What in the fukk was that Kanye?
I told you to do some shyt for the kids
You can give me your muhfukking graduation ticket right now
You will not walk across that stage, you won’t slide across that stage
Muhfukka can’t pull you across that stage Kanye
Who told you, see, I told you to do something uplifting
I’m trynna get you out here with these white people and this how you gone do me?
You know what? You’s a nikka
And I don’t mean that in no nice way
Had little kids sing about the shyt, the joke’s on you
You throw your muhfukkin’ hands in the air, and wave good-bye to everybody
Cause you getting the fukk out of this campus
Muhfukka what you gone do now?
I’m no longer confused, but don’t tell anybody.
I’m about to break the rules
But don’t tell anybody.
(“Graduation Day”)
In 2012 Kanye West introduced most of the world to Chief Keef, via the G.O.O.D. Music remix of Keef’s local hit “I Don’t Like.” (I know, I know, you knew about Keef before Kanye, but most of America can’t touch your impeccable blog game.) This was something of a confusing move at the time, at least for me; the remix wasn’t an improvement by any means, and it had been a while since Kanye had shown significant interest in preserving his Chicago affiliations, but there he was, shouting out all the local rappers, putting on a 17-year-old kid from one of the most fukked up neighborhoods in the country. But I know why Kanye did the remix now (and I think he knows he didn’t improve upon the original either). He needed to confront white America with what they presumed at the time was their worst nightmare: a young black male who grew up in hell and no longer gave a single fukk, who used unfamiliar words and rapped about guns and money and drugs. You know, rapper stuff. (NOTE: When I say “white America” please know I am not being all-inclusive. Like, fukk, I’m white, I get that there are many white people who fully support and understand the racial and socio-political issues at hand here, and that I am being reductive by dichotomizing it into simply “black” vs “white” to begin with. Consider it shorthand for the type of non-black American unconcerned by or complicit in the perpetuation of these issues.)
In reality though, Chief Keef isn’t white America’s worst nightmare. Because while he scares the living shyt out of them in person, he fits neatly into the trope that many racist white Americans need young black men to fit into: violent, uneducated, aimless. They expect this kind of character, and in turn know how to strip him of his humanity, dismiss him, and avoid him.
Kanye West is white America’s worst nightmare. Because as much as one may attempt to dismiss him—by calling him an a$$hole or classless or deranged or various other adjectives that fill the comment sections of literally every article about him—you still have to turn on your regularly scheduled late night comedy program and stare him in the face. You can’t avoid Kanye. He’s made very sure of that.
I’m not going to get too deep into breaking down the messages in “New Slaves” and “Black Skinhead”; these articles have done a good job of that already:
The truth in Kanye’s anti-prison rap - Salon.com The politics behind Kanye West's 'New Slaves' - The Week CCA Letters Reveal Private Prison Industry's Tactics I’d rather respond to the overwhelming criticisms that have already emerged in response to his premiere of the songs, “New Slaves” in particular, this weekend. Most of these criticisms fall into three categories: He’s A Hypocrite, This Isn’t New, and He Wants Attention.
Lost in translation with a whole fukking nation
They said I was the abomination of Obama’s nation
Well that’s a pretty bad way to start a conversation
(“Power”)
This is the easiest and most obvious way to attempt to dismantle the messages in “New Slaves.” “But how can a millionaire who just impregnated his millionaire girlfriend critique a culture of conspicuous consumption in which he participates?” Let’s get the Kim thing out of the way from the start, considering its total irrelevance (I’m going to quote David Turner’s tweet from yesterday here: “If You Use Kim Kardashian To Dismiss Kanye’s Music STOP AND LOOK AT HOW YOU EVALUATE MUSIC AND PROBABLY JUST STOP DOING IT ALL TOGETHER”). Most of the bitterness and accusations of the so-called hypocrisy of Kanye’s relationship with Kim seem eerily compatible with the lyrics of “Black Skinhead”: “Enter the kingdom/ But watch who you bring home/ They see a black man with a white woman/ At the top floor they gone come to kill King Kong.” Furthermore, since when is it acceptable to judge an artist on the merit of who they love? With what kind of partner would you feel comfortable seeing Kanye? Regardless, it doesn’t belong in this discussion.
Questioning why a rich black man has a right to express anger at the plight of less rich black people is essentially asking, “Well, you’re gonna be okay, so what’s the problem?” Kanye’s wealth and participation in consumerist culture (by selling records and concert tickets and having a clothing line, as though he couldn’t possibly be doing these things as a multi-genre artist and restless creative, but instead is surely just trying to cash out—because he totally needs that extra Air Yeezy dough) cheapens his message to certain critics. This is because they are approaching the hyper-consumerist culture Kanye references when he says “What you want a Bentley, fur coat and diamond chain?/ All you blacks want all the same things” as a force that is very bad, certainly; but not as a force that has enslaved them, personally, into a permanent underclass and then gone on to laugh at them for accepting the ideals and signifiers of this culture.
Kanye has transcended the class that is bearing the brunt of the issues at hand in “New Slaves”, and thus is expected to gratefully shut the fukk up and let it slide (“throw him some Maybach keys/ fukk it, c’est la vie”). He now belongs to the same social class that has essentially trapped his people, via the “DEA teamed up with the CCA” compounded with “broke nikka racism vs rich nikka racism.” Kanye is not a “new slave” in the same sense as the victims of the prison industrial complex, but he is still trapped in a world that expects him to not only be complicit with the struggle of his people, but to be appreciative that he is not one of them. And on top of all that, while he gets to exist in the world of the 1%, having the money and signifiers of success still aren’t enough to make his (white) 1% peers actually even respect him. Here is where Kanye’s most misunderstood quality is of great significance: for all the talk of his inflated ego (a good deal of which is accurate), Kanye hates himself more than he loves himself, and his self-loathing has only grown as he has accumulated wealth—the very thing he’d once been deluded into believing would be the answer to everything. When “Power” was released as a single in 2010, I don’t think too many people (myself included) saw the line “No one man should have all this power” as much more than another grandiose rap boast. In fact, he was being literal.
And for as miserable as his wealth has made him by this point (see “Hit the mall, pick up some Gucci/ Now ain’t nothing new but your shoes” from 2011’s “Murder to Excellence”), he anticipated this back in 2003 in the “College Dropout” days. Despite being more narratively framed and mildly worded, “All Falls Down” is very thematically similar to “New Slaves” a decade prior: “Shine because they hate us/ Floss cause we the greatest/ We tryna buy back our 40 acres,” and yet—and yet!—after you succeed in buying back those 40 acres, “Even if you in a Benz you still a nikka in a coupe,” “Because they made us hate ourself and love they wealth,” “And the white man get paid off of all of that.” Sounds pretty familiar—yes, gasp! in the “good old days” before he “sold out” and “lost touch with himself” Kanye was talking about the same things! Not to mention it acknowledges and does away with accusations of hypocrisy on its own: “I ain’t even gon act holier than thou/ Cause fukk it, I went to Jacob with 25 thou…” Like, duh guys, he’s painfully aware that he’s part of the problem. He hates himself for it. He’s still trapped in it. And now he’s going to try and find a way out.
Face it, Jerome get more time than Brandon
And at the airport they check all through my bag
And tell me that it’s random
But, we stay winnin
(“Gorgeous”)
dumb ass nikkas I swear lol
