mononym wrote:Kanye West has an estimated $100 million, the most beautiful woman in America as his wife-to-be, and an unparalleled career at the helm of pop music and culture. By most of our pedestrian standards, the man has not a thing to complain about. By his own admission, he’s found “heaven on earth.” But the past couple of months of Yeezus tour promo, during which he’s spoken more frequently and more sincerely than he has in years, have been thick with grievances. The headlines have accordingly singled out the zeitgeist-friendliest of soundbytes: Kanye West Thinks He Invented Leather Jogging Pants. Kanye West Encourages Fans to Boycott Louis Vuitton. Kanye West Says Sway ‘Ain’t Got The Answers.’
Rather than the media training-steeped platitudes and pre-approved anecdotes favored by other celebrities of comparable stature, Kanye has used this latest bout of media attention to lay out his criticisms of the global fashion industry, the awards industrial complex, America, and any person, place, or thing that has systemically or systematically obstructed his path to translating musical success to self-actualization in fashion, art, technology, and culture in general.
But extemporaneous speech is not his strongest suit; Kanye expresses himself much better creatively than he does in conversation. Fully formed thoughts are obscured by strings of seemingly inane phrases and a penchant for hyperbole that can be as entertaining as it is distracting. While it’s obvious to a fan why he would compare himself to Shakespeare, as he did in an interview with Sway Calloway last week, Kanye’s ascension to Shakespeare-level impact is less apparent to someone to whom he is, unobservantly enough, just another rapper.
In interviews and in other public appearances that require him to speak, Kanye’s nervousness is palpable and subsides only after he finds his groove, usually once the conversation has shifted to something he is passionate about. In an October appearance on Jimmy Kimmel, in which the two squashed a beef that resulted from a Kimmel bit that infantilized him by having a pair of children reenact out-of-context quotes from an earnest BBC interview, Kanye fessed up to having been nerve-wracked during the Zane Lowe sitdown that set the whole thing off. “After I did the BBC interview I was shaking,” he told Kimmel.
At some point early on in his now 15-year career—likely at the exact moment he distilled the government’s despicably inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina into the single, memorable phrase, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people”—Kanye became the most divisive and important figure in contemporary pop. That honesty is both what we love about him and what makes it easy to hate him: to those who understand it, his mission to inspire is self-evident and laudable but to those who don’t, he seems impossibly removed from reality and will likely remain that way. He is loved and hated in equal measure and with equal passion but, mostly, he is misunderstood.
Kanye’s public persona, or to put it more accurately, the public perception of Kanye’s personhood, has largely been defined not by his so-called “antics,” but by white reactions to them. Because of deep-rooted, centuries-old stereotypes used to oppress black men, Kanye is the embodiment of everything America has been taught to fear and hate. And he despises it as much as he revels in it, for better or worse—his default use of the sexualization of white women is the intentional (and, yes, misogynistic) fallout of that.
The all-too-common descriptions of Kanye as “crazy” or “childish” or “out of control” follow the long-held, socially sanctioned belittlement and demonization of black men. When he reacts angrily to an interviewer patronizing him, as he did when Sway Calloway suggested his approach to the fashion industry was misguided, he’s not viewed as a deeply frustrated artist who is forced to answer the same condescending questions over and over but, rather, as a disturbed man prone to flying off the handle.
Kanye has argued that the racially coded, tautologous delegitimization of his genius and cultural significance—among other things, he has cited disagreements with Nike over the cachet of his Air Yeezy sneaker, a pair of which auctioned for nearly $90,000 but inexplicably yielded no follow-up with the company—is used to actively exclude him from an industry that uses him when it’s beneficial but otherwise refuses to treat him as a peer.
Because of deep-rooted, centuries-old stereotypes used to oppress black men, Kanye is the embodiment of everything America has been taught to fear and hate.
Case-in-point: the song “I Am A God” on Yeezus, likely the most infamous and controversial track in his oeuvre, was written after he felt disrespected by Saint Laurent creative director Hedi Slimane, who refused to allow him to attend his show in Paris if he also attended other fashion week runway shows. A proper listen to the track, which facetiously lists Jesus as a featured artist, shows neither arrogance nor blasphemy but a hilarious, feisty blowback at what Kanye has repeatedly described as the fashion industry’s desire to “contain” him.
He attributes much of his mistreatment at the hands of The Establishment to classism, which he terms “racism’s cousin”; his point is well-taken but it’s perhaps a misnomer for the gradual switch not from racism to classism, but from legal racism to institutional racism, an infinitely more insidious system of oppression that is relatively easy to identify but, by design, difficult to prove.
At some point, Kanye went from being America’s black friend to being America’s public enemy number one; the backpacks, brightly colored Polo shirts, and charming collegiate demeanor that once identified him as safe were replaced with a black-and-leather uniform, a set of bottom grills, and a willingness to prioritize his own truth-telling over proper decorum (the Taylor Swift interruption heard ‘round the world is a prime example of that). He publicly grappled with the realization that America wants his window-paned sunglasses, not his take on racism or urban violence or the structure of higher education and certainly not his opinion on the way it treats black artists. It is a sentiment that, on a much smaller scale, rings true to many of us who watch and feel a kinship with him, his honesty, and the challenges posed by attempting to “survive America.”
On Yeezus and in the months since its release, we’ve seen the emergence of a new Kanye: a family man who appears in love with Kim Kardashian not despite but with complete disregard for all the negative things she’s said to symbolize. Their love was recently immortalized in the epic video for the album’s single “Bound 2,” a cheesy if self-aware, sincere declaration of love that, like anything he does, earned impassioned reactions from the public.
It is a distinctly different side to the Kanye that is portrayed as antagonistic and aggressive, a reflection of his capacity for code-switching; for many Americans, including, famously, President Obama, learning to switch between black and “mainstream” vernacular and cultural signifiers is necessary for survival in white America. Accusations of hypocrisy and disingenuousness have been lobbed at both for doing it with seeming ease. However, the many facets of Kanye are a shining reminder that to be black and in the public eye should not require much more than simply being black in the public eye.
He errs often, but Kanye West doesn’t bow or break and that is the ultimate measure of a man being watched and loved from afar by people whose daily battles instruct us to bow and break.
I know that people get very emotional about this topic. Either you love Tupac or you hate him, it’s that simple for most. It really comes down to either you are a Biggie fan or a Pac fan, most people don’t straddle the line. Today, marks the 12th anniversary of the death of Tupac Amaru Shakur (June 16, 1971 — September 13, 1996) but his music lives on.
The first time I heard Tupac was on my cousin’s “Me Against The World” CD and I have been hooked ever since, I was seven years old. Even as a young child his music touched me somewhere deep, I couldn’t really understand it at the time but as I got older I did. Tupac was a very complex individual and his music demonstrated that. From introspective tracks like “Keep Ya Head Up” and “Still I Rise to hard hitting viscerally charged tracks like “Hit Em Up” and “Bomb First”, Tupac Shakur was a man full of demons, trapped between who he was and who he wanted to be.
No disrespect to Biggie, I liked his music but I loved Pac’s. Both were cut down too soon in an example of how violence perpetuates and escalates itself until it becomes uncontrollable. The lyrical genius that was Tupac has yet to be surpassed in my opinion. Feeling nostalgic, I put Makaveli: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory in my car and just let it bump. As I listened to songs like “Hold Ya Head” and “White Man’s World”, it become very apparent to me just how much what the community considers good rap music has changed. I mean I am a huge fan of Lil Wayne, T.I., Pastor Troy, Plies, and others but when you put their lyrical content and message up against Tupac they just don’t hold up.
People knock Tupac for being contradictory in his songs going from songs insulting women and calling for change to songs that degraded women and called for violence, I think he music was simply as complex as he was. In fact, the majority of his content from “Me Against The World” on was more focused on uplifting content and challenging the black community to be better. A lot of his later content that has been released posthumously shows how much growth he had made and from all available sources it seemed he was ready to make a huge change in his life.
When Tupac died he was 25 years old and he had plenty of time to do all the things he wanted or at least he thought he did. He was engaged to Kidada Jones, daughter of Quincy Jones, and appeared ready to finally settle down. Makaveli was the third and last album he was contractually obligated to release on Death Row due to “All Eyez On Me” being a double album, the first double CD rap album in history I might add. So he was essentially primed to leave Death Row to start his own label and finally take full control of his career.
After 12 years, a lot of today’s listeners don’t really appreciate Biggie’s or Pac’s music in the way they should. Today, the unchallenged “Greatest Rapper Alive” is none other than Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter probably followed very closely by Lil Wayne and T.I. All I know is this while I love all those guys, there is no doubt in my mind that they would not be as big as they are today if Pac and Big were alive, I mean how could they be? How could Jay claim the title of the King of New York if Big was still around, he couldn’t.
There are a lot of great rappers, but there can only be one G.O.A.T and to me that’s Pac. All you have to do is look at his body of work, his lyrical depth and versatility, the power of his records. The man could tell a story, he could move people to action and in his later years that would have made him a force to be reckoned with not only musically but politically as well. He was a young man on a journey and just when it looked like he was about to find his way, someone cut him down. No some will say you live by the gun then you die by the gun but all I say to this if you had been shot 7 times and lived in the high energy, violent world he lived in how would you be?
For some only the numbers matter, well let’s talk numbers. Tupac has sold over 75 million records worldwide, the most of any other rapper in history save possibly Jay-Z, but I haven’t been able to verify. What makes that 75 million records even more impressive is that when you look at what is commonly recognized as his active period as a solo artist from 1991-1996, no other artist in the 50-74 million category even comes close to having as small of a window as Pac did. There have been over 10 posthumous releases of his music and they have all gone platinum.
All Eyez on Me was the fourth studio album, a double album (the first double rap album ever) and was released on February 13, 1996. According to the RIAA, over 9 million copies of the album were sold in the United States by June 18, 1998 (the album has since reached diamond status though not officially recognized by RIAA because no recount has been requested). The man sold 9 million copies in the U.S. alone in two years, I mean who does that? No you can say sales were spurred by his death but even if noboby does those kinds of numbers. He followed this up with his last studio album, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory which sold 663,000 copies its first week making Tupac the first rapper to have 2 #1 albums in the same year. One of his posthoumous releases Until The End Of Time was the best selling rap record of 2001 going triple platinum and beating out the likes of Jay-Z, DMX, and Ja Rule 5 years after his death. Think about this in 2001, Tupac was by far the best selling hip hop/rap artist of all time and #20 all time as far as solo artist in any genre go.
in the end a lot of people only knew of Tupac Amaru Shakur what they saw on TV and read in magazines but his real fans know the truth, that he was a complicated soul that was only with us for a short time but has had a profound change on our culture and lives he influenced. He was much more than a thug, he was a poet, actor, writer, producer, and executive. He said in an interview once that he didn’t think he would live long and he didn’t but I think he served his purpose. His true fans still miss him like the day he left us. He was truly ahead of his time. In closing, I leave you with this quote from him that I think says everything you need to know about him.
I'm waiting for your answer
