout-out to his family (DJP)

i mean not to get all into semantics but are you talking about "conservatism" as an internally consistent, rational, and coherent ideology? because i know that a lot of people writing for the national review _claimed_ there was such a thing, this vast sea of anti-trump conservatives. hell, i knew some people who claimed to be "anti-trump conservatives" themselves... and then voted for him anyway because they believed he was the "lesser evil".

also i have forgotten if i am on the kanye thread or the politics thread

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses)

#onethread

i don't think it's really a question of whether kanye is suffering from mental illness... he's publicly acknowledged he's bipolar, has been hospitalized previously, and has also previously talked openly about going off of his meds. his tweets from last night indicate that ppl close to him are trying to get him back in the hands of professionals, and just from personal experience of knowing someone w/ the illness that kind of social media posting seems consistent w/ a heightened manic period

but it's pretty easy to divorce the recent sideshow from his political beliefs. his newfound interest in abortion isn't surprising when you read the ppl helping him w/ the south carolina rally were an anti-abortion film score composer and some other shadowy "spiritual advisor." if you think about his turn towards evangelical christianity in the last year w/ sunday service and the whole weird atmosphere around that, i think it's pretty easy to trace the roots of some of what he's saying. in a way it's quite retrograde as far as republican politics go.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/kanye-in-s-c-two-political-novices-are-running-his-campaign.html

"at least this guy has never committed war crimes" was a popular argument for Trump over Clinton iirc

if 9/11 had happened on Trump's watch there probably wouldn't be a planet left