Rafael Montes Barrera 2/19 Week 12 - The Power of Downfall: Kanye West to Ye
The unreleased cover art for Kanye West's "Never See Me Again" (2009-2010) via Genius Lyrics
In the past three weeks, Ye (Kanye West) has arguably done more to damage his perception and influence than he has done over the course of his career. I would go so far as to say he found ways to eradicate whatever hope fans had for him and his well-being—both in his morality and health. As a former large fan of Kanye West myself, I have decided to change my rhetoric today in order to show more of my perspective.
Starting around the eighth of February, Ye decided to post a flurry of impulsive tweets about several sensitive topics and figures. These tweets
were ingrained with antisemitism, racism, hate speech, bigotry, and borderline ableism. Among the tweets met with the most backlash, Ye
offensively tweeted in defense of and in admiration of publicly known figures such as Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs—an alleged abuser and rapist in his 2024 indictment and detainment at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a prison holding several other
already charged offenders of similar crimes.
The tweets come at a time of exigence for his merch line created by Ye as well. Over the course of late 2024 around the time of his Vultures 1
album release, Ye made a successful attempt to seemingly rekindle his image and net worth after the backlash he received for his first time of
publicly identifying as a “Nazi” on several occasions. The effort and productivity instilled hope and promise for fans of Ye like myself.
However, his merch line would be compromised when Ye himself decided to produce Diddy shirts before replacing all of his catalog with shirts
containing antisemitic insignia, prompting Shopify to suspend the Shopify YZY site.
Some of the most hope from us Ye fans came when Ye finally emerged from his Tokyo estate after a long hiatus, looking in shape and healthier than he did proceeding the release of Vultures 1 and several other appearances around the time he advocated for the use of Nitrous Oxide. It raised hope for Ye at the very least putting less significance on past political sentiments in advocacy of his “passion” for music.
Now, Ye has rendered almost all of this useless—arguably even all of it. His recent sentiments on Twitter also present a pattern.
Demonstrated even in the year of 2016, Kanye West utilized controversial lyrics relating to Taylor Swift and the 2009 VMAs. These lyrics sparked controversy that gave more press and sales to the album. The action and revealed nature around his tweets, to me,
are nothing short of immature and cheap; his strategy blatantly exploits loopholes to gain sales rather than putting solely on his music.
The outlook for Ye fans in 2025 is grim. I personally find myself in a state of conflict. Kanye’s music was my favorite for a reason.
It contained a great deal of what I ever listened to and found motivation from. I find myself having trouble even separating art from the artist
due to his music’s reminder of his current situation. Instead, I’m convinced now—all that remained of Kanye West is gone, and all that remains
is Ye. There is no hope anymore for him.
As an image for today, I felt Kanye West's "Never See Me Again" (2009-2010) was fitting. As a song that was fortunately never released or
finished, the song is the culmination of Kanye's thoughts of suicide and depression that he felt around the release of
"My Beautiful Dark twisted Fantasy." it represents what Kanye would have released had he died. And since Kanye is gone, I felt it
fitting to listen to as the story of Kanye West and Ye comes full circle.
Hey Rafael, your perspective on Ye’s downfall is especially unique since you have seen him through different stages in his transformation from Kanye to Ye. I did not know that Ye defended Diddy in his flurry of racist and inappropriate tweets since Kanye had previously denounced Diddy’s parties. I agree that Ye is only tweeting outrageous comments to garner public attention to his newest album. This strategy is, like you said, completely degenerate since it detracts from the quality of his music. After reading your perspective, I realize that Ye fans are completely different from Kanye fans since Kanye and Ye are polar opposites. Kanye put his heart and soul into music creation, whereas Ye uses AI and deep fakes to produce music. The main differentiator between Kanye and Ye fans is that Kanye fans appreciate music and reinforce positive attitudes towards music, while Ye fans fuel Ye’s controversial and inhumane comments and do not care about music as much. Thanks for sharing Rafael!
ReplyDeleteHi Rafael! Your blog post was really interesting this week, and I really liked reading about your perspective on Kanye West, especially since you’ve probably done a lot of research on him considering he’s your POAS. Before reading your blog, I only knew Ye as a popular rapper, and I never expected him to be so insensitive and controversial. I genuinely don’t understand how people choose to ruin their career by publicly making these harmful statements even when they know that they’ll only be getting bad press. It seems so stupid to see these types of individuals try anything they can in order to gain greater power, and even from just your descriptions of him in this blog, I feel like I can definitely agree that his attempts to gain sales by making offensive comments is extremely immature.
ReplyDeleteI think that you also do an amazing job at showing how an artist’s actions have a large impact on their audience and their community, where when they make poor decisions such as Ye, their fans are definitely harmed as well, especially if they continue to express their admiration for that artist’s work. It must be difficult for you to continue to support Kanye's career and music during this situation and I wonder just how many of his previous fans feel the same way. Regarding your statement about having trouble separating the art from the artist, do you think that you will continue to listen to his music? Or if you’ve stopped, have you found other artists to listen to?