What’s wrong with Kanye West? Absolutely nothing.
Over the weekend, the Watch The Throne rapper closed his show by screaming at the top of his lungs for about 2 minutes, before throwing the microphone on the ground and walking off stage. But prior to his display of insanity or failed attempt at art, Kanye West explained what I look at as the key to life.
No, not the part about him not effing with “Suit and Tie” despite his love for Jay-Z, nor the part about how the Grammys could duck his sick. But everything else he said is pure brilliance.
I get it, I’m not delusional, Kanye West doesn’t know how to express himself outside of his music, but I am not going to downgrade him to regular ‘walking around the streetness’ just yet. As I said before, the man is brilliant and if more people saw the world like he did, it might actually be a better place, a human utopia even, as he suggests.
During his rant, and I use the word loosely, Yeezy said, “Creativity fuels everything.” Then in the worst possible way, he explains, “there are no good ideas and no real ideas and nothing sincere left. Everything has been so homogenized and it’s all big business.” Yeezy believes, “There is no creativity when really we have the ability to have the human utopia if we just help each other.”
Instead of helping and being helped, Kanye West is feeling the pressure of big business running things in the music industry. He’s frustrated by the same things that frustrate all music fans: The politics and the math.
Ye points out that during a phone call someone asked him, “What type of business are you doing? What’s the numbers? How much did you sell? What’s the radio spins?”
Yeezy vents his frustrations about what people like A Tribe Called Quest have been rapping about for years. This is a classic example of industry rule number 4080, record company people are shady. So when the Louis Vuitton Don sings, “Can you remind me again why we in this shit? I know it’s for more than to just get rich. Since when was making music about getting rich?” I fucks with it. Real hip-hop is art, and money has never been a reason for an artist like Kanye West to be forced to kiss babies and meet the children of executives who may or may not be a fan. They may very well be spoiled rich kids who simply want to brag about meeting Kanye West or having Yeezy at their bar mitzvah.
I’ve seen it myself. The secret shows for buyers, friends of the program, execs and their families to roll out a new project from an A-list artist.
I don’t care how much money you give me, I am not jeopardizing my art for check. Yet so many good artists do. So when Yeezy says, “I hate business people,” I get it. Because the corporations are blocking us from this human utopia so they can control what’s hot and what’s not. Just look around your computer screen.
I was held hostage at Jay-Z’s Made In America tour because I don’t drink Budweiser beer and since they shelled out all the money to put on the festival, that’s all audience members were allowed to drink. That was the best sober weekend I ever had at a festival in my life, but I digress.
Let’s give Yeezy some slack because no one understands him, and he is a bit jaded, but he’s right on this one when he says, “Racism and materialism” are killing us. Blacks, Whites, Asians, Hispanics, you name it, it’s killing us all. So Ye’s logic that:
“If we just use our resources and stop trying to compete against each other, to beat each other and eat each other and maybe came together to teach each other and reach each other and reach another to come together and love one another,” then we can have this human utopia that we all truly want, but so many don’t think we can have.
But fuck it. They don’t understand, so there is only one thing left to do… Live your life the way you want to live it.
“Imma make my music from my heart and I’ll live and I die by everything that I say and everything I do and everything that I make is what I believe to be true. If that don’t make sense or it sounds like nonsense idgaf because that was my stream of conscious and that’s the way I felt at that time and feelings were the only facts.”
I understand that logic, and if it were to offend me, I would be able to forgive. Ye is not crazy, he is in fact the smartest man in the room. The whole thing was really brilliant, if you ask me.
~ Blog Xilla Follow Me On Twitter
Xilla is the Sr. Entertainment Editor for GlobalGrind.com as well as CEO of the number 1 relationship blog BlogXilla.com/M2TB.com. He has been featured in XXL, The Source, Essence, LA Times and is considered one of the premiere bloggers in the industry. Follow him on twitter @BlogXilla
