If you’ve seen a headline about Kanye West in the last several weeks, I bet the headline included the word “rant.” West’s passion on his BBC Radio interview with Zane Lowe have spurred parodies like Jimmy Kimmel’s skit making fun of the new Kardashian dad. Just to fuel the fire, West’s Twitter reaction and follow-up interview on Kimmel’s talk show have spun around the media sphere so fast we’re dizzy. The irony is that these interviews were actually thought-provoking, considerate, and sincere. Both interviews included a discussion about professionals in the fashion industry shooting down West’s ideas because they did not think he belonged in that particular creative realm. Both showed his frustration for being written off as arrogant when he is trying to be honest with himself and reach his fullest potential. Both showed a side of Kanye that is typically not conveyed by tweets like “I love me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” or “YOUR FACE LOOKS CRAZY… IS THAT FUNNY? … OR IF I HAD A KID SAY IT WOULD IT BE FUNNY???” Instead, during these interviews he said CRAZY, angry, outrageous things like “I’ve got ideas that can mean something if I can put the proper production around them,” and “I understand paparazzi, I understand you need to get money; it’s hard out there, but let’s have respect for each other.”
Sound like rants to you?
I’m not trying to say that I think Kanye West is modest, selfless or blameless; he certainly makes it more difficult for himself to be taken seriously when he yells things like “I AM THE BIGGEST ROCKSTAR IN THE WORLD.” However, I think it’s important to recognize the rhetoric used in his media coverage and how it may affect West’s projected “crazy arrogant” persona.
The nice thing about calling someone crazy is that it allows us to disregard his or her opinions and ideas. This is not necessarily a horrible practice – there are some mentally unstable people whose ideas I would not trust on account of falsity or misleading character. However, for an artist who has won 21 Grammys, in addition to 103 other music awards (and been nominated for 387 others), been named one of the Top Ten Producers of the Decade by Billboard, and been crowned MTV Man of the Year, there is no reason to believe Kanye West is anything other than talented. Most people who have listened to any of his albums could probably argue that at least one of them is among the best Hip Hop/Rap albums of the 21st century.
When people brush off West’s ideas in interviews as “rants” or as “insane,” they entirely disregard what he is trying to convey. The BBC interviews focus on the implicit systematic classism in the fashion industry and the difficulty for a black man to break into a world in which he is interested because he is seen as an outsider. By name-calling West and ignoring the content of his opinions, media outlets reinforce the obstacles against which he is fighting. I believe he deserves more consideration than that; as he said himself: “If you know an artist, there is only one thing you can say when you see them, two words: ‘Thank you.’ We dedicate our entire life to making our current time in civilization better, to adding something to the culture.”
So thank you, Kanye, I wish you the best of luck.
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