Kanye Being Kanye

In this article, Peter and Joshua detail the weird and controversial history of Kanye/YE.

Kanye: The man of the west

By Peter Easterwood and Joshua Miranda

Kanye West, aka YE, is a man and figure known by many. He has produced several top hits, a total of 24 Grammy awards, and 160 million records sold. Yet the controversies he has involved himself in have not reflected these achievements. The most recent issues have presented him as a racist and a lover of Hitler. West has said that “Most people have redeeming qualities, especially Hitler”, and was also caught wearing an executioner hood at a concert that looked scarily similar to the hood of a Klan member. Many find him hard to hate artistically, but still primarily dislike him for his recent statements, which shines the light on the question of if he is a racist or just loud-mouthed. However, his music is still noted as legendary in the eyes of many, blinding them from the form of hatred he has been spreading.

His tarnished legacy can not be forgotten as an artist, going on a monumental five-album run, spanning from The College Dropout to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Mr. West was on top of the world after MBDTF, arguably one of the greatest rap albums of all time. On AOTY (a website that collects reviews from “professional” critics and regular people), My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy received a 91/100 in “Critic Score” with a total of 45 ratings, while also receiving an 89/100 in “User Score” with a total of 16k ratings. Let us not forget the Taylor Swift MTV mishap in 2009, where Kanye belligerently went on stage, stole the mic from T Swizzle, and yelled with a drunken slur, "If God ain’t want me to run on stage and say Beyoncé had the best video, he wouldn't have sat me in the front row." This whole outburst was in protest of T Swiss getting “Best Female Video” for her song “You Belong With Me” over Beyonce’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”. This massive implosion in public would not be the last for East, as his music career and personal life would soon consistently clash into one weird, messy collage. 

Photo from: Wikimedia Commons

West’s life seems to have been an up-and-down roller coaster, fighting to stay on top while simultaneously falling down the social hierarchy. It all started in 2004 with the “Best New Artist” award ceremony, where Kanye (after not winning) allegedly stormed out of the AMAs, declaring that he should have won. According to CapitalXtra (a part of the global radio, one of the largest commercial radio groups), Mista West shouted, “I was the best new artist this year.” This single occurrence started his long reign as the leader of musical controversies, setting him up as one of the most egotistical artists. This behavior has only escalated since then and, at the VMAS in 2009, he stormed onto the stage drunk and bewildered, where Taylor Swift was giving her acceptance speech for the “Best Female Video” award. West infamously interrupted her speech, said he would let her finish, and ranted about how Beyonce deserved the “Best Female Video of the Year” award. It ended with the president at the time, Barack Obama calling him a “Jacka**”. 

Photo from: Flickr

Controversy must drive Mr. West to release masterpieces, because on Nov. 22, 2010, he would release arguably his greatest album of all time, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Kanye Western would then collaborate with his close friend Jay-Z to create a collab album with him titled Watch the Throne. He seemingly changed after the VMAs, staying out of any controversy from 2010-2013 until the release of Yeezus activated something in his brain. While Yeezus was controversial in the sense of music (with a messier production and loud 808s), West would also participate in performing at the wedding of the president of Kazakhstan’s grandson. Although it seems random to bring it up, the president Nursultan Nazarbayev ran Kazakhstan with a dictatorship type mentality. He shunned anyone who spoke against him, giving no one the right to speak freely, whilst the police and regular citizens/workers were seen violently brawling with each other. To Kanye West, this seemed unimportant. Rather than going the moral route and deferring the idea of performing for a practical dictator, he took three million dollars and went through with the idea, according to TMZ and The Guardian. Maybe the years between 2009 and 2013 are a sign that West is maturing and that this little slip-up for a paycheck is the end of his reign on top of the most controversial artists of our generation.

If only that were true.

Two years later, Kanye West would bring back his signature move at the Grammy Awards, running on the stage when Beck won “Album of the Year” and giving a “warm-hearted” speech about how Beyonce (again) should have won this award against this “unartistic” man. Not even a year later, before the release of his seventh studio album The Life of Pablo, on Feb. 9, 2016, Kim K’s husband at the time tweeted “BILL COSBY INNOCENT!!!!!!!!!!” It does not need to be expressed that what West tweeted was controversial, but his loud mouth seemingly has a mind of its own and has no cure to shut it up. To even the playing field regarding whether his tweets and public outbursts should hurt his legacy, he would release The Life of Pablo on Feb. 14, another experimental album collabing with multiple artists like Frank Ocean, Ty Dolla $ign (this name will pop up again), Chris Brown (yikes), and others. Of course, the “Bill Cosby” tweet would not be the last time his ivory tower would get wounded again from his actions.

In 2018, he had a scheduled interview with TMZ that ended in a horrendous comment based on ignorance. West stated, “You hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years? That sounds like a choice, like, you was there for 400 years and there’s all of y’all?” Of course, this incident sturred backlash for the grand artist, which made Ye apologize about two months later after an unsuccessful explanation about how the statement was said to free the mind and that we, as humans, need to change. Afterward, West dealt with some legal issues with the song “Ultralight Beam”. In 2019, Sir West sampled a clip of a four-year-old Natalie Green praying and talking about God. West would then be sued by Green's adoptive parents, ending with Mr. West settling. Eventually, through a separation from Kim Kardashian in 2021, a feud between Ye and Pete Davidson arose, the “Hollywood Homie Hopper”. The peak of this feud was during West’s tracks “Eazy” and “City of God”, where Kanye West dissed Davidson with lines like, “God saved me from that crash just so I could beat Pete Davidsons a**”. The worst of it is the music videos, which feature an animated Pete getting kidnapped, mutilated, and buried alive. This roller coaster of a feud made multiple headlines throughout the country, most notably People Magazine and US Magazine. Taylor Swift’s arch-nemesis would continue down this slippery slope, giving everyone on Earth front-row seats to watch this sad fall from supposed grace.

Photo from: Vulture

On Feb. 17, 2022, YE announced his eleventh studio album, Donda 2, the idea being an add-on to the album before Donda. The weirdest part of its release, however, is that people could only listen to it through his $200 “Donda Stem Player”, making the album practically cost $200. During his long-awaited “Yeezy Season 9” fashion show, Kanye West would be seen in the crowd wearing a t-shirt that reads “White Lives Matter” on the back; tagging along with him was the very likable character Candace Owens. Mr. Kanye West would then defend what he did in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox, saying, “ I thought the shirt was a funny shirt. I thought the idea of wearing it was funny. And I said, ‘Dad, why do you think it’s funny? And he said, ‘Just a black man stating the obvious.” To add to not only being a racist, Kanye West would then go on an antisemitic spree of remarks, blaming Jewish people for his downfall. On cut pieces of the interview with Tucker Carlson, YEtler would reveal his many conspiracy theories on how the Jewish community controlled the media and that they are the ones that have caused this “unfair” negative vision of him. Surprisingly, the “White Lives Matter Enthusiast” Kanye West would go on a hiatus, disappearing from the face of the Earth for a couple of months. Possibly, this was the time for him to rebuild all the bridges he burnt and come back strong.

Photo from: Wikimedia Commons

That would be an absolute lie. 

Kanye West and his new wife (who eerily looks similar to Kim K), Bianca Censori, would get caught doing it on a boat in Venice, Italy. The pair is an odd one, with Censori seen dressed up in pretty, revealing outfits that no one else would ever want to wear out. It seemed almost impossible for “God” (in his eyes) to even come close to releasing a new album, let alone a new song. In an earth-shattering change of events, Ty Dolla $ign and YE would announce on Dec. 12, 2023, their collaboration album, Vultures. Sadly, in obvious YE fashion, the album has gone through multiple delays after releasing two meh singles his fans are left hanging til further notice or until YE has another blow-up again. 

Mr. West has proved time and time again that this sought-after growth people want to see from him will never happen. His career started with controversy at the AMAs in 2004 and has continued throughout the 2020s. Anyone can blame all these issues on his bipolar disorder but, at some point, Kanye West had to have known that seeking help would minimize these outbursts, and help him overall. Hopefully, by the grace of god, Mr. East will have a random change of heart, rebuild the bridges he burnt, and will finally release Vultures.