Mason Godek
The room is buzzing with media and supporters as the presidential candidate takes the stage. The stage is cascaded by a contrasting blue that makes every person on the stage reflect importance. The candidate is wearing a wood colored bullet proof vest with the word “Security” in all white lettering below the neck cutoff of the vest. The crowd is starting to quiet down as the Candidate speaks. The candidate was already known for his controversial history for these events.
This candidate of importance is none other than Kanye West.
Mr. West takes the stage with swagger chatting with his supporters up front and his security team as well. For about the first twenty minutes of his speech Mr. West invited his supporters to the stage to express the issues they would like him to represent with varying issues ranging from education, abortion to racial injustices.
Until Mr. West starts to lose his cool in a transition from complete comedian/politician combination to a hysteric individual who quickly breaks down into crying.
“My mom saved my life. There would have been no Kanye West. Because my dad was too busy.” The crowd grew quiet as Mr. West softly cried to himself explaining his recent past with abortion and how his father seeked his abortion.
Kanye West announced his run for president in the 2020 election around July 4th, 2020. Following the announcement Kanye West held a supporter rally in Charleston, South Carolina where he aimed to gain or listen to his supporters about the issues they sought for him to represent. His support however began to fade after the rally was held with multiple videos of controversy emerging around the internet.
“Well, Harriet Tubman never actually freed the slaves, she just had the slaves go work for other white people,” was among the many controversial quotes taken from this speech.
Mr. West has been a topic of discussion the second he took the world stage. I never followed the scrutiny Mr. West faced as I was more of another fan who looked for only his next project to drop. Not until recently did I question his media presence as his influence is nevertheless interesting with several news headlines critiquing his actions at any given time. I began to discover the social media personality that Mr. West had begun to build from the start of his career and see if this affected my take on his trend setting songwriting and creation.
Kanye’s reign began prior to my listening endeavors as he was discovered by my younger self around 2009 when he previously dropped two of his most famous albums, Graduation and 808’s and Heartbreaks. Kanye West was introduced to me by my sister who is about nine years older than me so her music taste was nevertheless trendy at the time. From this very moment I was introduced to not only West’s genius production of music but so many blends of soul, R&B, jazz and many more genres of music that West incorporated into his eccentric, vibe riddled beats. His music shaped my taste to this very day.
Kanye West from then has completely taken off with a total of twenty one Grammy awards with thirteen studio albums to date. Mr. West has amassed over 1.5 billion dollars in his time as a rap mogul with an entire shoe and clothing company that plays a large part in his enormous amount of wealth.
However, apart from being one of the world’s biggest rap moguls and fashion moguls, Kanye is still one of the most critiqued celebrities found in the media. Notably, Mr. West’ first controversial moment on the scene is from a Hurricane Katrina relief concert. Mr. West is with fellow celebrity Mike Myers where the two were supposed to be discussing the plan of action and situation of the massive Hurricane. West took the opportunity to go off script and say, “Geogre Bush doesn't care about black people.” Mr. West then received his first form of media criticism.
Following the incident, his list of controversies kept growing to this day. With instances such as him posing for a photo shoot for Rolling Stone magazine where he is seen wearing a crown of thorns to represent his similarities to Jesus. The media interpreted this as a move of ego on his part.
Additionally, Kanye West also took the stage at the 2009 MTV Music Video Awards where he rushed the stage after Taylor Swift received the award for best female video. He then proceeded to rush the stage to say, “I'm sorry, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time!"
My initial response to reading throughout most of these controversial moments Kanye West has had was more confusing than anything. I struggled to see any of the behavior to be believable just based off of the lyrics he uses in his music. Many of his lyrics in earlier albums consisted of progressive lyrics discussing the racial injustices the black community have gone through and how the America we live in is biased towards corporations. Sure the occasional rapper will flaunt their jewelry, money, and among other things. However, Kanye West always seemed to rap with purpose in many of his songs compared to different rappers. So the initial reaction of seeing this bugged me quite a bit.
It was almost as if his mood while making music versus that of being in the spotlight was more calming for him. That is when I discovered something about Mr. West that completely changed my view of him, his music, and the way people portray him.
Around 2016 Mr. West was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder by definition is disorder where an individual experiences episodes of emotional manic highs and dangerous emotional lows that can hinder one’s mind if not properly treated. Treatments may include therapy or medication.
Examples of Kanye West’s bipolar disorder can be attributed to several incoherent tweets that can be found throughout his twitter history. In addition, we can see that in the speech he gave in South Carolina can be linked to his disorder as throughout the speech he experiences symptoms and several emotional highs and lows.
What changed my confusion to ultimately a satisfied consensus was this knowledge of his bipolar disorder. The disorder can be seen throughout the discography of his earlier albums to his later albums.
Albums such as The College Dropout, Late Registration, and Graduation all have sounds of hype, off the wall beats with jazzy undertones that bring forth a soothing of the soul. They convey a more focused and driven Kanye West that ultimately looks for progessive change.
Although if we advance forward after Kanye West’s many controversies throughout the late 2000’s into the early 2010’s we get a different style of rap from the certified hitmaker.
These later albums into the 2010’s convey a more lost sound where Kanye West almost takes a look at his controversies and tries to explain his reasoning. He also gives off the vibe that he could care less about the media in some of his songs and almost just wants to add fuel to the fire he already started with these news outlets. The sounds of these songs are riddled with hard hitting drums, vocals, lacking the earlier soft, ear soothing jazzy beats that he originally used.
This use of drums and angry, irate beats can only explain Kanye West’s frustration with perhaps the world or himself. I do not necessarily agree with everything he says but I also feel the media portrays him in a negative way when he clearly needs help. If you just follow the music and lyrics he uses, especially on albums like Donda or The Life of Pablo (which does bring back forth some soul) you can see a clear frustration with his personal life and the way he is portrayed.
I feel as though the media needs to take what he says and does with a grain of salt. Mr. West clearly experiences episodes and I feel as though the media fails to recognize such instances leading the narrative to attack him in a way.
Some things I took away from my research/experiment was an entire different look at artists in general. I realized that we glorify these individuals to a point where they almost are not allowed to mess up and we forget that mistakes lie within everyone’s everyday action. In addition, I am going to look at Kanye West’s music in a new light by looking for the emotion in his music to entirely interpret his meaning rather than just considering the surface level of his songs.