Kanye West FourFiveSeconds Editorial
Up until Sunday night, the world thought it had a pretty good handle on Kanye West. No longer the stage-stealing "jackass" (President Obama's words, not ours) and wellspring of outrageous quotes, the last few weeks appeared to be bringing out a more respectful (or just more self-restrained) Mr. West. He seemed to be cooling off, too busy collaborating with boomer icon Paul McCartney and premiering tender videos of him as a doting father on the soothing white leather armchairs of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. It was a New Kanye for the new year, co-signed by shamans of masscult sameness.
But, no. The microscope just needed to be dialed in a touch. Before the 57th Annual Grammy Awards even got underway, the press began daring Kanye to speak his mind, and thus, speak out of turn. Ryan Seacrest's seemingly innocent question,"Do you think that attention deficit disorder is a good thing?" in truth briefly showed the media's (white-skinned) hand. What Seacrest implicitly said to West was You must truly have a mental health issue, bait which the artist cooly brushed off. "It's also just called thinking."
The question gets asked a lot: "What was Kanye West thinking about?" --when it's obvious that thinking--if anything, over-thinking--is the oxygen that keeps his artistry alive and moving forward. The man has never stopped reconceptualizing his place in the world, never rested on his laurels or kowtowed to conventional wisdom. From the beginning West's music has been about self-affirmation; it decrees: Make your own decisions. Never let society tell you, ‘This is what you have to do.’ It can be vulgar at times and über-commercial at others, but at its core his output is individualistic--Kanye is only ever who he wants to be. Not by coincidence, in the twelve years that he's been active as a solo artist all seven of his LP releases have gone platinum. He's rolled out numerous successful clothing lines, made huge contributions to charities and sent paradigm shifts through not just hip-hop but the entire entertainment industry. It says something when two sitting presidents are asked to address your cultural impact. To list the ticket sales, the collaborators and the accolades would by now be futile--Kanye West is without a doubt the most successful musician of this young millennium--and what's gotten him here has been a burgeoning revolt against the expectations of his (predominantly white) colleagues, critics and even fans.
And that's the Kanye problem--we as a society aren't so used to a black artist who is at once so artistically and commercially dominant and yet so blatantly devoid of reverence for the old gods. He confounds the status quo and loves pushing its buttons, and when he does it old white men get appalled...Why? Cultural critic and New Inquiry editor Ayesha Siddiqi spelled out the situation perfectly:
Siddiqi's tweet comes from the fall of 2013, when Kanye and Jimmy Kimmel found themselves at odds after Kimmel ran sketches of toddlers repeating Kanye's remarks from a BBC interview. Kimmel's jabs seemed playful enough, unless you consider the old practice of white America cutting down black men with the label "boy." (please note: Kanye was quick to call out Kimmel via twitter, and when he did, at least one well-established old white male music critic not only grouched for an apology but flat-out labeled 'Ye an asshole.)
To put it plainly: Kanye has tied a knot in the way America talks to itself about celebrity-artists, thus the frustrated discussion of him often devolves into name-calling. Since he basically-but-not-really rushed the stage to protest Beck's Grammy win, twitter has ballooned with the old asshole insult. 'Ye later clarified his actions, telling E! "Beck needs to respect artistry and he should have given his award to Beyoncé. And at this point, we tired of it...Because what happens is, when you keep on diminishing art and not respecting the craft and smacking people in the face after they deliver monumental feats of music, you're disrespectful to inspiration." These are strong words that make a very valid point, but all that anyone seems to be talking about is the half-second of stage time he stole from Beck.
Monday saw Fox News (predictably) holding a roundtable inquisition, but it was a Billboard op-ed from Monday morning that proved to be the most disturbing. Critic Chris Willman belittled Kanye in his opening line, cracking "Kanye West seemed to have won his way back into America's good graces, thanks to the mistaken belief that he'd developed the ability to take the piss out of himself," later chiding "But it's a good thing West hadn't gotten around to cashing all our good-will checks." Once again an authoritative white voice has been raised to scold Kanye--and Willman goes beyond simple name-calling, reasserting the idea that West should know his place. His check metaphor is spot-on: according to this mindset, mega-star artist Kanye West owes us meekness and good behavior.
Willman's attempted-spanking of Kanye is so multi-faceted it's almost surreal. The Billboard piece frames Beck as a musical Scorsese--hugely talented but perennially snubbed for his achievements--and notes that when The Departed finally won Scorsese the best director Oscar, Sensible White Person Judi Dench showed good sense and wasn't "jumping on stage or having an E! fit because Clint Eastwood was robbed." Willman later touts West critic Al Roker, perhaps the most non-threatening black face in all of America, as (and I am not making this up) "The conscience of a nation." The piece ends with the obvious/readymade snarky burn of labeling Kanye a "Loser."
And so Willman and others like him seized on Kanye's words and actions as a fresh chance to blow off a bit of the steam built up by a person of color's refusal to play the role assigned. But perhaps the most damning flaw in all these would-be damnations is the mistaken idea that Ye's main target was Beck. On Sunday night, Beck's only crime was being a person holding the best album statue whose name wasn't Beyoncé. Kanye's intentions were pretty clear: to disrespect the Grammys voting academy and briefly check an aging institution that had denied Beyoncé the credit that almost everyone--including Beck, it should be noted--was certain she was due.
Vitriolic name-calling is a reality of modern social media, just as the occasional celebrity dressing-down is a given in entertainment reporting. But Ye attracts unjustly sharp barbs because he refuses to stay seated and wait for the credits to roll. Note that none of the Grammys fallout takedown pieces could muster a critique of his two fantastic performances earlier in the night. What frustrates so many is that Kanye has the audacity to tell the industry "you're wrong." But what fascinates so many more is that he has the artistic prowess to prove it.
