Music Thoughts : Should Kanye’s Public Outbursts Effect Your Views on his Music ?

Rj Knight | 7 years ago | No comments yet | Tags: Absolute Zero, Hip-Hop, Kanye West. Music, Music Thoughts

With Kanye West constantly making incidents, being arrogant, and increasingly making political messages, should we separate these things from how we view his music? Kanye West‘s style of Hip-hop has always been incredibly personal. He plays off the fact that you are familiar with his life, to give his lyrics context. Kanye often uses an under dog narrative, but the high levels of arrogance he has been displaying really hurts that message in his songs. When you take a moment and compare his song lyrics, to the facts of what we know happened in all these events, it can change the way you view his music.

I understand and can empathize with Kanye West‘s original story. Kanye came into rap as an underdog and worked his way to the top. From everything we can tell, Kanye didn’t have too many resources and this made it easy to get behind him and root for him.

The problem is now that Kanye is rich he is still acting like an underdog. His outbursts about being underestimated don’t seem to make sense.He is reaching into areas like fashion which it doesn’t appear that he has put as much work into. Its clear he put alot of work into his music but in fashion he is expecting to start at the top. This made a lot more sense in music and many people have given him his dues for his musical talents. When I look at these situations, Kanye West seems to be saying that his celebrity justifies him skipping ahead of other people who are working their whole lives to make it in fashion.

When you compare the reality of Kanye‘s outbursts and situations it make me question the relatability of his current music. It also makes me question his old music as well though. Were people really underestimating Kanye as a producer and an emcee. or did he just expect to shoot to the top of Hip-hop immediately. Maybe Kanye has a “this world is against me” mentality no matter how much is going for him. Kanye has millions of dollars, a huge brand, and has access to capital if he wants to do anything he can do it. This has to affect your view of his music.

These outburst hurt my relatability with Kanye. The music that I love makes connections with me. With the way Kanye connects his personal life with his music its going to be harder to separate the two going into the future.