West of Crazytown

How how, how, how can you convince people that the most popular and most influential recording "artist" of our time is a total fraud?  For years, people who dared to dismiss Kanye West as an idiot, a poser, and a proprietor of computerized noise - mostly white male musicians who play real instruments -  were dismissed themselves as being racist and elitist, and it became apparent that, given that rap had replaced every other form of music on the record charts, bitching about Kanye was a waste of breath.  The only person who was going to do Kanye in was Kanye himself, and it would be not for exposing himself a a fraud but for exposing himself as something else that no one can tolerate, like getting Al Capone on tax evasion instead of murder.   

And so it was that Kanye did himself in by declaring his intent to go "Death Con 3" on the Jews on his Twitter feed, which was then closed down.

He also turns out to be an admirer of Adolf Hitler and he thought Hitler did great things for the German people. That's as may be, Volkswagen isn't likely to make him a spokesperson.

Quite the opposite, in fact.  Every company and brand West has been professionally associated with - Adidas (a German company), Balenciaga, and Vogue - has severed ties with him. And so has Def Jam Recordings, his record label. 

You will note that the other companies, however, are all connected to fashion, which is very telling - not of Kanye's prejudices but of rap's trendiness.  West has greatly involved himself with fashion interests to license his own merchandise and to design his own clothing, paying so much attention to his fashion work that it's a wonder he finds the time to make records (until you realize that what he mostly does is turn on a synthesizer or an autotuner and wigs out).  This use of popular music as a meaningless vehicle to promote style and titillation that started with MTV, continued with Madonna (who has appeared on the covers of fashion magazines as much as if not more than on the cover of music magazines), and exploded with hip-hop and with rap stars' clothing lines shows how popular music isn't about the music itself and hasn't been for a long time.  It's all about fashion.

For proof, consider Def Jam Recordings.

As for his anti-Semitism, West is the typical Gentile conspiracy theorist who thinks the Jews are out to exploit black people for their own personal gains and that they control the workings of government with their stupendous wealth.  "You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda," West told American Jews in 2013.  At the time, folks didn't seem to notice, maybe because they were getting more steamed over his similarly provocative statement that rap was the new rock and roll, which came out at the same time.

Sadly, West's comments about Jews won't have a detrimental effect on rap per se, nor will it have a detrimental effect on his artistic reputation any more than Van Morrison's fight against COVID restrictions will have a detrimental effect on his.  (Graham Nash on Van Morrison: "I love his music and I love his records, but I don't like him as a person very much.")  Pop critics too afraid to admit that rap sucks who would rather bash bands like Nickelback have seen to that.  But his career going forward is pretty much toast.  And his social media presence has been severely curtailed, and he won't be able to say anything on Facebook or Instagram.

He will be able to tweet again, though.  Now that Elon Musk, a friend of West's, has completed his purchase of Twitter (a topic I'll get to later), he's restored West's Twitter account.