Written by Charles M. Blow
Amongst Kanye West’s defenders, the considering goes like this: He’s a genius, a freethinker, an elevated conscience. They could not like or agree with all the pieces he does, however they applaud the person.
There’s a cult of Kanye, and I got here to the opinion way back that our society confers a particular attract on cults, notably when they’re tied to not faith however to popular culture or politics. In these arenas, they really feel enjoyable, harmless, like rooting collectively for a favourite staff.
So I’m not right here to argue about whether or not West is a genius, though when anybody refers to themselves as such, it tends to undercut the appellation.
This newspaper itself has repeatedly known as West a genius, so it could behoove him, I suppose, to run with the branding.
But it surely has all the time appeared to me that West is aching to be thought-about a contemporary Mozart: the tortured genius. In fact, Mozart was a genius past dispute, however the concept he was a tortured one could also be a fantasy. As Jan Swafford wrote in his guide “Mozart: The Reign of Love”:
Whereas Mozart had his share of sorrow and loss and frustration like the remainder of us, he was essentially a contented man. He wrote for public consumption, which is to say that he was an expert in a method few composers are anymore. Nonetheless, on the entire he did what he needed to do the way in which he needed to, and when he was accomplished he didn’t fear overmuch about what the general public considered it.
West isn’t any Mozart. West is a brooding, narcissistic consideration addict and reward junkie. He attends his torture. He curates and employs it. A few of it could come naturally, however some is manufactured, to enlarge the legend.
I’ll let others debate whether or not his skills as an artist, that are outstanding, rise to that of genius. I need to focus as a substitute on West as a cultural chaos agent, as a purveyor of harmful politics. On this enviornment, he’s no genius; he’s a gussied-up gimmick.
West is usually described as a “freethinker,” however within the political area, he isn’t. He’s merely a Black artist keen to regurgitate conservative — typically bordering on white supremacist — speaking factors as in the event that they had been his personal.
Coming from the mouth of a world famous person, a rapping clothier, oppression begins to sound like freedom to those that shrink back from or overtly reject a critical evaluation of politics and present affairs.
Final week, West prompted a firestorm by carrying a “White Lives Matter” shirt at his vogue present in Paris. The Anti-Defamation League labels “White Lives Matter” a “white supremacist phrase” and has written that, since 2015, “white supremacists in a number of states, particularly members of the Texas-based white supremacist group Aryan Renaissance Society, have promoted the slogan” as a part of “a free marketing campaign to popularize the phrase.”
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) October 3, 2022
Effectively, final week, West gave the white supremacists a lift.
West is identical man who in 2013 was promoting merchandise with Accomplice flags on tour. As he defined to a radio station that yr about folks’s appalled reactions: “Any power is sweet power. The Accomplice flag represented slavery in a method. That’s my summary tackle what I learn about it, proper? So I wrote the music ‘New Slaves.’ So I took the Accomplice flag and made it my flag. It’s my flag now.”
Kanye pitches it as co-option, however it’s, in actual fact, primary shock-value antics that promote and normalize anti-Black hate symbols.
There may be nothing genius about this. It’s bargain-basement exploitation. As West put it himself, “any power is sweet power,” which is simply an nearly non secular, if jargony, method of reinterpreting what Oscar Wilde wrote in “The Image of Dorian Grey” within the late 1800s: “There is just one factor on the earth worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about.” The spirit of that concept led to “all publicity is sweet publicity.”
After the newest outcry over the “White Lives Matter” shirt he wore at Vogue Week, West continued his publicity searching for by happening Fox Information to elaborate. The interview was a jumble of themes through which he tried to weave collectively godliness, inventive inspiration, private persecution, disdain for establishments, anti-abortion speaking factors, an inversion on the concepts round racism and his help for Donald Trump. You understand, core concepts of the trendy proper wing.
West says of the shirt, “The reply to why I wrote ‘White Lives Matter’ on a shirt is as a result of they do.” He performs oblivious to the plain.
West is identical man who stated in 2015 that “racism is a dated idea,” and that “it’s like a foolish idea that folks” use “to separate, to alienate, to pinpoint something. It’s silly.”
He is identical man who stated in a TMZ interview in 2018: “You hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years? That seems like a selection. Like, you was there for 400 years, and it’s all of y’all?”
West later apologized for the slavery feedback, however even within the apology he couldn’t management his narcissism, saying: “You understand in a relationship, perhaps someone will do one thing simply to see if you happen to nonetheless love them. One factor that I received from the TMZ remark is it confirmed me how a lot Black folks love me, and the way a lot Black folks rely on me and rely on me. And I respect that.”
None of this, within the political sphere, is genius. It’s shallow and boring. Kanye is only a Black man who found Black conservatism and thinks it’s enlightenment. There may be nothing advanced or mysterious about it. He’s a Black man parroting white supremacy, whereas far too many brush it off, proceed dancing to his music and put on his garments.
West is a Black man sampling classic anti-Black racism, remixing and releasing it underneath a brand new label: the tortured Black genius.
This text initially appeared in The New York Occasions.
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