The most uncanny thing about kanyes career is seeing himself turn his album narratives from progressive conscious, to semi conscious, to only self aware, to half assed, consciously dealing with problems, to unconsciously ignore those problems and to ultimately abandon all sorts of consciousness in favor of songs of "all vanity and no humanity". Seeing a backpack rapper with a classic conscious album abandon it on all fronts is just reality shattering
Exactly; First album Kanye was entertaining, although mediocre; Second album Kanye is all about "Money is what makes you socially relevant" Third album Kanye and beyond is just him talking about how he is "God's chosen messenger and that buying is horrifically looking shoes will have you walking the path of Jesus"
Seeing Kanye throw his hat in the ring during the Kendrick/Drake beef and then everyone unanimously agreeing to ignore it was one of the funniest things to happen in Hip Hop
On the "delayed brain injury" thing: I have a friend who was horrible jumped, robbed and injured. Both sides of his skull were caved in (the police said he fell, by the way, but that's another, much angrier story) he survived but barley. I can recall a few months after his recovery he seemed fine. His memory was sh!t but besides that I didn't noticed too much difference. Today, roughly 6 years after his brain injury, he's a different person entirely. He doesn't seem even able to laugh or be expressive in any way. He just kinda sits and listens to people. Doesn't seem to have any strong opinions about anything. He was always a Tupac fanatic and I told him I thought Kendrick Lamar was better than Pac, expecting a spirited debate, but he just kinda shrugged. It's sad. Not to mention he was the poster child for charm. He's literally the guy who taught me how to talk to women. The Last we spoke he said how lonely he was and how he envied my nightlife. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. What I'm getting at is delayed reaction to TBI is definitely a thing I've witnessed first hand.
Damn that’s depressing but good youre still rockin with him also gives good insight into a lot of my clients who’ve experienced TBIs prior to meeting me, often much earlier in life. 1 guy I work with is practically paralyzed but with intermittent mobility. His provider & partner claim (medical) marijuana has been a game changer for him, as evidenced by brain scans not just anecdotes or improved mood but that too although he just takes it at night before bed anyways. I’ve had adverse affects from it myself; exacerbated anxiety, paranoia, etc. so I’m typically not an advocate of it for mental health exclusive issues but undeniably effective in TBI, CTE related symptoms including drastic decrease in physical paralysis! hopefully ur friend can find some treatment options that work for him or just gratitude & contentment for life now
I am not an empath, but I could feel your sadness through the screen. I'm so sorry that happened to your friend. That's terrible. And I'm sorry you lost your friend, at least the person he used to be.
It breaks my heart bc I used to really relate to Kanye's eccentricities and struggles. I'm autistic and bipolar and to me Kanye always represented this ideal that even someone who's weird and volatile and misunderstood like me could be successful and accomplish great things. But instead he ends up perpetuating every negative stereotype about people with mental disorders, and making that whole community look bad. (Plus he went from being the first mainstream rapper to speak against homophobia, to allying with political forces that want to make homosexuality a crime.)
Felt this. I've always loved Kanye and when I found out he was bipolar (as I also am) I was so excited until all this stuff happened. His consciousness and everything is gone and the way he's gone literally off his rockers and made bipolar ppl look worse hurts. And to realize he doesn't even like women when he's made songs about his mom and grandma, his daughter, and BOUND 2 is really.... depressing.
@@michaelturley8222 Was referring to his meeting with the President of Uganda in 2018, a nation where homosexuality can be punished up to the death penalty. US pastors such as Scott Lively sponsored the Uganda anti-gay laws and provided international funding
One of my big takeaways from jeen-yuhs was the impact of his mom's death on him. I think she was a restraining influence on him and able to direct that rebellious energy (saying things he "shouldn't") in healthier directions. I remember watching Hoarders years ago and you'd hear from family members that the person was always messy but that [insert key event] happened, usually the death of a spouse or parent, and then everything came off the rails. I think we've seen something really similar with Kanye. He always had these tendencies and his mom dying was the removal of the guardrails. She was only person who could cut through the "I won't listen to you if you make less money than me" ethos he's crafted. Thanks for the video, insightful as always.
Saying Kanye was never good is like talking about Paul McCartney being a wack musician and completely ignoring his time in the Beatles. Kanye was absolutely musically brilliant with his first three albums even though we knew he had some personal issues. His next two albums were uneven yet he still had some banging tracks on them. But they also came after his mother died, and I think this was the beginning of his downfall.
@@728huey Hey, I never said Kanye was never a good musician - College Dropout and Graduation are favorites of mine. I'm talking about his unchecked mental health and narcissism issues. Adults who say "naughty" things in public are doing it for an audience. When his mom was alive, I think what he said was tempered, somewhat, by performing for her.
@@codyowen5070 adults who say "naughty" things in public and are mentally ill may not be doing it for an audience. And sometimes doing too much for an audience or attention can be a result of mental illness. Doesn't mean you can do whatever without consequence, but it also isn't necessarily the same as someone who is a bit of a jerk and just wants the people around them to think they're cool or funny
@@codyowen5070It’s so interesting to people bring up Kanye’s mother dying as a form of sympathy, but that grace was never extended to Megan the Stallion who else lost her mother as well as her father and grandmother.
As a black girl who grew up in the mostly white suburbs kids like us all have to grow up and get to this point and realize that we are amazing. Let the self hate go. Embrace your culture and you will never feel more powerful or beautiful for real. My self esteem has never been better until I found my group of like cool af weird black girls that liked anime but also classic black staples of the community. We can have it all you know? It makes me sad some people never get to have that realization. You just know they're filled with so much self hate that they have to spew it onto everyone else
I think part of the "George Bush doesn't care about black people" thing that got me is that he seemed to be psyching himself up for it. I don't know, maybe it was because he knew it might go too far but I remember feeling in the moment and years afterwards "holy shit, there's a young black guy just like me who got up and said what I've been wanting to yell for a long time now." It's amazing how far that good will carried him since he really didn't say anything else so radical after that.
He's said a lot but people and the media choose to ignore it all. Even during his slavery rant there was a lot of positive commentary and it all was ignored.
@@KareemDaKing I watched that entire video and I don't remember anything positive from it. I don't think it was as terrible as people made it at the time, but certainly nothing positive.
@@KareemDaKing I mean, maybe you're seeing something I'm not, but at best it's the usual black elite and hotep nonsense dialed up to an 11. And with the company he keeps I think even calling it that is generous.
I remember feeling "anti Black" in high school because I thought I was different from most of the Black people in my all Black community. Back in the 2000s, it wasn't normal for a Black girl to like anime, video games, rock music, Kpop and such. It wasn't until my 30s this became acceptable. Though I always appreciated Black History and Black contributions to art and entertainment, I had in my mind that the "ghetto" types were inferior. This was also fed to me by my relatives. I also hated the violence in my community and neighborhood, in a failing suburb outside of Chicago, and blamed Black people in my neighborhood for their own misfortune. It wasn't until I grew up, traveled a bit, finished college taking history and African American studies, and started working around and in my neighborhood that I realized the greater picture. I started to realize how my neighborhood began to fail (the closure of local steel mills and how Black people were lured to these homes as White people moved out). I began to personally be profiled by police and realized why there was such a mistrust in the police infrastructure. I learned the real definition of racism and how it shaped my perceptions and my families' perceptions from a very early age. Instead of criticizing Black people, I began thinking about ways I could give back in REAL ways. Not just supporting programs without any real depth. I think if I'd gone down a different path, I probably would have ended up like Kanye West or Candace Owens. And that's a scary thought to me right now.
I’m in a similar boat tho probably a little younger than you, and I’m black but not African American. Saw ‘black culture’ as honestly inferior because I severely disliked gangster rap, and hated how our neighbourhood was basically terrorized by these street thugs. I’ve only ever appreciated hip hop as a genre around 10 years ago through Kendrick, J Cole, etc.
31:55 I noticed when he said that line about leaving BW for a yt girl. I noticed when on stage during his political campaign, he declared that he hates BW. I noticed when he gifted Julia, and all her friends designer bags, the only friend in the picture that didn't receive a bag was the black one. People don't care when someone attacks BW until they realize, it starts with BW and extends to all black people.
Truly absorbing this phrase is so important for so many people. Being hurt or traumatized and then expecting other people to be okay with being mistreated and/or expecting those around you to heal you is so common.
Thankfully I became a Kanye Fan before the Donda Rollout and got to experience what Kanye Might have been if he'd gotten atleast 10%of his shit together
@urhomiesapien Kanye West is literally one of the greatest rappers in modern mainstream times. He's lyrically on par with his old self and shows he can adapt to rapping with modern rappers. He's a crazy genius will forever be consistent one of the GOATs.
Psych RN here. I’ve heard you say this on a few occasions, but Bipolar I absolutely can cause someone to adopt beliefs they wouldn’t if they weren’t manic. Kanye is really a textbook case of bipolar and none of his antics surprise me. I meet people every day who have bizarre opinions - often influenced by current events and conspiracies - which resolve with treatment. It is not just a “difficult state of mind to be in” it can seemingly completely alter someone’s personality and judgement. These episodes can last months or years, either because they’re inconsistently treated or untreated or because they have a chronic condition. Recognizing this shouldn’t equal giving him a pass.
As someone with Bipolar Disorder 1 I agree. Mania and psychosis are no joke, you literally are not capable of making ration decisions or understanding the world around you rationally. I have an Aunt who is also bipolar 1 and she hasn't been in touch with reality in decades. It doesn't justify the harmful things he says and does but it does explain it.
The idea of being completely separate from reality frightens me so much, it ruins lives so easily. If I know anyone with bipolar 1, I'm not aware/have never seen them in their rough place, but I am very familiar with schizophrenia. Ime when people have a "break from reality" with schizotypal disorders, there's an important bit of truth under all the out of control pattern matching. Like, you can talk to a person and figure out there's a real thing bothering them - they're just kinda speaking Dr. Bronners language so it's harder to understand. Is bipolar 1 totally different? (Genuine question)
Honestly…I think we all think / know how much mania can distort reality, I think it’s just media savvy to condemn. 10/10 if, and this is a big IF Kanye were to have a massive come to Jesus moment and said “on god, I was tripping ya’ll”, the lines would blur a bit and some leeway would be given.
I agree, I have bipolar disorder and was arrested and institutionalized twice for manic episodes in public. I had many beliefs that I now find so ridiculous, and even problematic! It can change everything about a person! Love the videos tho!!
According to an acquaintance of mine that has BPD, these types of adrenaline inducing behaviors (saying controversial things, shoplifting, doing socially reprehensible stuff in public, using drugs and other harmful stuff) are common with people with BPD. I recommend looking it up because idk the exact reasons of why folks with BPD do negative stuff for adrenaline, but it checks out with other BPD experiences I've heard of in the past.
The abbreviation is BP. BPD stands for borderline personality disorder. BP can be caused by "a chemical imbalance". The chemicals responsible for controlling the brain's functions are called neurotransmitters, that includes noradrenaline, serotonin and dopamine. Dopamine is the "happy hormone". Those with BP can have too much noradrenaline, which causes mania, or can be lacking in dopamine, causing depression. Adrenaline is a close relative of dopamine. BP folks may be instinctively attempting to increase their happy hormones via adrenaline rushes.
As someone with BPD, for me it's lack of impulse control and getting a spike of dopamine. I'm on medication to help with that but the urge is still there
22:18 "he just knows the thing to say that will piss people off and bring him attention." Am I misremembering that you were a teacher before? Because this is so real, and it perfectly fits: Kanye is THAT KID; the one you get every few semesters who just KNOWS how to get at you and derail the classroom. It's ALL about Kanye, and the minute it isn't, he does or says something stupid to make sure it is again.
even the style in his music videos are often just a trend-copy from what was popular at the time, something actually the youtube king captain disillusion pointed out in a small joke in one of his videos back then. now in comparison with ur comment, it just shows that the man only always wants to be in everyones convo and does everything he can to stay relevant in media...i really think him being on his latest right wing rode is just the old way of trying to piss everyone off. and appearantly hes a friggin s.a.-ist too so yea...
12:00 I'd like to add that Kanye much like drake, doesn't truly like women.. he likes the aesthetics and image of women in relation to his social position. He doesn't like women as actual human beings
Yeah… I get the sense that he’s like that as well. His ego can’t be checked by anyone, that’s a very dangerous mindset to be in. I hope he finds inner peace before he self destructs 🙏
Lennon Bowie Ye Page Polanski Weisntein Tons of rappers/producers Tons of film directors/producers The eccence of entertainment industry If you really stand on the moral principle then one is left with nothing to watch or listen to.
I was listening to Kanye's newest album, Vultures (or something), and there was one line which really shocked me. He genuinely said: "...gotta make 'em drink the urine. Now I'm Ye Kelly bitch, Ye Cosby bitch, Puff Daddy rich, Me Too rich..." It seemed like such an intrusive thought to put on record, or perhaps a confession? He LITERALLY compared himself to 3 notorious pedophiles. Shocks me that more people didn't catch that one. That whole song btw (Carnival) was so overly sexual it seemed manic.
Cosby wasn't a Pedo, he was an abuser. Diddy isn't being investigated for Pedophila, again sexual abuse, trafficking. Kelly is the one who was found guilty of sex with minors. Kelly also wasn't a Pedo. He was charged and found guilty of Epohephila. A Pedo is interested in kids/pre teens. The other two black celebs weren't involved with minors. Thinking anybody accused of being an abuser is having sex with kids. That's revealing. Why does your subconscious come up with pedo when it hears sexual abuse, ra*e or trafficking? A Freudian slip from an individual who IS abusing kids hence why you relate any abuse with the one you engage in. Like how in the 'Heart part 6' Drake said Epstein [an abuser of underage girls]. That was a Freudian slip. Kendrick said he should locked up with Weinstein [ an abuser of women] Calling Carnival overly sexual is laughable considering the content of Hip Hop songs these days. Might be time for some self reflection. We often see in others what we are guilty of because our brain is condition to interpret others actions/situations/words based on our personal life experiences. Example , a kid who gets a smack whenever they break something will always flinch whenever they break something infront of an adult because they are expecting a smack. To the kids brain, breaking things = a smack. Anyway enough Psychoanalysis for one day.
13:52 I believe one can be socially aware and choose to date white women. However, the issue arises when a Black man or woman flaunts their white partner as if they are a trophy from a carnival. This not only appears frivolous to us but also diminishes the dignity of that individual in the process.
That's fascinating considering if he where with a black women and did the same thing you would probably be congratulating him and if not u someone else in the community would have I find it funny how people consider themselves conscious but then get offended when someone who loves someone else from a different place and or culture is expressing it in the public eye people start to feel away. Kanye never said oh I love white women and f black women and I don't think we as a community should be telling people how to express their love if it's not affecting or hurting anyone else. Except your group conscience ego but I noticed this trend with black men who talk good about the white women there with ppl legit act like the man said I don't like blk women instantly disallowing a lot of black men from talking about black issues due to who they happen to be with 🙄 u can't call it self conscious and be bothered by that, specifically other aspects of Kanye are a lot more troubling than his dating history and lack there of, of black women in his past this is like when people focus on Joe biden's gaffs instead of looking at the policies he's actually putting out there.
I was in 4th grade when “Get Well Soon” came out. . I got a full ride to a huge university. Graduated. I honestly attribute some of that to College Dropout, Lupe Fiasco, The Cosby Show, and The College Center on BET hosted by Julissa. Thanks Kanye.
I was older and I think thats why I never bought his act. I liked some of his music fo sho. But disliked his persona and never saw him as deep or conscious the way younger ppl did
28:36 as a different black or a nerdy black girl it does take work not to be anti black. It’s really depends on how your parents speak about other black people and finding black friends with your interests, it makes you feel less ostracized.
@jessinthecomments What black people don’t talk about, or aren’t cognizant of, or don’t have the words to express & certainly don’t teach our children is that that “You Can Only Be ONE thing/set of things, You’re Not Being Black Enough” mentality that a lot of us caught from black peers is a *leave-over* from Slavery & Jim Crow. When we were only allowed very limited existences, opportunities & lanes for expression. On a micro level this is expressed as “You don’t see a lot of black skydivers, Olympic swimmers, golfers.” The reason being we did not have the means, the allowance of opportunity &/or the shepherding to those avenues. So when we develop resentment at Other Black People for maybe giving us a hard time for having divergent interests it is especially damaging. Because what really are upset about is the legacy of how we were pigeon-holed and typecast by a sabotaging system. We are just conned into enmity for what’s out in front of our eyes rather than the underlying root. We see this type of thing when we sometimes have friction with the Asian community & their social standing. When ofc the Model Minority archetype was fabricated by white folks to use Asians as anti-blackcraft missiles. And again, we see this lack of cognizance or appropriate words or just disinterest/misunderstanding the need to educate by black parents raising mixed-race/light skinned children. Who are not explaining to them how the world treats them in relation to full/dark blacks people & where resentment can stem from. Thus, like the different black/black nerd you describe, they become disillusioned with black folks and are now available to be used as Mixed Race/Light Skinned anti-blackcraft missiles.
Agreed, but its blk ppl that make you feel that way. Being smart or nerdy doesn't make you any less blk but they sure do make us feel like that...Im adopted and ppl would say oh that makes sense, your parent are yt, right? Im like NO, i had a mom who was super into science fiction and a dad who was an uber nerd(rip) so yeah they raised a huge dork 😂
Yup! Ive had to unlearn and get rid of a lot of antiblack thoughts in my life! I thought because i like anime and metal music and grew up in the suburbs, I shouldve at least been light skinned! Of course i unlearned my internalized rasicm, but it is real!!
I think it was genuine but I doubt he would have said it on national TV in that exact moment if it wasn't for his impulsive urge to be provocative. Which is not to say it was a bad thing at all, we need impulsive and provocative people and that's a big part of his success in the first place. But I think the point FD is making is that it wasn't coming from a very strong and consistant base of pro-Black activism.
It has been rumored that Busy had to be dragged off a vacation to deal with the crisis and that Reagan had the same problem with the Iran hostage crisis.
I think the difference is that Azealia Banks is still quite disciplined and restrained in regards to her art. She also doesn't have as many people indulging her and she's had a lot of career repercussions for the thing's she's said. Patriarchy is definitely a factor in the difference between them I think.
The one thing that has always stuck with me about Kanye now is from an old story an ex of mine told me in 2021 - she knew a girl who was in sex work in NYC, and circa 2009-10, she got invited back to Kanye's apartment for... well, reasons. And what that girl found so strange was that in the pre-(insert disclaimer here), where a proprietor gets to know her client, Kanye kept showing off a bunch of weird, predominantly European fashion and art and music that he had collected. And he was so excited to share it and try to find someone who might know more about that... and when said girl ran out of ways to say 'that's interesting', his demeanor abruptly shifted and they got to (insert disclaimer here). I remember not being remotely surprised that my ex told me that. Maybe it's tied to neurodivergence, maybe it's tied to trying to find someone who shares your weird idiosyncrasies and struggling within/without community (this was post Taylor Swift episode at the VMAs and his mother dying and the Amber Rose breakup, so this was a very isolated version of Kanye), but the tryhard weird streak has been there for a decade plus. And when it came out that he wanted to name the 2018 album 'ye' HITLER and had to be talked off the edge... again, none of this feels surprising.
A surprising amount of higher class sex work is just sitting there while a lonely rich man talks at you, that's not just a Kanye thing. But it's definitely not surprising he's one of those
The porn addiction is a really vital piece to tracking his trip through the rightwing pipeline. People like Nick Fuentes and others in the Theocratic Fascism type zones gobble up dudes with porn addictions and mold that guilt into a Christian guilt, then into the zionism and antisemitism type shit associated with them. It all makes sense now. I was pretty young when Kanye was coming up, but I remember looking at him funny ever since he said that paparazzi was worse than nazis in his opinion on Flashing Lights. It has really all come together!
Ooh I never thought about this connection. The accessibility of porn that objectifies marginalized people as sex objects leads to addiction and shame that these rightwing folks hone into. Their “Christian” rhetoric never challenges the idea that marginalized people are objects but instead, reinforces this incel thought pattern that claims that your porn addiction is to be blamed by the actions of the people they think to be objects - they’re the one’s stopping you from getting what “you deserve” which made you turn to porn. Very interesting point!
It's crazy hearing the weird stuff Kanye used to say ON AIR back in the late 2000s/ early 2010s, without much damage to his career at the time. Seems like it's more damaging now to establish a pattern in his beliefs than it actually was at the time. Never look for reasons to defend your favorite people, let your favorite people become your favorite through the behavior they display. If you gotta defend them, you're already doing too much.
Yeah, I've been listening to Kanye since he came out and I have been Paying Attention to him and what he said that entire time. Only thing that surprised me is that anyone was surprised by his last 5 years. He was always crazy crazy, but he kept it under the lid. His eyes gave it away to me.
It's not unusual for different kinds of guys to say different things. If he's truly bipolar combined with a strange egotistical personality with enablers you can see why he's off the deep end. I have somewhat watched a few of those Kardashian shows were Kim was talking about how the old Kanye isn't coming back.
Because no one gaf, majority of us just listened to the music and bought the clothing, it wasn't until maybe like the late 2010s people started being conscious about celebrities and only recently to a t, if they weren't flat out sex offenders no one gaf and sometimes they didn't and don't gaf.
I think part of it is that egotism and things like that are baked into hiphop. So things like 'I think I'm a god' read more like that 'I'm the greatest mfer alive' mindset rappers are expected to have than a guy being so manic he literally thinks he's a deity
It's funny because many many many Kanye fans can attest to having spent a lot of time on the internet defending him from critics. Now, granted, some of that criticism was really not warranted and overblown, and obviously some of it even racist, so pushing back against it is obviously something you're going to feel an urge to do because you see somebody saying some wild shit and instinctively you wanna correct them or call them out for it. But it felt like something that was almost routine for Kanye fans, almost as if it was a point of pride to spend hours of your day defending a man who doesn't know you at all. I think this primarily has to do with people's connection to music. Kanye sold himself on his genuineness, how he was never anything but himself no matter how many warts he had or how many critics piled on him. And that made people grew attached to his music in a way that, genuinely, I've only seen for a handful of rappers, and really none to the same degree. So that always results in people getting overly defensive and doing too much, because they can't separate what they like from themselves, so they take any attack on what they like/the people who make it as an attack on themselves as well. This is also the reason why many can't separate the art from the artist.
Growing up as a Black American outside of poverty or the inner city doesn't make that individual become anti black; even if they were teased as a child by other black people. Malcolm X, and many other prominent black leaders didn't grow up in poor neighborhoods and inner cities. But all black children grow up in a country where violence and nonphysical assaults are constantly directed towards us. Likewise , there are many Black people who grew up in poor inner cities, and country towns, who exhibit anti-blackness. Ye and Owens choose to be the way that they are, not because they don't fit in with Black people, but because of self hate. They have internalized racism so deeply, that they see themselves as inferior, and hope that their actions will cause their oppressors to accept them It's not about fitting in with other black people, it's about an internalized inferiority. The American Black community is diverse, and that doesn't make someone anti black or feel superior to other black people. Because in the end, I can enjoy listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers while driving my hybrid SUV, but the police will only see another.....on the road.
I love this comment. I’m black, grew up in the suburbs as a middle class family. My dad (a baby boomer) is a HUGE rocker and a very proud black man. He always taught me to embrace my black features and our history. I’ve been told for as long as I can remember that I “talk like a white girl” but my dad never allowed me to internalize it. He told me if I’m meeting people who think annunciation of words is reserved for white people then I need to run. It kept me very grounded and secure as a young black girl into womanhood. I’m a force and most people , specifically corporate white women can’t take it. My dad and I have major beef but I’m eternally grateful for him teaching me that my interest and cadence can never chip at my blackness as long as they’re not anti black.
Like Kanye said, "can't tell me nothing." That much wealth, popularity and influence mixed with drugs, mental illness and personal tragedy are keys to creating a bubble of yes people that won't be able to help.
I been saying this since he started all his antics fr lmaoo I told my bsf one day when we were listening to the song, “damn we was just bopping along and whole time this was a warning” 🤣💀💀
It's individuals like Kanye that make it hard for me to separate art from the artist. Personally speaking. At one point can you not look away from all the bs?
I don't think it's possible to separate art from artist. Art is one of the deepest, most pure representations of individuality that there is. The truth is, abhorrent people can also have truly beautiful art inside of them. It's one of the complexities of life that you just have to deal with. I'm not going to deprive myself of the art I love just because the person is awful. The exception is if I monetarily contribute to living artists that do bad things with said money, Ala JK Rowling. (I say all this not really in regards to West, but there's other people like him for me[Wagner, Charlie Parker etc])
@@trombonegamer14You're 100% entitled to your opinion & perspective. For me it becomes hard to tolerate when these creative & talented individuals, use their influence & platforms to express vitriol and bigotry, or as a mask to hide their darker halfs until it eventually gets uncovered. It's almost like said art I appreciated becomes tainted, cause either they're hiding who they really are or they've become so far removed from the individual they once were. Have a nice day
I seperate art from the artist once the artist is dead. If the artist displays behavior wild enough for me to make note of it in the first place, I'm not gonna further their legacy by participating in media they created. Yall can say you have limited engagement with the artist, only engaging with the art, but their career grows nonetheless. Penny by Penny. Listen by listen.
I feel this as I was heavy into the metal community a few years ago. Many liked black metal and would have band shirts of Burzum and other BM fans that wore merch that had ties to neo Nazis and pos ppl. I still don’t understand how ppl buy like burzum shit when varg is a literal murderer, Neo Nazi, and burned multiple religious places.
I remember being at a Kweli concert back then, and the crowd up front turning their backs on Kanye when he started rapping about his diamond encrusted belt buckle.
@@Unionproud23FD doesn’t owe anybody who willingly pays him anything but the video content. Guaranteed this dude is just happy to support FD and his dope videos, real fans of creators don’t need likes and comments 😂
Man, I'm just going to go in for a long comment here with no concern of formalism. Major Ex-Kanye fan. Those first five albums from The College Dropout to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy War as a teenager and still is some of the most important music I've ever heard. They radically change the way my brain thought of music and directly influenced the way I thought about art within my own sensibilities and was my entryway into rap music. It's ironic that much this is about Kanye's possible need to be accepted within white communities because Kanye's attempts to bring conscious rap on his first two albums was the direct influence on me developing and appreciation for Gil Scott-Heron, a figure that appears frequently throughout that original run of albums. Across the original Trilogy of albums (the college dropout, late registration, and graduation), the Persona Kanye created on those albums often blended complex psychological self-analysis with genuinely unique political and religious observations that were fascinating for someone with such a major platform to be doing. Recently, during all of the shit show with what spoken about in this video and the much stranger alleged shit like the obsession with Adolf Hitler that apparently goes back decades, I began to wonder if I was using a subconscious bigotry to influence the way I was reading Kanye as "above" other contemporaries rap artists, something I still think about to this day and combat directly. While that part of my psychology I'm dealing on my own, re-listening to those albums, especially late registration, remind me why Kanye was such a special artist what is his connection with Blackness and him trying to deal with it. He did get a major film composer / Rock producer to create orchestral Arrangements, but several songs are based around Gil Scott-Heron, Curtis Mayfield, or Bill Withers samples. Many of the sounds coming off that record are still deeply seeped within soul, r&b, and gospel while mixing the orchestral elements in inspired ways. It breathes a strong sociopolitical disconnect with the structure of society with the government distrust of heard him say, the intersection of drugs and African-American culture in crack music, the influence of money in romantic relationships on gold digger, and the fucking blood diamond trade with diamonds from Sierra Leone intertwined with emotionally vulnerable moments like Roses and Hey Mama. How the fuck could a guy that has a song describing crack being made to stop radical black political thought that then sieges into an emotionally vulnerable song about the death of his grandmother could become the dude talking about bleached assholes and wearing a white lives matter t-shirt? At this point, the only logical conclusion is the one that FD is implying here that's the most difficult to think about; Kanye always had these issues and the conscious hip-hop Persona was itself a form of kayfabe that began breaking after the death of his mother and would completely shatter away with the release of the life of Pablo. He never truly cared about the politics, just the way it made him present as an extreme surreal contrarian. Which fucking hurts Complex conversations about some of the people I'm going to mention here, but you wouldn't get figures like Donald Glover, Vince Staples, or Thundercat who often talked about Black masculinity and society as a whole in ways that are very untraditional but still talk to some previous tradition partly without Kanye ( although George Clinton would be a more appropriate influence on Thundercat and Childish gambino, and aspects of fly in the milk do need to be brought to mind). Even if figures like him existed before (De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest really come to mind), he somehow weaponized the Michael Jackson type of Popstar mentality to selling it. Kanye, no matter how much the original Persona was bulshit or real honesty, quite radically deconstructed things like Blackness, masculinity, and to a lesser degree neurodiversity in the 21st century. That two-part video by FD stands as one of my favorite video essays of all time because it understands so well what made Kanye such an important figure and the absolute horror of watching someone you have such a strong parasocial relationship with just go so downhill. This feels like a proper epilogue to that two-parter as it finally tackles a possible we ignored; there never was a true "old Kanye," just us as fans putting our own anxieties and disconnect from society into this man. Old Kanye Is Dead, Long Live Old Kanye.
I think you get it. It's very complex and full of nuance. Actually every thing kanye is, is art. It's all one huge body of art. People don't understand how that type of artist mind works. I think he's in a constant mindset of creativity and expression always trying to get people to think in new and unique ways. He wants people to think and question him and everything around them. It's very intriguing. It's all art
As someone who follows F.D. but doesn't listen to Kanye (or even much rap beyond what I liked of Eminem back in school, yes boo me) I really appreciate the insight of your comment! Thank you
Thank you for your excellent comment Riley, which I will give a reply to as a white Irish (actually Irish) boy, not that I will be able to add that much. My favourite Kayne album is Yeezus because I can't really relate to its sadness and loneliness and hope and faith in the power of art. I dont really consider it a hip hop album though, or only barely. It's more an art-punk album. That's not some weird anti-black or anti-hip hop comment, I just mean that there are almost no traditional hip hop beats on it. It should probably be grouped along with Death Grips and Clipping as "hip-hop derived punk" or "art-hop" or something like that. Danny Brown and JPEGMafia I still class as hip hop. Life of Pablo - Ultra Light Beam is nearly his best song and then after that it's all shite. The bleached asshole was basically the end of him as an artist worthy of your attention, as has been said numerous times here. You've just encouraged me to go back and listen to the original trilogy again. Love your historical analysis of the samples. But I won't be able to take it seriously because like you said the politics are probably all performative, whereas yeezus is art that you can really believe in.
I don't listen to Kanye but I don't think the conscious hip-hop was kayfabe for him, it was... You ever been in a relationship where you don't feel it right off the bat, but your partner does and you want to keep at it to see your feelings develop to make it mutual? That was my first relationship; it never happened and the fallout was horrible, but I'd like to think it wasn't for lack of trying on my part. I really don't know much of Kanye except that he strikes me as the coddled Asperger's Syndrome/autistic kid with an ego, and what I just described with my relationship is how he seems to have felt for the black community: he tried but deep down he was hooked on white culture (as I assume he experienced from a privileged upbringing)
There's a zine called "why misogynists make great informants" talking about how sexism is often one of the biggest tells of an informant, yet how people will let it slide. It's almost like an "acceptable" form of bigotry. I thought there was so many parallels to this history of kanye, highly recommend a read, it's pretty short Edit: you can find this piece online. Just look up the title. It's written by courtney desiree morris
Sexism is definitely the most acceptable bigotry among men and some women, you see it a lot especially with hip hop discourse. There are genuinely people who think beating your wife is the least evil evil thing you can do (and that’s not a dig at Kendrick, Drake was talking out of his ass)
@@AliveBoldTV if you look up the title, theres a website with the full text! It's on truthout and by courtney desiree morris. I dont wanna post a link here in case it gets blocked but yeah!
@@AliveBoldTV Look up the title and it pops up. Why Misogynists Make Great Informants. It's by Courtney Desiree Morris. There's a version on truthout, but there are also other sites that host it as well
I will say, as someone with bipolar disorder, it kinda depends. Kanye has been falling into the right wing for years (over a decade by now), his disorder can't be blamed for that, but when a bipolar person is experiencing mania, they can believe, see and hear things that they would not otherwise. I myself for a week straight was under the delusion that the world was a matrix and my real body was outside of it and there was some wife I had to escape this world to go to, I had a breakdown at work about it. I have never believed anything like that before or since, only during the episode. I know someone who thought Sans Undertale was a real person because of their mania, and another guy who randomly latched onto a conspiracy theory for two weeks and then dropped it when he came out of it. I knew one guy who hallucinated a woman in his hallway, and know multiple people who have had auditory hallucinations with the disorder. If someone with the disorder does something that hurts someone, they should most definitely apologize afterwards, but I think it's irresponsible to treat the actions they took at the time as if they were 100% within their control and indicative of substantial anything about the person. As much as media likes to skip over the fact that bipolar disorder is a cousin to schizophrenia, it isn't just mood swings.
This was such a great video. I never thought much about the Sway interview moment beyond "Wow, that was hilarious". But him saying "It ain't Ralph though", perfectly sums up your point. Sway tries to encourage Ye to invest into the community that has been down since 03-04 and his response is to downplay them. He essentially said to Sway "What can y'all give me?"
South Park released the "Fishsticks" episode in 2009 and used Kanye basically as a narrative device to stand-in as the one person who didn't understand the "fish dicks" pun. They basically painted him as shallow, self-obsessed, unable to relate to other people, and lashing out violently at anything he doesn't understand. 15 years later and it feels as eerily prescient as it did at the VMA's that took place a few months after the episode...
The thing I always remember is that Kanye was in an SNL sketch about his tendency to interrupt awards shows BEFORE the Taylor Swift thing. He's a remarkably consistent person, we just couldn't see the signs that maybe those aspects of his personality were waiting to come out
Rewatching this after your preamble in the Drake V Kendrick video to get more context to what you're going to cover in that. Looking forward to insight learning about the connections you're talking about.
Soft rebuttal: His one Sway interview calling out homophobia in Hip Hop. This wasn't a case of the broken clock. Kanye is genuinely sober, thoughtful and contemplative. It's the only time I've seen him cast himself as the perpetrator. It might be the only time I've seen a celeb cast himself as a perpetrator. He notes how his behavior is harmful, self-reflects as to why he did it. What combination of internal qualities and external factors led him to this life choice. Then rejects the part of him that did it so he can make the world a better place for queer folk. And invites the rest of Hip Hop to do the same. It's definitely the last time he was this thoughtful in an interview and w/o a chip on his shoulder.
It is really interesting to hear you say that Kanye was considered a woke rapper. I listened to Mos Def, Common, and Talib Kweli but never considered Kanye to be in the same category. I always associated him with being an ego-centered rapper, minus the violence. I saw him in the same way I would come to see J. Cole, a normal dude rapping about his thoughts. Regarding bipolar, while it doesn’t make you a racist, it can feed into conspiratorial and erratic thinking (it’s often paired with schizophrenia for that reason). One of the worst things you can be is a mentally ill person who is told they’re brilliant because those are the ones who double down on conspiracies and stop taking their meds because they won’t believe anyone knows more about anything than them and, if they feel they don’t need medication or “normal” thought, they don’t. Sometimes, in service of protecting the self-esteem of neuro-diverse black boys from a culture that would tear them down, parents fail to humble them and overprotect them. It’s hard to balance and that would be my assessment of Kanye.
i dont think kanye ever considered himself "woke" hes always been a vain person and has called himself that, him and drake actually actually have a lot in common
I agree with you describing J Cole as a guy rapping about his thoughts. However, Kanye was brilliant was a child which was shown in his documentary. Many people who struggle with mental illness especially bipolar disorder & schizophrenia are very talented but due to their illness it can hinder it. Donda West was very supportive of him but she was also honest. Kanye’s bad decisions and antiblack tendencies are the cause his own doing unfortunately.
@@user-td2zx2jy3c Is he any more brilliant than R. Kelly? We have to stop acting like bi-polar and schizophrenia automatically make you a savant. Both run in my family and some people are brilliant, some are not regardless of mental health. The issue is if you’re brilliant and everyone keeps telling you that to make a profit or cover your flaws. R. Kelly and Kanye are both surrounded by yes-men. Kanye acts like every smart, neuro-diverse black boy with social issues I’ve ever worked with. The difference is whether their parents and people around them focus more on their brilliance or more on their maladaptive social behaviors. Often, with black boys, to shield their self-esteem, parents focus less on that maladaptive behavior and Kanye gives those vibes. I am not blaming his parents for his behavior. I am saying that fame brought out his worst tendencies. Is he was a normal dude, he’d just be that really annoying uncle at family events that starts fights with everyone.
Woke wasn't even a thing back then, it was called conscious hip-hop. I think he was probably more supposed to be bridging the gap between conscious and commercial than wanting to be strictly pigeonholed as conscious. A good example is the song All Falls Down off his first album, where he uses a play on the word "conscious", by talking about being self-conscious and that driving him to be materialistic, which he acknowledges in the song is ultimately a form of mental slavery. This was a very common theme in conscious lyrics, but as Kanye says "we all self-conscious, I'm just the first to admit it". Other evidence of his early adjacency to conscious hip-hop not mention by FD is that he produced Get By by Talib Kweli, which was a fucking banger. And signed Common as one of the first people on GOOD Music, and exec produced his whole next album. This was a pretty big deal at the time because Common was almost considered underground.
Bipolar can definitely turn you into a racist if part of your obsessions ends up rolling on religion and spirituality, which Kanye's notably did, because of the proliferation of racism within religious institutions and dogma over the past 2000 years, and their recontextualization of old world texts projected onto modern understandings of language. There is a lot of stuff about black people and having no souls, or black souls making peoples skin change color, etc in there.
Ill say this, as one of those percieved 'white' Black kids. I had a ton of self-hatred for myself growing up and it was largely even internalized by my parents as long as I did well in school to eventually become something. I think what helped me out back then was actually having a black girlfriend who actually made me feel not alone in that disconnect and slowly it changed my perspective on others including myself. I definitely resented being Black and 'being one of the good ones' but it started to click that I did good for myself. So I started actually carrying myself with that energy through the end of HS and finished College without too much debt. Working at a decent job and I do feel more positive. That kind of anti-blackness; Its something you either dig out of to see yourself as worth something or you wallow endlessly searching for validation to prove yourself in the eyes of others. If you like yourself, itll be harder to change but if you value too much of how others see you, youll never be satisfied. Then you become a Candace or a Kanye whos so disconnected they can only go back on what know works.
Interesting self analysis. It makes me think about the deep roots of racialized trauma and all the ways we need to bend ourselves in order to grit and bear this reality. Healing also happens in relationships, so the more we connect with others the more we are able to form new understandings of self. To be outcast can create a sense of self loathing that can manifest in pretty awful ways. Kanye is a poster child for internalized racism and it makes me sad.
@@o._c. People like FD? Yeah it would have helped but honestly its very difficult to understate how pervasive that feeling can be. Every success is because you are expected to be, but every failure will feel like all eyes on you to watch as if you're a lost investment. It was in school with other kids judging you, it was what teachers teach with whitewashed books, it's in culture with people who don't recon that everyone's human and some just aren't lucky in capitalism at all. It was that kind of toxic mindset of "working twice as hard to end up having half the pay" for me.
I was in a similar boat growing up. I had two black parents with masters degrees and went to predominantly white schools for elementary-middle, all the while I heard my parents subtly speaking down on black culture all the time. It wasn’t until the past couple of years that I realized I had internalized a lot of anti-blackness and subconscious prejudice for black people, but going to an HBCU has helped me tremendously.
His mom nurtured and advocated for a very quiet, shy kid to pursue his dreams. Now he feels the need to show her he’s independent and her work wasn’t in vain. When his mother passed he became a contrarian; he became obsessed w conflict due to his loss of stabilization. 808’s was sonically a mess. It’s only so beautiful bc he’s a savant. It reflects his attitude;disruptive, layered and filled w anomaly. The hate he spews now shows insularity wealth has afforded him. No one has reminded him that demonstrably false ideas are not under attack, they are just wrong.
His mom’s career as an educator should be inspected as well. Think about it, he came out w the whole hood-preppy look, there was mostly likely some respectability politics he was raised w that have only grown throughout his life
Thanks for what you said about bipolar disorder. Having bipolar disorder was pretty rough during those kanye nazi months where people just flat out blamed his ideological shift on a fricken mood disorder.. Dude was a nazi for way longer than Charlie Sheen was winning. Can't blame that on a mood disorder. We don't turn nazi, we get really super duper sad or extremely energetic... We don't turn into nazis..
The conversation that was being had around bipolar disorder at that time was HARD to listen to. Sometimes you can't help but internalize some of those things and wonder "to the people I know think the same things about me?"
Just shows the people excusing Kanye at the time didn't really care about his mental health. Just wanted to point and laugh, and justify it after the fact so they didn't have to feel bad or think twice before doing it again.
than again, all mood disorders are different for different people, and i’m assuming you didn’t lose your own mother to a decision you made (moving to LA). Along with the weight of having the entire media waiting and watching for you to mess up.
@@soarsoverearth mood disorders don't cause you to become a nazi. Don't care how much trauma you've gone through. There's always an example of someone who went through similar stuff and made different choices
He's since said he was misdiagnosed and was extremely drugged to keep his behaviour in check. 🤷🏾♂️ n funny how everyone pointed to his alleged bipolar disorder but he's never done that himself in the heat of controversy lol. As far as the nazi thing, hey. If that's what u think he is, I don't got the energy to argue against it at this point lol. I will say it's extremely similar to when he cosigned Trump & once u get down to the why that was the case, the Hitler thing isn't a surprise. But Kanye makes no effort to make himself more understandable so it is what it is lol
I grew up with a bipolar father. I can smell these things from miles away, since I learned to feel those behaviours since very young. With kanye, my alarm goes wild. But also with young kanye. I know you said in the beginning, that you cant justify everything with being bipolar. But I can tell you, that those actions discussed are easily linked to it, I can feel it.
Same, and yeah, it doesn’t excuse their actions, but it certainly explains their actions. It doesn’t mean you give them a pass, but at least you can understand what is going on with them.
The whole "bipolar doesn't make you act this bad" thing is like really pretty ableist. To me, it shows how much people are only willing to accept and support mild mental illness. 100% he's still accountable for his actions but the way people decide that they're too uncomfortable with his actions to believe it's mental illness is wild to me. I don't think it's intentional or anything, but I do think it's a problem.
the entire culture let him down during the yeezus era. he was talking about glass ceilings and structural forces that even a superstar as big as 2013 kanye west couldnt get through. after 5 straight classics and changing the genre and the cultural sound and style and fashion. boldly declaring he doesnt need the systems approval "soon as they like you make em unlike you, cause kissing people ass so unlike you" seconds before calling out the billionaires and corrupt government agents profiting off of black people. the response to his cry for help was "why is he so angry" and "yeezus is trash where are the soul samples". i fully understand how he stopped trying to do anything for his culture and just went on his own after that. hip hop deserved a poser like drake who doesnt care about the culture and instead enforces the oppressive systems for the billionaires as the biggest artist of the genre. its fitting.
@@NacrunoCreations "declaring he doesn't need the systems approval" yet was upset that they weren't embracing him and giving him the seat at the table he wanted. He really just came across as bitter for not being able to get his way, especially when certain people were tryinv to tell him to make his own way and prove them wrong if he wanted it so bad...yet he managed to lash out at them too despite the fact that they were trying to help him. Regardless of what he'd done for hiphop up to that point, he wasn't entitled further fandom and keys to the city because of it...especially in the context of trying to break into a different industry. You wanna form partnerships in this world, then it's a hard reality that you have to put in the work to prove your worth first - not lash out when people can't see your vision.
@@FrancoisDressler yeah but he was being childish as to how he was pushing back on some very basic advice: if you have a passion and a vision for something yet the people up top don't want it, then figure out another way to make something happen. All Sway and Charlamagne was telling Ye is that he wasn't broke so figure something out - they were being supportive yet Ye lashed out at them anyway.
Nobody seems to talk about the death of his mom, and how his behavior became so much more outrageous and anti Black after she passed. Just to clarify - I don't mean this as "he's grieving." No. I'm saying he doesn't have to "behave" for her now that she's gone.
I've commented the same theory in a few places. I think you're absolutely right. I genuinely believe she was the last person in his life who challenged (especially in constructive ways) his behavior and ideas. My theory is he got comfortable sticking out or being controversial and began to associate that friction with progress. But he surrounded himself with sycophants which meant to get the same level of challenge he had to get increasingly radical.
Let's not forget he was spending heavily on his mum out of love, and that's what ultimately ended her life... he paid for the surgery that ended fatally, and if I was in his position, I'd go pretty off the rails mentally too... I'm not saying the theory in ur comment is wrong about him no longer needing to behave, but I think it's a horrible blend of multiple factors. I think it's the fact he knows he caused her death, but also, she's not there anymore to reel him in. That could give even the most mentally stable person a lot of stuff to work through to the point it might never be reckoned with.
Kanye wasn’t ever really conscious, he just came up in a time where if you weren’t gangsta rap you were conscious and as that changed the true Kanye was revealed
That explains why he gets more credit than he deserves for being a "visionary" or thinker ahead of his time. Best example is insane people giving him crazy "credit" for exposing the current conflict in the middle east. People are just marrying the 2 but those rants were self-serving, shallow, hateful tirades. What real truth bombs or knowledge did he drop?
He was def conscious at some point in his music from Jesus Walks to All Falls down and Diamonds from Sierra Leone. His old MTV interview with Swae about the rampant culture of homophobia in rap back in 05. He wasn't always so reactionary
There have been times when I have written you off or taken time away because of my own intellectual and personal journey. But I really appreciate how consistent you are. I come back and you make more sense than before
I’m a Gen Xer from the bay and the sway interview was the moment I completely left Ye alone. The Bay is where hip hop got independent spirit. The fact that Kanye was telling a Bay legend he only saw success through the eyes of white people was heartbreaking. Musically he had fallen off for me by then. But I didn’t have a problem with him or his character until after that. Then slavery was a choice was the point of no return.
I was working at the Medieval Times gift shop right around the time “Late Registration” came out. Kanye, with posse in tow, stopped by every register demanding he be given things for free. Using that all too familiar line of nepotists and c-listers, “Do you know who I am?” It spoke volumes about him, and I was never able to take him as genuine ever since.
@@bazzfromthebackground3696 I always liked the retort where someone declares they don't care if they're an even bigger figure, they still have to pay. e.g. "I don't care if you're the President of the United States, that's still gonna be $10.50."
I like the reply “I do now”. But you gotta be capable of delivering it right to make it burn properly. But I always favour subtlety in my retorts. It might not hit as hard in the moment but the burn lasts way longer and leaves a permanent mark on their subconscious when delivered properly.
@Mextazectaces Damn bro. The saying "all our heroes have feet of clay" seems appropriate here. Sucks to hear these things, but unfortunately not too surprising at this point.
i think your point abt kanye's antisemitism is great. he's not abt the NOI, his antisemitism actually comes from anti blackness i think. he's very focused on the idea of jews as elites/manipulators, but almost exclusively as damaging white/american hegemonic culture. ♡ a jewish sociologist
I think it comes from him realizing that he was being used for their benefit. He woke up to the whole "we don't control everything, but if you say something about us we will ruin your career and prevent you from getting a job etc etc". They started NWA (Jerry Heller) which started the gangster rap movement and has decimated their culture to this day. I think I would be upset to.
You missed the whole point. His antisemitism comes from hating Zionists and what they believe, but if you identify with them too good job for making yourself known.
@@RADIOACTIVEYOUTH I must have missed all of the times Kendrick condoned Hitler or blamed black people for slavery. I was in highschool when Kanye dropped graduation. At the very least, Slowjams is in every one of my spotify yearly wraped lists but at a certain point you've got to death of the author the shit out of someone and accept that no matter how talented they are they dont deserve a platform to make the world a worse place.
As a person with bipolar disorder, I empathize with Kanye. Having BD can 100% make you act like an asshole during manic episodes because your perception of what is appropriate becomes so warped. Whenever I come out of a manic episode there’s this terrible comedown from having all that energy & anger & being hypersexual & I’m trying to navigate that while simultaneously cleaning up whatever messes manic me made. It’s not an excuse to harm others. My therapist helps me check myself sometimes & I’m learning to fix my behavior. Ijs I can imagine that having fans & yes men constantly validating your behavior would make it hard to see when you’re wrong because you can’t actually trust your own feelings.
thanks for sharing this, I felt kinda the same way when I learnt that Kanye has or might have BD, my sister has it and her journey is so hard. Of course it's no excuse to Kanye's behavior towards BIPOC and women. The way BD brain is wired might scare those who've never been close to someone that has it or empathetic enough to someone with BD.
Same - people don't care, though. They just hate on people like Kanye when he's clearly in the middle of mania, and then they'll put out a cute little tweet on World Mental Health Day to "show support" - people are fake as hell. They need people suffering below them on the psychological ladder so they can sleep better at night and feel better about their own misery.
Thank you for saying this. Knowing that your audience is primarily men makes this 1000x’s better because they will not listen to me when I tell them that Kanye is not “great” or “genius” for being a unafraid to be a brazen contrarian. Anyone can do that, but we choose not to because we’re sane, reasonable, and not crying out for attention and that’s a good thing. 🤷🏽♀️
I think he was always ahead of the curve artistically. That wasn't hype. But I've never trust him as a spokesperson or representative of anything. I don't why people (usually men) do that.
The thing that changed about Kanye was he lost his restlessness. The restlessness he had made him focus on rapping and getting what he wanted. After he got what he wanted, he started saying his beliefs. He never tried to hide anything, his priorites just changed, and he forgot his past.
I’ve only been hip to you for a few weeks. But I’ve watched/listened to at least 10 videos; you’re easily the best journalistic RUclips platform by far!! No bias, while acknowledging bias in every video, yet still not showing it. 🙏🏾‼️ while some might say the videos are lengthy, I think the back stories are needed, most of the likewise styles of yours, don’t do so, which leads to them spreading misinformation or inaccurate takes. We need more of you!! 🙏🏾
This honestly makes so much sense. It explains why Doja, Logic and other rappers that grew up in white spaces view their old rap -that they used to push them into star dom- with such "distaste" It's so sad. They parade in blackness until stardom so they can throw away blackness for the whiteness they always wanted .
Logic definitely doesn't fall into that category. He sold out with everybody/COADM era but his heart is in the roots of boom bap and old hip hop. And he grew up in a mainly black atmosphere, he just gets perceived as white cuz he's so light skin
He grew up in Gaithersburg MD. Not exactly the Chocolate City DC Is/was but racially diverse nonetheless. I agree with the first part of what you said tho@@ceefahie
Even back when everyone loved Kanye all I could wonder is "Why did he use a song about a woman being good to her man to make a song about women being trash?" The man hasn't even changed, he's just become more obvious as the internet grew.
@@bleachjazz1726 Gold Digger, it is built around a sample of "I Got a Woman" by Ray Charles where he sings "she give me money when I'm in need" But Kanye tries desperately to fit it into a "women be shoppin" narrative going so far as to have the music video start with Jamie Foxx singing "She take my money..."
This is so good man, I would f love to see this type of content about hiphop, thank you FD❤ this is a pure gem. Also your video about Canibus was phenomenal. Not considering the fact that when I was a kid I was surfing RUclips to find more information about my favourite hiphop artists (who mostly were underground like canibus and there were nothing besides hours of interviews lol). To see you talk about all these old live performances, interviews and freestyles is f wholesome, back in the day I would beg to see something like this, damn😩. I wish I'll have a chance to see you do a video about Organized Konfusion, they got pretty interesting story, of them being so freaking good but struggling with labels and contracts. I remember listening to Pharaohe Monch's verse on Releasing Hypnotical Gasses (from their self titled album 1991) and I was shocked that there were nobody talking about it, not gonna lie, i was fiening too hard with this song, I thought it was too far ahead of it's time, it sounded like it was released by outkast in late 90's. I kinda forgot about how good Canibus was, but this video throw me back to those days when i used to listen to old underground artists and groups who weren't that famous but had so much creativity that it keeps amazing me to these days. Thank you for your content sir, love from Russia❤
as a white boy who went through the whole "saying wildly offensive shit is actually just a haha funny" phase as a very isolated teenager I found that my days spent spewing right-wing talking points and outright hatred under the thin facade of comedy and eventual rejection of those ideas to be a really formative moment in my devlopment and people like you (not you specifically cuz this was like nearly 10 years ago now but I'm pretty sure youll have a similar impact on some of the younger generations) who make this sort of informative left-wing thought pieces had a pretty big hand in that, so thanks for that or something idk this has little to do with the video but I fealt like saying it... yeah.... bye
If you start to think for yourself and get in touch with your emotions, you'll discover that all of the extremes are kinda shit. But the first step is to go outside and talk with real people. You'll constantly live in that bubble at home with extreme opinions coming left and right at you but we often forget that there's a real world out there and being angry will only bring harm to yourself and won't change anything. This is almost a form of self-abuse to stay at home on the internet and listen to all these political and extreme statements.
I agree that isolation like that is self abuse and that you shouldn't blindly follow what people on the internet say and should form your own opinions and world view, and of course you should go outside and make friends. I just don't agree that extremes are wholly bad (also I wouldn't call this video/content-creator extreme unless you deem anything beyond the status quo as such) or that anger is entirely harmful, I mean every product we consume comes at the cost of someone thousands of miles away suffering and often dying and I think everyone should be angry about that if we want to have a chance at stopping it, the devices you and I typed these on have likely had someone die to harvest the materials, someone suffer to put it together, those people will be payed pennies while those at the top will get millions. But anyway one more thing I've found that my political bubble as you call it has largely followed me into the real world with most of my friends having similar views to me and the ones who don't really don't care when I go into my more extreme rhetoric in fact arguing over those things have been a bonding experience for us so it's not like you can't exist outside of the internet with extreme ideologys both on the left and sadly with groups like neo nazis on the right.
@@PrincessMadeira To speak twitter: extreme rhetoric ≠ "extreme" positions But seriously, hot takes and twitter style discourse is generally counterproductive to actually changing someone's mind. I feel that that's part of what OP is getting at with his discussion about "extreme online discourse". The quick, witty one liners feel good to write, but tend to stifle an actual conversation. It's kind of what FD is getting at with Kanye's contrarian statements. Kanye might say radical things, but it looks like that's coming out of attention seeking rather than actual belief in what he's saying. If you actually believe "radical" things, then you should genuinely explain why you believe it. That's the way to turn "radical" into "common sense" the same way as it has for the 8 hour working day. Of if you would prefer to speak twitter again, you could read that entire paragraph as: "touch grass". Your choice.
Honestly I got to a point where I stopped saying I miss the old Kanye and just started saying, I miss his old music. But now that I'm older, I can see he has always had a grandiose personality that was probably unchecked and slowly became unhealthy.
People don't realize that the whole music industry changed and kanye tried to stay relavant while also being innovative. He had his hits and misses. People have no idea how hard that man works and his vast output. Like many of our black artist he doesn't get enough credit for all he does and has done.
"Y'all we leaving right now" from that woman at the Kayne for President rally the moment after he said "Well Harriet Tubman never actually freed the slaves, she just had the slaves go work for other white people."
I owe somebody at RUclips a graveyard staycation for trying to sneak this video on me while I was half sleep Ye is the Goat. Don't recommend or auto play me any nonsense like this.
@foreverNwonder Jesus Lord, OG Forever Rolling and OG Time Moving Slow, Take Off Your Dress, and Unlock whenever it releases is still gas. Sick to my stomach this video even got a play from me because I'd never click or sit through something like this consciously. This is also apparently one of the places that braindead unplugged controller meme sprouted up in too, completely overlooking Lucian's conspicuous absence at Drake's side during the beef. Hell I'll go listen to a Like that Remix right now with a spliced in Dababy verse just to pressure clean my ears of this BS.
The alleged insider details are that Kim and her team helped Kanye immensely, often without him even knowing what they did to prop him up, and without them he’s been flailing business and financial wise
@@wplants9793 I wouldn't be surprised, she's always maintained the position of "he's the father of my kids I have to try and help him". I bet she would feel very guilty for her kids if she contributed to it
28:45 That lady's "Jesus Christ, Candace" was just perfect. I mean even growing up in white church, I still learned what a call and response is. It's pretty fundamental to like, every church service I've ever seen or participated in.
Thank you for this, I'm a musician/composer and have been on a deep dive on Kanye for a little more than 3 months now and you really put into words the theories I'd been drawing about Kanye the man and how he has evolved over time. There's so much to comment on here but to talk about one thing, maybe to give a little more credit to Kanye's sense of civil duty but to reframe why he's off the mark: "Yeezus" has some of the most hard hitting "conscious" subject matter in any of his records from talking about his individual experience breaking into the fashion industry as a black man all the way to talking about the prison industrial complex (in 2013, mind you) and how the government incentivizes and collaborates with the private prison industry to disproportionately imprison and therefore enslave black people. While this theme is prevalent in Yeezus, the narrative of the album describes a man battling systemic injustice who deduces he must be the one to solve it since no one else is making the strides he is but he is riddled with his own demons he has to overcome; in essense and in Kanye's mind, the systemic critique is reduced to an individual problem. In Kanye's interview run accompanying Yeezus' rollout, when asked about capitalism and how it fuels the private prison system and injustices within the racist Euro-centric arts/fashion spaces, Kanye goes out of his way to clarify that he blames the people running the companies and not the systems themselves (ie crony capitalism). Kanye's strong sense of ego/self combined with the capitalistic framework of "individualism" stops Kanye from fully being on the mark with his critiques because, as the representation of black wealth in hip hop in the 2000's and especially as he became the richest black man in US history in the mid 2010's, he is diametrically opposed to the idea of class criticism and how it intersects with race. When describing how MTV wouldn't allow Michael Jackson's videos to be played because they were too "urban" (a comparison he drew to mirror his being walled from the fashion industry), Kanye said "Michael Jackson isn't even black: he's Michael Jackson"; I believe Kanye ascribes to this idea of divorcing himself from the general black populace utilizing the rationale that his individual merits withing the white capitalists system *should* displace him from blackness in that system's eyes. Very much the OJ quote.
As someone who was in high school in Kenya between the years of 1999-2002 when Neo Soul was huge as a genre, i can tell you that Kanye fell off in the same fashion that John Legend did. They both seemed "grounded" when they were around artists in the Neo Soul genre, whether the rapping or singing end. The minute they went mainstream and didnt have people like Dwele, Selena, Talib, etc around them, i knew they weren't for me and i knew they'd make lots of money obviously, but many of their fans would wake up YEARS later. Its happening now for Kanye and it already happened for John Legend. I'm just thankful i moved on from their toxicity before i was even 20.
Bruh Kanye was still around all of them people around him even when he went mainstream. Most of them grew tired of being around kanye & did there own thing
@@tredadon444 I should've said "making music with" instead of just "around". The process of making music is very deep and involving especially if you're around people who are self aware like most of the artists in that genre were back then. I'm pretty sure hanging around Jay Z isn't the same as hanging out with the gentlemen of Slum Village, as an example.
in my opinion just based on kanye’s past interviews (before the antisemitism) i feel like he’s been very consistent that he’s not trying to get the attention of white people specifically, but rather trying to break into spaces that were traditionally reserved only for white people. that’s the main point he was tryna make in the “how sway” video. and he did just that, without kanye there is no virgil abloh getting creative director at LV. he paved the way for others to follow in his footsteps in rap, fashion, and business. he stood up and said that he will be respected by CEOs, nations leaders and industry moguls as a black man and for a time he received that respect. even one of the situations you bring up with taylor swift had nothing to do with appeasing white people. it was about championing beyoncé and her getting what she deserved and he wasn’t afraid of the backlash of majority white hateful country fans going after him to make that statement. aside from that tho i do think you nailed it with the contrarian thing. kanye has always loved going against the grain and that def has recently taken him down dark paths but i don’t think that means that everything he’s done previously can simply be chalked up to him taking the contrarian path. i do think he used to do things with more intention. update: just wanted to edit and say that i love your videos and the amount of research you put into them. one of my favorite channels tbh
Man, I have to give you respect. You have low key become my favorite analyst of Hip Hop culture. One of my very favorite RUclipsrs. Keep doing you big cousin.
I'm at 22:30. That little goofy grin is fascinating to me, because it's exactly the same face my brother, who also has bipolar, makes when he's manic and is trying to wind people up. It's almost like he wants the energy in the room to match his own heightened energy. That little goofy grin ALWAYS precedes the most obnoxious, tailored to make me angry, nonsense I'll hear all month. It's weird. My brother chooses not to manage his bipolar because he believes he doesn't need to and the more I hear about Kanye, the harder it is not to map one onto the other. I don't know how to explain the way that it feels like I can see the, i don't know, *flavor* of the assholery change when my brother's going through an episode. It is absolutely impossible to draw a hard line between what is "him" and what is attributable to his mental illness, but that little grin reminds me so, SO much of days when ALL he wants to do is make everyone else as excited and upset and loud as he's feeling. He has been like this since he was little, it's always been how he picked on me, but like I said the *flavor* of it 100% changed when he got older and the family bipolar definitely kicked in. I have no attachment to Kanye, at all. I mourn the relationship I used to have with my brother and how I'll probably never get that back because he doesn't care enough to do anything about it. I WANT to be able to blame it on the illness, and to just say he has no agency in being an asshole, because how else can I hope to get him back? He's my brother.
Before i even watch, grew up Chicago adjacent (Evanston) 38 years old. Mr. West had been telling us from jump he was going to be a problem. You all know the line “Wait till i get my money right, then you can’t tell me nothing right” A under looked at turning point was him getting an honorary degree from the art Institute of Chicago. Watch the clip of him getting that degree and you will see the last time Kanye was left stunned for words.
Man. You just said the Dixie Chicks. I swear. I am such a fan of your channel… I grew up as a wanna-be hip hop head. NAS- “I know I can..” and CREAM. I always think what happened to the DC’s? The Chicks were on point about the war. I listened to Immortal Technique. I miss both IT and DC!!! You WIN the internet!!! So much to say here! I hope you also lecture on a campus somewhere to help young people understand how we grew up on a whole other level! Thank you for being here and for all you do!!!
The most uncanny thing about kanyes career is seeing himself turn his album narratives from progressive conscious, to semi conscious, to only self aware, to half assed, consciously dealing with problems, to unconsciously ignore those problems and to ultimately abandon all sorts of consciousness in favor of songs of "all vanity and no humanity". Seeing a backpack rapper with a classic conscious album abandon it on all fronts is just reality shattering
Exactly; First album Kanye was entertaining, although mediocre; Second album Kanye is all about "Money is what makes you socially relevant" Third album Kanye and beyond is just him talking about how he is "God's chosen messenger and that buying is horrifically looking shoes will have you walking the path of Jesus"
@@yokuzo11 first album was médiocre?!???!????!!?
@@yokuzo11bro nobody is reading your bs after the first line
@@antoninbaklouti3307 - Yea he lost me 😭 also I’m not gonna pretend I don’t like Yeezys
Conscious is not when someone says they are or raps about something you agree with. He did bang all to prove consciousness
Seeing Kanye throw his hat in the ring during the Kendrick/Drake beef and then everyone unanimously agreeing to ignore it was one of the funniest things to happen in Hip Hop
Nga talked abt himself more then drake on the track it was so funny ngl i loved it
minus the fact that the song was the hardest remix of all time and people still bump it all the time
YO DOT, I GOTCHU
Dude I didn't even know about it till I saw a comment like this a month after
I didn’t even know that happened until today, that’s fucking hilarious lmaooo
On the "delayed brain injury" thing: I have a friend who was horrible jumped, robbed and injured. Both sides of his skull were caved in (the police said he fell, by the way, but that's another, much angrier story) he survived but barley.
I can recall a few months after his recovery he seemed fine. His memory was sh!t but besides that I didn't noticed too much difference. Today, roughly 6 years after his brain injury, he's a different person entirely. He doesn't seem even able to laugh or be expressive in any way. He just kinda sits and listens to people. Doesn't seem to have any strong opinions about anything. He was always a Tupac fanatic and I told him I thought Kendrick Lamar was better than Pac, expecting a spirited debate, but he just kinda shrugged. It's sad. Not to mention he was the poster child for charm. He's literally the guy who taught me how to talk to women. The Last we spoke he said how lonely he was and how he envied my nightlife. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
What I'm getting at is delayed reaction to TBI is definitely a thing I've witnessed first hand.
sorry to hear that about your friend, wish him and you the best
Lots of studies on this. Can happen in early life too.
Damn that’s depressing but good youre still rockin with him also gives good insight into a lot of my clients who’ve experienced TBIs prior to meeting me, often much earlier in life. 1 guy I work with is practically paralyzed but with intermittent mobility. His provider & partner claim (medical) marijuana has been a game changer for him, as evidenced by brain scans not just anecdotes or improved mood but that too although he just takes it at night before bed anyways. I’ve had adverse affects from it myself; exacerbated anxiety, paranoia, etc. so I’m typically not an advocate of it for mental health exclusive issues but undeniably effective in TBI, CTE related symptoms including drastic decrease in physical paralysis! hopefully ur friend can find some treatment options that work for him or just gratitude & contentment for life now
I am not an empath, but I could feel your sadness through the screen. I'm so sorry that happened to your friend. That's terrible. And I'm sorry you lost your friend, at least the person he used to be.
I hope things get better for you and your friend in any way it can ❤️🩹
Drake v Kendrick video feeling like waiting on GTA6
FD tryna be Jay Electronica 😂
Bro for real I am patiently waiting but I daily keep checking to see if it's done yet lol
You spelled "Tyler Perry" wrong
Elder Scrolls 6 type beat.
Right 😆
It breaks my heart bc I used to really relate to Kanye's eccentricities and struggles. I'm autistic and bipolar and to me Kanye always represented this ideal that even someone who's weird and volatile and misunderstood like me could be successful and accomplish great things. But instead he ends up perpetuating every negative stereotype about people with mental disorders, and making that whole community look bad.
(Plus he went from being the first mainstream rapper to speak against homophobia, to allying with political forces that want to make homosexuality a crime.)
Felt this. I've always loved Kanye and when I found out he was bipolar (as I also am) I was so excited until all this stuff happened. His consciousness and everything is gone and the way he's gone literally off his rockers and made bipolar ppl look worse hurts. And to realize he doesn't even like women when he's made songs about his mom and grandma, his daughter, and BOUND 2 is really.... depressing.
I've literally never heard a single major figure say they wanted to make homosexuality a crime, can you explain that?
@@ninjachicz1113yall just weak thats all
@@michaelturley8222 Was referring to his meeting with the President of Uganda in 2018, a nation where homosexuality can be punished up to the death penalty. US pastors such as Scott Lively sponsored the Uganda anti-gay laws and provided international funding
@@michaelturley8222 not a crime, but intentionally deny them certain rights, absolutely
Bro almost spit out my water when I saw "Metro gave Kanye an unplugged controller" 😅
IKR!
When was this in the video?
@@89RealThe 1:05 right at the beginning lol
Crazy Work🤣🤣
Some of these comments are works of art lmao
Missed the chance to title this “Kanye was never G.O.O.D.”
😂😂😂
Facts 😂
Hella lol
He going to change it now.
Kudos!
One of my big takeaways from jeen-yuhs was the impact of his mom's death on him. I think she was a restraining influence on him and able to direct that rebellious energy (saying things he "shouldn't") in healthier directions. I remember watching Hoarders years ago and you'd hear from family members that the person was always messy but that [insert key event] happened, usually the death of a spouse or parent, and then everything came off the rails. I think we've seen something really similar with Kanye. He always had these tendencies and his mom dying was the removal of the guardrails. She was only person who could cut through the "I won't listen to you if you make less money than me" ethos he's crafted. Thanks for the video, insightful as always.
Saying Kanye was never good is like talking about Paul McCartney being a wack musician and completely ignoring his time in the Beatles. Kanye was absolutely musically brilliant with his first three albums even though we knew he had some personal issues. His next two albums were uneven yet he still had some banging tracks on them. But they also came after his mother died, and I think this was the beginning of his downfall.
@@728huey Hey, I never said Kanye was never a good musician - College Dropout and Graduation are favorites of mine. I'm talking about his unchecked mental health and narcissism issues. Adults who say "naughty" things in public are doing it for an audience. When his mom was alive, I think what he said was tempered, somewhat, by performing for her.
@@codyowen5070 adults who say "naughty" things in public and are mentally ill may not be doing it for an audience. And sometimes doing too much for an audience or attention can be a result of mental illness. Doesn't mean you can do whatever without consequence, but it also isn't necessarily the same as someone who is a bit of a jerk and just wants the people around them to think they're cool or funny
@@codyowen5070It’s so interesting to people bring up Kanye’s mother dying as a form of sympathy, but that grace was never extended to Megan the Stallion who else lost her mother as well as her father and grandmother.
I always thought that she often restrained him from speaking on his impulsive thoughts and taught him to always speak with good intention.
As a black girl who grew up in the mostly white suburbs kids like us all have to grow up and get to this point and realize that we are amazing. Let the self hate go. Embrace your culture and you will never feel more powerful or beautiful for real. My self esteem has never been better until I found my group of like cool af weird black girls that liked anime but also classic black staples of the community. We can have it all you know? It makes me sad some people never get to have that realization. You just know they're filled with so much self hate that they have to spew it onto everyone else
That’s so beautiful! I found my tribe here at HBCU and I absolutely love it here!! It’s my safe space! 🥰
I think part of the "George Bush doesn't care about black people" thing that got me is that he seemed to be psyching himself up for it. I don't know, maybe it was because he knew it might go too far but I remember feeling in the moment and years afterwards "holy shit, there's a young black guy just like me who got up and said what I've been wanting to yell for a long time now." It's amazing how far that good will carried him since he really didn't say anything else so radical after that.
He's said a lot but people and the media choose to ignore it all. Even during his slavery rant there was a lot of positive commentary and it all was ignored.
@@KareemDaKing I watched that entire video and I don't remember anything positive from it. I don't think it was as terrible as people made it at the time, but certainly nothing positive.
@@KareemDaKing I mean, maybe you're seeing something I'm not, but at best it's the usual black elite and hotep nonsense dialed up to an 11. And with the company he keeps I think even calling it that is generous.
He did and still doing but for different groups
He backtracked that statement on some talk show iirc, so, yeah, that thing doesn't have much weight to it.
I remember feeling "anti Black" in high school because I thought I was different from most of the Black people in my all Black community. Back in the 2000s, it wasn't normal for a Black girl to like anime, video games, rock music, Kpop and such. It wasn't until my 30s this became acceptable. Though I always appreciated Black History and Black contributions to art and entertainment, I had in my mind that the "ghetto" types were inferior. This was also fed to me by my relatives. I also hated the violence in my community and neighborhood, in a failing suburb outside of Chicago, and blamed Black people in my neighborhood for their own misfortune. It wasn't until I grew up, traveled a bit, finished college taking history and African American studies, and started working around and in my neighborhood that I realized the greater picture. I started to realize how my neighborhood began to fail (the closure of local steel mills and how Black people were lured to these homes as White people moved out). I began to personally be profiled by police and realized why there was such a mistrust in the police infrastructure. I learned the real definition of racism and how it shaped my perceptions and my families' perceptions from a very early age. Instead of criticizing Black people, I began thinking about ways I could give back in REAL ways. Not just supporting programs without any real depth. I think if I'd gone down a different path, I probably would have ended up like Kanye West or Candace Owens. And that's a scary thought to me right now.
So you went to college and learned to make excuses
@lakersfansince1991 she went to college and learned what socioeconomic inequality is.
@naomishofner3529 So she went to college and became a professional victim
Interesting how people have different takes
I’m in a similar boat tho probably a little younger than you, and I’m black but not African American.
Saw ‘black culture’ as honestly inferior because I severely disliked gangster rap, and hated how our neighbourhood was basically terrorized by these street thugs.
I’ve only ever appreciated hip hop as a genre around 10 years ago through Kendrick, J Cole, etc.
31:55 I noticed when he said that line about leaving BW for a yt girl. I noticed when on stage during his political campaign, he declared that he hates BW. I noticed when he gifted Julia, and all her friends designer bags, the only friend in the picture that didn't receive a bag was the black one. People don't care when someone attacks BW until they realize, it starts with BW and extends to all black people.
🎯says a lot about when people are willing to get “offended”.
Yeah I really hated seeing people up in arms about the antisemitism when he has been openly anti-black and misogynistic for most of his career
I just looked this up and the black friend does have a bag.
"YO DOT I GOT YA" KILLS ME EVERY TIME. As a bipolar nigga myself I know kanye is cooking inside, didn't get that clout he wanted lmao
The fact that Kanye in the middle of all his insanity and problems knew who the right guy to support was, just makes Drake's fans look even worse
@@DoomroarI don't think he did. Some of the lyrics in the song were dissing Kendrick, but they were replaced at the last minute.
@@blunteastwood that’s a lie
Like Dot even needed him 🙄
@@blunteastwoodYou just made that up.
A wise person once said to me "Mental health isn't your fault but it IS your responsibility".
Exactly why the problem is as bad is it in America. It has to be addressed collectively
Thank you. You don't get to blame an addiction for being a sexist.
Truly absorbing this phrase is so important for so many people. Being hurt or traumatized and then expecting other people to be okay with being mistreated and/or expecting those around you to heal you is so common.
With great ADHD comes great...ly reduced productivity?
Marcus Parks?
Becoming a Kanye West fan in 2020 is like exploring the ruins of a once great city it's sad
I became a Ye fan at 2022, months before the "WLM shirt". Imagine that...
Same shit happened to me in 2019
Becoming a Kanye West? Did you turn into him or something? lmao
Thankfully I became a Kanye Fan before the Donda Rollout and got to experience what Kanye Might have been if he'd gotten atleast 10%of his shit together
@urhomiesapien Kanye West is literally one of the greatest rappers in modern mainstream times. He's lyrically on par with his old self and shows he can adapt to rapping with modern rappers. He's a crazy genius will forever be consistent one of the GOATs.
"We might miss the old Kanye
but the current Kanye doesn't miss us"
Damn that line is powerful
thank god, my feed was so dry i actually used spotify at work
😂
Hey, me too lol 😄
Dear mother of gawd !
So im not the only one who be wasting my sub watching yt instead?😭
THE FEELING!! 😂
Psych RN here. I’ve heard you say this on a few occasions, but Bipolar I absolutely can cause someone to adopt beliefs they wouldn’t if they weren’t manic. Kanye is really a textbook case of bipolar and none of his antics surprise me. I meet people every day who have bizarre opinions - often influenced by current events and conspiracies - which resolve with treatment. It is not just a “difficult state of mind to be in” it can seemingly completely alter someone’s personality and judgement. These episodes can last months or years, either because they’re inconsistently treated or untreated or because they have a chronic condition. Recognizing this shouldn’t equal giving him a pass.
As someone with Bipolar Disorder 1 I agree. Mania and psychosis are no joke, you literally are not capable of making ration decisions or understanding the world around you rationally. I have an Aunt who is also bipolar 1 and she hasn't been in touch with reality in decades. It doesn't justify the harmful things he says and does but it does explain it.
The idea of being completely separate from reality frightens me so much, it ruins lives so easily. If I know anyone with bipolar 1, I'm not aware/have never seen them in their rough place, but I am very familiar with schizophrenia.
Ime when people have a "break from reality" with schizotypal disorders, there's an important bit of truth under all the out of control pattern matching. Like, you can talk to a person and figure out there's a real thing bothering them - they're just kinda speaking Dr. Bronners language so it's harder to understand.
Is bipolar 1 totally different? (Genuine question)
Honestly…I think we all think / know how much mania can distort reality, I think it’s just media savvy to condemn.
10/10 if, and this is a big IF Kanye were to have a massive come to Jesus moment and said “on god, I was tripping ya’ll”, the lines would blur a bit and some leeway would be given.
As a bipolar person who's been psychotic, thank you!
I agree, I have bipolar disorder and was arrested and institutionalized twice for manic episodes in public. I had many beliefs that I now find so ridiculous, and even problematic! It can change everything about a person! Love the videos tho!!
seen the title and stopped everything I was doing. time to be messy
facts lol im like what else he going to dig on kanye
Me too, only the “everything” I dropped was watching other rap beef videos 😂
Thats the whole point of such titles
lets get it
SAME so excited haha
According to an acquaintance of mine that has BPD, these types of adrenaline inducing behaviors (saying controversial things, shoplifting, doing socially reprehensible stuff in public, using drugs and other harmful stuff) are common with people with BPD. I recommend looking it up because idk the exact reasons of why folks with BPD do negative stuff for adrenaline, but it checks out with other BPD experiences I've heard of in the past.
The abbreviation is BP. BPD stands for borderline personality disorder. BP can be caused by "a chemical imbalance". The chemicals responsible for controlling the brain's functions are called neurotransmitters, that includes noradrenaline, serotonin and dopamine. Dopamine is the "happy hormone". Those with BP can have too much noradrenaline, which causes mania, or can be lacking in dopamine, causing depression. Adrenaline is a close relative of dopamine. BP folks may be instinctively attempting to increase their happy hormones via adrenaline rushes.
As someone with BPD, for me it's lack of impulse control and getting a spike of dopamine. I'm on medication to help with that but the urge is still there
@@Shavon0865 BP or BPD? They're different things. As the comment above stated.
22:18 "he just knows the thing to say that will piss people off and bring him attention."
Am I misremembering that you were a teacher before? Because this is so real, and it perfectly fits: Kanye is THAT KID; the one you get every few semesters who just KNOWS how to get at you and derail the classroom. It's ALL about Kanye, and the minute it isn't, he does or says something stupid to make sure it is again.
yup
I know he's said he's worked as a youth counselor before
even the style in his music videos are often just a trend-copy from what was popular at the time, something actually the youtube king captain disillusion pointed out in a small joke in one of his videos back then. now in comparison with ur comment, it just shows that the man only always wants to be in everyones convo and does everything he can to stay relevant in media...i really think him being on his latest right wing rode is just the old way of trying to piss everyone off. and appearantly hes a friggin s.a.-ist too so yea...
@madlovee what's the captain disillusion video where he mentioned kanye if you remember ?
Fun fact: the reason his X/Twitter account was removed is almost certainly because he posted a certain yacht photo of Elon Musk.
This might be a video title and thumbnail that doesn't need to be changed 5 times lmao
Which is unfortunate, in a way 😅
I sent the thumb nail shot to my friend immediately 😂
12:00 I'd like to add that Kanye much like drake, doesn't truly like women.. he likes the aesthetics and image of women in relation to his social position. He doesn't like women as actual human beings
❤ facts.
Yeah… I get the sense that he’s like that as well. His ego can’t be checked by anyone, that’s a very dangerous mindset to be in. I hope he finds inner peace before he self destructs 🙏
this isnt a drake or kanye thing. this is a hip hop thing.
Lennon
Bowie
Ye
Page
Polanski
Weisntein
Tons of rappers/producers
Tons of film directors/producers
The eccence of entertainment industry
If you really stand on the moral principle then one is left with nothing to watch or listen to.
@@EverythingsoknowSexism and misogy are not hip-hop things, however they exist in hip hop and in other places.
I was listening to Kanye's newest album, Vultures (or something), and there was one line which really shocked me. He genuinely said: "...gotta make 'em drink the urine. Now I'm Ye Kelly bitch, Ye Cosby bitch, Puff Daddy rich, Me Too rich..." It seemed like such an intrusive thought to put on record, or perhaps a confession? He LITERALLY compared himself to 3 notorious pedophiles. Shocks me that more people didn't catch that one. That whole song btw (Carnival) was so overly sexual it seemed manic.
Bill Cosby was never accused of pedophilia
Cosby wasn't a Pedo, he was an abuser. Diddy isn't being investigated for Pedophila, again sexual abuse, trafficking. Kelly is the one who was found guilty of sex with minors. Kelly also wasn't a Pedo. He was charged and found guilty of Epohephila. A Pedo is interested in kids/pre teens.
The other two black celebs weren't involved with minors. Thinking anybody accused of being an abuser is having sex with kids. That's revealing. Why does your subconscious come up with pedo when it hears sexual abuse, ra*e or trafficking? A Freudian slip from an individual who IS abusing kids hence why you relate any abuse with the one you engage in. Like how in the 'Heart part 6' Drake said Epstein [an abuser of underage girls]. That was a Freudian slip. Kendrick said he should locked up with Weinstein [ an abuser of women]
Calling Carnival overly sexual is laughable considering the content of Hip Hop songs these days. Might be time for some self reflection. We often see in others what we are guilty of because our brain is condition to interpret others actions/situations/words based on our personal life experiences. Example , a kid who gets a smack whenever they break something will always flinch whenever they break something infront of an adult because they are expecting a smack. To the kids brain, breaking things = a smack. Anyway enough Psychoanalysis for one day.
The last word is the answer to your question.
Ya some real losers over here 😂
@@jonaromero3587the Kanye stans calling ANYONE else losers is so ridiculously ironic 😭😭😭
Nah, Kanye was super nervous when he said George Bush didn’t care about black people. You could hear the tremble in his voice. 😂
13:52 I believe one can be socially aware and choose to date white women. However, the issue arises when a Black man or woman flaunts their white partner as if they are a trophy from a carnival. This not only appears frivolous to us but also diminishes the dignity of that individual in the process.
But what if the head is so good she’s on honor roll…
Very well said Sir 👏🏾
@@directordank😂😂 I can’t with this
That's fascinating considering if he where with a black women and did the same thing you would probably be congratulating him and if not u someone else in the community would have I find it funny how people consider themselves conscious but then get offended when someone who loves someone else from a different place and or culture is expressing it in the public eye people start to feel away. Kanye never said oh I love white women and f black women and I don't think we as a community should be telling people how to express their love if it's not affecting or hurting anyone else. Except your group conscience ego but I noticed this trend with black men who talk good about the white women there with ppl legit act like the man said I don't like blk women instantly disallowing a lot of black men from talking about black issues due to who they happen to be with 🙄 u can't call it self conscious and be bothered by that, specifically other aspects of Kanye are a lot more troubling than his dating history and lack there of, of black women in his past this is like when people focus on Joe biden's gaffs instead of looking at the policies he's actually putting out there.
People judging the social awareness of others by the perceived race of their partners are doing racism like any racist would, no?
"when was the last time he said something significant in favor of black people?"
Hot damn, this really hit me hard.
"Beyonce had the best video of all time" was certainly something significant in favor of black people.
@@blunteastwoodno it isn’t
@@a1ntcry1noveru well it kind of was, as his point was to highlight how the accomplishments of Black People are too easily ignored
@@xjtreex is that how he really meant it though? That's what we thought he was saying, but maybe not
George bush doesn’t care about black people
You are soooo good at using clips to describe certain things. They explain everything so well
Most of us were literally undergrads when College Dropout dropped. We were just as immature as he was and assumed he'd grow out of it. But nah...
I was in 4th grade when “Get Well Soon” came out. . I got a full ride to a huge university. Graduated. I honestly attribute some of that to College Dropout, Lupe Fiasco, The Cosby Show, and The College Center on BET hosted by Julissa. Thanks Kanye.
@ville__u went full Robert Downey jr eh ?
@@lovedavantlamour301wait give me a run down what RDJ did I never knew he was a really weird guy
@CuntyFernandoAlonso I'm pretty sure they're referencing Tropic Thunder, "never go full r*t*rd"
I was older and I think thats why I never bought his act. I liked some of his music fo sho. But disliked his persona and never saw him as deep or conscious the way younger ppl did
28:36 as a different black or a nerdy black girl it does take work not to be anti black. It’s really depends on how your parents speak about other black people and finding black friends with your interests, it makes you feel less ostracized.
Yeah I just try to blend as much as I can
@jessinthecomments What black people don’t talk about, or aren’t cognizant of, or don’t have the words to express & certainly don’t teach our children is that that “You Can Only Be ONE thing/set of things, You’re Not Being Black Enough” mentality that a lot of us caught from black peers is a *leave-over* from Slavery & Jim Crow.
When we were only allowed very limited existences, opportunities & lanes for expression. On a micro level this is expressed as “You don’t see a lot of black skydivers, Olympic swimmers, golfers.” The reason being we did not have the means, the allowance of opportunity &/or the shepherding to those avenues.
So when we develop resentment at Other Black People for maybe giving us a hard time for having divergent interests it is especially damaging. Because what really are upset about is the legacy of how we were pigeon-holed and typecast by a sabotaging system.
We are just conned into enmity for what’s out in front of our eyes rather than the underlying root.
We see this type of thing when we sometimes have friction with the Asian community & their social standing. When ofc the Model Minority archetype was fabricated by white folks to use Asians as anti-blackcraft missiles.
And again, we see this lack of cognizance or appropriate words or just disinterest/misunderstanding the need to educate by black parents raising mixed-race/light skinned children. Who are not explaining to them how the world treats them in relation to full/dark blacks people & where resentment can stem from.
Thus, like the different black/black nerd you describe, they become disillusioned with black folks and are now available to be used as Mixed Race/Light Skinned anti-blackcraft missiles.
Agreed, but its blk ppl that make you feel that way. Being smart or nerdy doesn't make you any less blk but they sure do make us feel like that...Im adopted and ppl would say oh that makes sense, your parent are yt, right? Im like NO, i had a mom who was super into science fiction and a dad who was an uber nerd(rip) so yeah they raised a huge dork 😂
Yup! Ive had to unlearn and get rid of a lot of antiblack thoughts in my life! I thought because i like anime and metal music and grew up in the suburbs, I shouldve at least been light skinned! Of course i unlearned my internalized rasicm, but it is real!!
And it doesn't help if you have trouble socializing. Can do a lot of damage.
The "GB doesn't care about black people" thing always seemed like a genuine moment of shock at the images he was seeing to me
I think it was genuine but I doubt he would have said it on national TV in that exact moment if it wasn't for his impulsive urge to be provocative. Which is not to say it was a bad thing at all, we need impulsive and provocative people and that's a big part of his success in the first place. But I think the point FD is making is that it wasn't coming from a very strong and consistant base of pro-Black activism.
The best part was the guys reaction next to him, I forget his name lol
It has been rumored that Busy had to be dragged off a vacation to deal with the crisis and that Reagan had the same problem with the Iran hostage crisis.
Azealia Banks and Kanye West have a lot in common, and its not just that they are Geminis.
I think the difference is that Azealia Banks is still quite disciplined and restrained in regards to her art. She also doesn't have as many people indulging her and she's had a lot of career repercussions for the thing's she's said. Patriarchy is definitely a factor in the difference between them I think.
Right @@Haldered
As Kanye might say...they don't just have Astronomy in common. 😂😂😂
The one thing that has always stuck with me about Kanye now is from an old story an ex of mine told me in 2021 - she knew a girl who was in sex work in NYC, and circa 2009-10, she got invited back to Kanye's apartment for... well, reasons. And what that girl found so strange was that in the pre-(insert disclaimer here), where a proprietor gets to know her client, Kanye kept showing off a bunch of weird, predominantly European fashion and art and music that he had collected. And he was so excited to share it and try to find someone who might know more about that... and when said girl ran out of ways to say 'that's interesting', his demeanor abruptly shifted and they got to (insert disclaimer here).
I remember not being remotely surprised that my ex told me that. Maybe it's tied to neurodivergence, maybe it's tied to trying to find someone who shares your weird idiosyncrasies and struggling within/without community (this was post Taylor Swift episode at the VMAs and his mother dying and the Amber Rose breakup, so this was a very isolated version of Kanye), but the tryhard weird streak has been there for a decade plus. And when it came out that he wanted to name the 2018 album 'ye' HITLER and had to be talked off the edge... again, none of this feels surprising.
For all that his behaviour and views are repulsive and have been for a long time, he seems like a deeply lonely person.
A surprising amount of higher class sex work is just sitting there while a lonely rich man talks at you, that's not just a Kanye thing. But it's definitely not surprising he's one of those
Kanye was (prolly still is) the black Holden Caulfield, end of story.
There’s background behind the original name for ‘ye’. He was trying to self sabotage his career. There’s videos out that explain it more
Report this PDF file 👉 @ville__
The porn addiction is a really vital piece to tracking his trip through the rightwing pipeline. People like Nick Fuentes and others in the Theocratic Fascism type zones gobble up dudes with porn addictions and mold that guilt into a Christian guilt, then into the zionism and antisemitism type shit associated with them. It all makes sense now. I was pretty young when Kanye was coming up, but I remember looking at him funny ever since he said that paparazzi was worse than nazis in his opinion on Flashing Lights. It has really all come together!
Ooh I never thought about this connection. The accessibility of porn that objectifies marginalized people as sex objects leads to addiction and shame that these rightwing folks hone into. Their “Christian” rhetoric never challenges the idea that marginalized people are objects but instead, reinforces this incel thought pattern that claims that your porn addiction is to be blamed by the actions of the people they think to be objects - they’re the one’s stopping you from getting what “you deserve” which made you turn to porn.
Very interesting point!
That line was in 2007. He's been like that for a while.
says the leftard
There are a lot of ways to go down some of these parts, they're interconnected.
He aint say that shit. He said he hates them more than the notzees.
It's crazy hearing the weird stuff Kanye used to say ON AIR back in the late 2000s/ early 2010s, without much damage to his career at the time. Seems like it's more damaging now to establish a pattern in his beliefs than it actually was at the time. Never look for reasons to defend your favorite people, let your favorite people become your favorite through the behavior they display. If you gotta defend them, you're already doing too much.
Yeah, I've been listening to Kanye since he came out and I have been Paying Attention to him and what he said that entire time.
Only thing that surprised me is that anyone was surprised by his last 5 years. He was always crazy crazy, but he kept it under the lid. His eyes gave it away to me.
It's not unusual for different kinds of guys to say different things.
If he's truly bipolar combined with a strange egotistical personality with enablers you can see why he's off the deep end.
I have somewhat watched a few of those Kardashian shows were Kim was talking about how the old Kanye isn't coming back.
Because no one gaf, majority of us just listened to the music and bought the clothing, it wasn't until maybe like the late 2010s people started being conscious about celebrities and only recently to a t, if they weren't flat out sex offenders no one gaf and sometimes they didn't and don't gaf.
I think part of it is that egotism and things like that are baked into hiphop. So things like 'I think I'm a god' read more like that 'I'm the greatest mfer alive' mindset rappers are expected to have than a guy being so manic he literally thinks he's a deity
It's funny because many many many Kanye fans can attest to having spent a lot of time on the internet defending him from critics. Now, granted, some of that criticism was really not warranted and overblown, and obviously some of it even racist, so pushing back against it is obviously something you're going to feel an urge to do because you see somebody saying some wild shit and instinctively you wanna correct them or call them out for it. But it felt like something that was almost routine for Kanye fans, almost as if it was a point of pride to spend hours of your day defending a man who doesn't know you at all.
I think this primarily has to do with people's connection to music. Kanye sold himself on his genuineness, how he was never anything but himself no matter how many warts he had or how many critics piled on him. And that made people grew attached to his music in a way that, genuinely, I've only seen for a handful of rappers, and really none to the same degree. So that always results in people getting overly defensive and doing too much, because they can't separate what they like from themselves, so they take any attack on what they like/the people who make it as an attack on themselves as well. This is also the reason why many can't separate the art from the artist.
Growing up as a Black American outside of poverty or the inner city doesn't make that individual become anti black; even if they were teased as a child by other black people. Malcolm X, and many other prominent black leaders didn't grow up in poor neighborhoods and inner cities. But all black children grow up in a country where violence and nonphysical assaults are constantly directed towards us. Likewise , there are many Black people who grew up in poor inner cities, and country towns, who exhibit anti-blackness. Ye and Owens choose to be the way that they are, not because they don't fit in with Black people, but because of self hate. They have internalized racism so deeply, that they see themselves as inferior, and hope that their actions will cause their oppressors to accept them
It's not about fitting in with other black people, it's about an internalized inferiority. The American Black community is diverse, and that doesn't make someone anti black or feel superior to other black people. Because in the end, I can enjoy listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers while driving my hybrid SUV, but the police will only see another.....on the road.
I love this comment. I’m black, grew up in the suburbs as a middle class family. My dad (a baby boomer) is a HUGE rocker and a very proud black man. He always taught me to embrace my black features and our history. I’ve been told for as long as I can remember that I “talk like a white girl” but my dad never allowed me to internalize it. He told me if I’m meeting people who think annunciation of words is reserved for white people then I need to run. It kept me very grounded and secure as a young black girl into womanhood. I’m a force and most people , specifically corporate white women can’t take it. My dad and I have major beef but I’m eternally grateful for him teaching me that my interest and cadence can never chip at my blackness as long as they’re not anti black.
Like Kanye said, "can't tell me nothing." That much wealth, popularity and influence mixed with drugs, mental illness and personal tragedy are keys to creating a bubble of yes people that won't be able to help.
I think he was taken into the white house basement after that George Bush statement.
I been saying this since he started all his antics fr lmaoo I told my bsf one day when we were listening to the song, “damn we was just bopping along and whole time this was a warning” 🤣💀💀
Ugh, I was deep in my FD itch man. 38 mins should hold me over till your Drake/Kendrick essay.
FOR REAL I've been waiting for that to drop for damn near two months
It's individuals like Kanye that make it hard for me to separate art from the artist. Personally speaking. At one point can you not look away from all the bs?
I don't think it's possible to separate art from artist. Art is one of the deepest, most pure representations of individuality that there is. The truth is, abhorrent people can also have truly beautiful art inside of them. It's one of the complexities of life that you just have to deal with. I'm not going to deprive myself of the art I love just because the person is awful. The exception is if I monetarily contribute to living artists that do bad things with said money, Ala JK Rowling. (I say all this not really in regards to West, but there's other people like him for me[Wagner, Charlie Parker etc])
@@trombonegamer14well said
@@trombonegamer14You're 100% entitled to your opinion & perspective. For me it becomes hard to tolerate when these creative & talented individuals, use their influence & platforms to express vitriol and bigotry, or as a mask to hide their darker halfs until it eventually gets uncovered.
It's almost like said art I appreciated becomes tainted, cause either they're hiding who they really are or they've become so far removed from the individual they once were.
Have a nice day
I seperate art from the artist once the artist is dead. If the artist displays behavior wild enough for me to make note of it in the first place, I'm not gonna further their legacy by participating in media they created.
Yall can say you have limited engagement with the artist, only engaging with the art, but their career grows nonetheless. Penny by Penny. Listen by listen.
I feel this as I was heavy into the metal community a few years ago. Many liked black metal and would have band shirts of Burzum and other BM fans that wore merch that had ties to neo Nazis and pos ppl. I still don’t understand how ppl buy like burzum shit when varg is a literal murderer, Neo Nazi, and burned multiple religious places.
I remember being at a Kweli concert back then, and the crowd up front turning their backs on Kanye when he started rapping about his diamond encrusted belt buckle.
Watched first thing on Nebula, watching again on RUclips and commenting to feed the algorithm. Never stop FD.
You pay this guy and he can’t even like or comment
😂😂😂
@@mykalmcdo😂
@@Unionproud23FD doesn’t owe anybody who willingly pays him anything but the video content. Guaranteed this dude is just happy to support FD and his dope videos, real fans of creators don’t need likes and comments 😂
Man, I'm just going to go in for a long comment here with no concern of formalism.
Major Ex-Kanye fan. Those first five albums from The College Dropout to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy War as a teenager and still is some of the most important music I've ever heard. They radically change the way my brain thought of music and directly influenced the way I thought about art within my own sensibilities and was my entryway into rap music.
It's ironic that much this is about Kanye's possible need to be accepted within white communities because Kanye's attempts to bring conscious rap on his first two albums was the direct influence on me developing and appreciation for Gil Scott-Heron, a figure that appears frequently throughout that original run of albums. Across the original Trilogy of albums (the college dropout, late registration, and graduation), the Persona Kanye created on those albums often blended complex psychological self-analysis with genuinely unique political and religious observations that were fascinating for someone with such a major platform to be doing.
Recently, during all of the shit show with what spoken about in this video and the much stranger alleged shit like the obsession with Adolf Hitler that apparently goes back decades, I began to wonder if I was using a subconscious bigotry to influence the way I was reading Kanye as "above" other contemporaries rap artists, something I still think about to this day and combat directly. While that part of my psychology I'm dealing on my own, re-listening to those albums, especially late registration, remind me why Kanye was such a special artist what is his connection with Blackness and him trying to deal with it. He did get a major film composer / Rock producer to create orchestral Arrangements, but several songs are based around Gil Scott-Heron, Curtis Mayfield, or Bill Withers samples. Many of the sounds coming off that record are still deeply seeped within soul, r&b, and gospel while mixing the orchestral elements in inspired ways. It breathes a strong sociopolitical disconnect with the structure of society with the government distrust of heard him say, the intersection of drugs and African-American culture in crack music, the influence of money in romantic relationships on gold digger, and the fucking blood diamond trade with diamonds from Sierra Leone intertwined with emotionally vulnerable moments like Roses and Hey Mama. How the fuck could a guy that has a song describing crack being made to stop radical black political thought that then sieges into an emotionally vulnerable song about the death of his grandmother could become the dude talking about bleached assholes and wearing a white lives matter t-shirt?
At this point, the only logical conclusion is the one that FD is implying here that's the most difficult to think about; Kanye always had these issues and the conscious hip-hop Persona was itself a form of kayfabe that began breaking after the death of his mother and would completely shatter away with the release of the life of Pablo. He never truly cared about the politics, just the way it made him present as an extreme surreal contrarian. Which fucking hurts
Complex conversations about some of the people I'm going to mention here, but you wouldn't get figures like Donald Glover, Vince Staples, or Thundercat who often talked about Black masculinity and society as a whole in ways that are very untraditional but still talk to some previous tradition partly without Kanye ( although George Clinton would be a more appropriate influence on Thundercat and Childish gambino, and aspects of fly in the milk do need to be brought to mind). Even if figures like him existed before (De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest really come to mind), he somehow weaponized the Michael Jackson type of Popstar mentality to selling it. Kanye, no matter how much the original Persona was bulshit or real honesty, quite radically deconstructed things like Blackness, masculinity, and to a lesser degree neurodiversity in the 21st century. That two-part video by FD stands as one of my favorite video essays of all time because it understands so well what made Kanye such an important figure and the absolute horror of watching someone you have such a strong parasocial relationship with just go so downhill. This feels like a proper epilogue to that two-parter as it finally tackles a possible we ignored; there never was a true "old Kanye," just us as fans putting our own anxieties and disconnect from society into this man.
Old Kanye Is Dead, Long Live Old Kanye.
I think you get it. It's very complex and full of nuance. Actually every thing kanye is, is art. It's all one huge body of art. People don't understand how that type of artist mind works. I think he's in a constant mindset of creativity and expression always trying to get people to think in new and unique ways. He wants people to think and question him and everything around them. It's very intriguing. It's all art
o.o
As someone who follows F.D. but doesn't listen to Kanye (or even much rap beyond what I liked of Eminem back in school, yes boo me) I really appreciate the insight of your comment! Thank you
Thank you for your excellent comment Riley, which I will give a reply to as a white Irish (actually Irish) boy, not that I will be able to add that much.
My favourite Kayne album is Yeezus because I can't really relate to its sadness and loneliness and hope and faith in the power of art. I dont really consider it a hip hop album though, or only barely. It's more an art-punk album. That's not some weird anti-black or anti-hip hop comment, I just mean that there are almost no traditional hip hop beats on it. It should probably be grouped along with Death Grips and Clipping as "hip-hop derived punk" or "art-hop" or something like that. Danny Brown and JPEGMafia I still class as hip hop.
Life of Pablo - Ultra Light Beam is nearly his best song and then after that it's all shite. The bleached asshole was basically the end of him as an artist worthy of your attention, as has been said numerous times here.
You've just encouraged me to go back and listen to the original trilogy again. Love your historical analysis of the samples. But I won't be able to take it seriously because like you said the politics are probably all performative, whereas yeezus is art that you can really believe in.
I don't listen to Kanye but I don't think the conscious hip-hop was kayfabe for him, it was...
You ever been in a relationship where you don't feel it right off the bat, but your partner does and you want to keep at it to see your feelings develop to make it mutual?
That was my first relationship; it never happened and the fallout was horrible, but I'd like to think it wasn't for lack of trying on my part.
I really don't know much of Kanye except that he strikes me as the coddled Asperger's Syndrome/autistic kid with an ego, and what I just described with my relationship is how he seems to have felt for the black community: he tried but deep down he was hooked on white culture (as I assume he experienced from a privileged upbringing)
There's a zine called "why misogynists make great informants" talking about how sexism is often one of the biggest tells of an informant, yet how people will let it slide. It's almost like an "acceptable" form of bigotry. I thought there was so many parallels to this history of kanye, highly recommend a read, it's pretty short
Edit: you can find this piece online. Just look up the title. It's written by courtney desiree morris
Sexism is definitely the most acceptable bigotry among men and some women, you see it a lot especially with hip hop discourse. There are genuinely people who think beating your wife is the least evil evil thing you can do (and that’s not a dig at Kendrick, Drake was talking out of his ass)
Where can I get this zine?
@@AliveBoldTV if you look up the title, theres a website with the full text! It's on truthout and by courtney desiree morris. I dont wanna post a link here in case it gets blocked but yeah!
@Fenilee also interested if you could share please. Identifying these “tells” makes the work of community creation easer
@@AliveBoldTV Look up the title and it pops up. Why Misogynists Make Great Informants. It's by Courtney Desiree Morris. There's a version on truthout, but there are also other sites that host it as well
I will say, as someone with bipolar disorder, it kinda depends. Kanye has been falling into the right wing for years (over a decade by now), his disorder can't be blamed for that, but when a bipolar person is experiencing mania, they can believe, see and hear things that they would not otherwise.
I myself for a week straight was under the delusion that the world was a matrix and my real body was outside of it and there was some wife I had to escape this world to go to, I had a breakdown at work about it. I have never believed anything like that before or since, only during the episode. I know someone who thought Sans Undertale was a real person because of their mania, and another guy who randomly latched onto a conspiracy theory for two weeks and then dropped it when he came out of it.
I knew one guy who hallucinated a woman in his hallway, and know multiple people who have had auditory hallucinations with the disorder. If someone with the disorder does something that hurts someone, they should most definitely apologize afterwards, but I think it's irresponsible to treat the actions they took at the time as if they were 100% within their control and indicative of substantial anything about the person. As much as media likes to skip over the fact that bipolar disorder is a cousin to schizophrenia, it isn't just mood swings.
This was such a great video. I never thought much about the Sway interview moment beyond "Wow, that was hilarious". But him saying "It ain't Ralph though", perfectly sums up your point. Sway tries to encourage Ye to invest into the community that has been down since 03-04 and his response is to downplay them. He essentially said to Sway "What can y'all give me?"
South Park released the "Fishsticks" episode in 2009 and used Kanye basically as a narrative device to stand-in as the one person who didn't understand the "fish dicks" pun. They basically painted him as shallow, self-obsessed, unable to relate to other people, and lashing out violently at anything he doesn't understand.
15 years later and it feels as eerily prescient as it did at the VMA's that took place a few months after the episode...
I deadass remember that episode 😂
They also predicted that Carlos Mencia wasn't funny
What about the EP where south park "killed Ye" by giving cartman medication?
@@Thed538dhskwasn’t that Jlo? Either way I need to watch this asap
Gay Fish😂
The thing I always remember is that Kanye was in an SNL sketch about his tendency to interrupt awards shows BEFORE the Taylor Swift thing. He's a remarkably consistent person, we just couldn't see the signs that maybe those aspects of his personality were waiting to come out
he always was like that, he just hadn't dissed the jews
Rewatching this after your preamble in the Drake V Kendrick video to get more context to what you're going to cover in that. Looking forward to insight learning about the connections you're talking about.
Soft rebuttal: His one Sway interview calling out homophobia in Hip Hop.
This wasn't a case of the broken clock. Kanye is genuinely sober, thoughtful and contemplative. It's the only time I've seen him cast himself as the perpetrator. It might be the only time I've seen a celeb cast himself as a perpetrator. He notes how his behavior is harmful, self-reflects as to why he did it. What combination of internal qualities and external factors led him to this life choice. Then rejects the part of him that did it so he can make the world a better place for queer folk. And invites the rest of Hip Hop to do the same.
It's definitely the last time he was this thoughtful in an interview and w/o a chip on his shoulder.
...so, 2005?
Yeahh no definitely seems like a case of the broken clock
It is really interesting to hear you say that Kanye was considered a woke rapper. I listened to Mos Def, Common, and Talib Kweli but never considered Kanye to be in the same category. I always associated him with being an ego-centered rapper, minus the violence. I saw him in the same way I would come to see J. Cole, a normal dude rapping about his thoughts.
Regarding bipolar, while it doesn’t make you a racist, it can feed into conspiratorial and erratic thinking (it’s often paired with schizophrenia for that reason). One of the worst things you can be is a mentally ill person who is told they’re brilliant because those are the ones who double down on conspiracies and stop taking their meds because they won’t believe anyone knows more about anything than them and, if they feel they don’t need medication or “normal” thought, they don’t.
Sometimes, in service of protecting the self-esteem of neuro-diverse black boys from a culture that would tear them down, parents fail to humble them and overprotect them. It’s hard to balance and that would be my assessment of Kanye.
i dont think kanye ever considered himself "woke" hes always been a vain person and has called himself that, him and drake actually actually have a lot in common
I agree with you describing J Cole as a guy rapping about his thoughts. However, Kanye was brilliant was a child which was shown in his documentary. Many people who struggle with mental illness especially bipolar disorder & schizophrenia are very talented but due to their illness it can hinder it. Donda West was very supportive of him but she was also honest. Kanye’s bad decisions and antiblack tendencies are the cause his own doing unfortunately.
@@user-td2zx2jy3c Is he any more brilliant than R. Kelly? We have to stop acting like bi-polar and schizophrenia automatically make you a savant. Both run in my family and some people are brilliant, some are not regardless of mental health. The issue is if you’re brilliant and everyone keeps telling you that to make a profit or cover your flaws. R. Kelly and Kanye are both surrounded by yes-men. Kanye acts like every smart, neuro-diverse black boy with social issues I’ve ever worked with. The difference is whether their parents and people around them focus more on their brilliance or more on their maladaptive social behaviors. Often, with black boys, to shield their self-esteem, parents focus less on that maladaptive behavior and Kanye gives those vibes. I am not blaming his parents for his behavior. I am saying that fame brought out his worst tendencies. Is he was a normal dude, he’d just be that really annoying uncle at family events that starts fights with everyone.
Woke wasn't even a thing back then, it was called conscious hip-hop. I think he was probably more supposed to be bridging the gap between conscious and commercial than wanting to be strictly pigeonholed as conscious.
A good example is the song All Falls Down off his first album, where he uses a play on the word "conscious", by talking about being self-conscious and that driving him to be materialistic, which he acknowledges in the song is ultimately a form of mental slavery. This was a very common theme in conscious lyrics, but as Kanye says "we all self-conscious, I'm just the first to admit it".
Other evidence of his early adjacency to conscious hip-hop not mention by FD is that he produced Get By by Talib Kweli, which was a fucking banger. And signed Common as one of the first people on GOOD Music, and exec produced his whole next album. This was a pretty big deal at the time because Common was almost considered underground.
Bipolar can definitely turn you into a racist if part of your obsessions ends up rolling on religion and spirituality, which Kanye's notably did, because of the proliferation of racism within religious institutions and dogma over the past 2000 years, and their recontextualization of old world texts projected onto modern understandings of language.
There is a lot of stuff about black people and having no souls, or black souls making peoples skin change color, etc in there.
Ill say this, as one of those percieved 'white' Black kids.
I had a ton of self-hatred for myself growing up and it was largely even internalized by my parents as long as I did well in school to eventually become something. I think what helped me out back then was actually having a black girlfriend who actually made me feel not alone in that disconnect and slowly it changed my perspective on others including myself. I definitely resented being Black and 'being one of the good ones' but it started to click that I did good for myself. So I started actually carrying myself with that energy through the end of HS and finished College without too much debt. Working at a decent job and I do feel more positive.
That kind of anti-blackness; Its something you either dig out of to see yourself as worth something or you wallow endlessly searching for validation to prove yourself in the eyes of others. If you like yourself, itll be harder to change but if you value too much of how others see you, youll never be satisfied. Then you become a Candace or a Kanye whos so disconnected they can only go back on what know works.
Interesting self analysis. It makes me think about the deep roots of racialized trauma and all the ways we need to bend ourselves in order to grit and bear this reality.
Healing also happens in relationships, so the more we connect with others the more we are able to form new understandings of self. To be outcast can create a sense of self loathing that can manifest in pretty awful ways.
Kanye is a poster child for internalized racism and it makes me sad.
Do you think that maybe if you were surrounding by adults that mirror this type of black you would have not fallen into that whole in the first place?
@@o._c. People like FD? Yeah it would have helped but honestly its very difficult to understate how pervasive that feeling can be. Every success is because you are expected to be, but every failure will feel like all eyes on you to watch as if you're a lost investment. It was in school with other kids judging you, it was what teachers teach with whitewashed books, it's in culture with people who don't recon that everyone's human and some just aren't lucky in capitalism at all.
It was that kind of toxic mindset of "working twice as hard to end up having half the pay" for me.
I was in a similar boat growing up. I had two black parents with masters degrees and went to predominantly white schools for elementary-middle, all the while I heard my parents subtly speaking down on black culture all the time. It wasn’t until the past couple of years that I realized I had internalized a lot of anti-blackness and subconscious prejudice for black people, but going to an HBCU has helped me tremendously.
That’s a lot of word girl
The meme at 1:00 is hilarious
His mom nurtured and advocated for a very quiet, shy kid to pursue his dreams. Now he feels the need to show her he’s independent and her work wasn’t in vain. When his mother passed he became a contrarian; he became obsessed w conflict due to his loss of stabilization. 808’s was sonically a mess. It’s only so beautiful bc he’s a savant. It reflects his attitude;disruptive, layered and filled w anomaly. The hate he spews now shows insularity wealth has afforded him. No one has reminded him that demonstrably false ideas are not under attack, they are just wrong.
His mom’s career as an educator should be inspected as well. Think about it, he came out w the whole hood-preppy look, there was mostly likely some respectability politics he was raised w that have only grown throughout his life
i fully agree with this
That sums it up. Contrarian, he doesn't seem to believe most of the controversial ideas he says. He just wants to defy
Definitely. His mother’s death really ushered in an era of unhinged contrarian-ness for Kanye.
I actually agree because 808s is the one year album i like (and definitely recognize it’s influence) but i dont like it as much as his other work
Thanks for what you said about bipolar disorder. Having bipolar disorder was pretty rough during those kanye nazi months where people just flat out blamed his ideological shift on a fricken mood disorder.. Dude was a nazi for way longer than Charlie Sheen was winning. Can't blame that on a mood disorder. We don't turn nazi, we get really super duper sad or extremely energetic... We don't turn into nazis..
The conversation that was being had around bipolar disorder at that time was HARD to listen to. Sometimes you can't help but internalize some of those things and wonder "to the people I know think the same things about me?"
Just shows the people excusing Kanye at the time didn't really care about his mental health. Just wanted to point and laugh, and justify it after the fact so they didn't have to feel bad or think twice before doing it again.
than again, all mood disorders are different for different people, and i’m assuming you didn’t lose your own mother to a decision you made (moving to LA). Along with the weight of having the entire media waiting and watching for you to mess up.
@@soarsoverearth mood disorders don't cause you to become a nazi. Don't care how much trauma you've gone through. There's always an example of someone who went through similar stuff and made different choices
He's since said he was misdiagnosed and was extremely drugged to keep his behaviour in check. 🤷🏾♂️ n funny how everyone pointed to his alleged bipolar disorder but he's never done that himself in the heat of controversy lol. As far as the nazi thing, hey. If that's what u think he is, I don't got the energy to argue against it at this point lol. I will say it's extremely similar to when he cosigned Trump & once u get down to the why that was the case, the Hitler thing isn't a surprise. But Kanye makes no effort to make himself more understandable so it is what it is lol
I grew up with a bipolar father. I can smell these things from miles away, since I learned to feel those behaviours since very young. With kanye, my alarm goes wild. But also with young kanye. I know you said in the beginning, that you cant justify everything with being bipolar. But I can tell you, that those actions discussed are easily linked to it, I can feel it.
Same, and yeah, it doesn’t excuse their actions, but it certainly explains their actions. It doesn’t mean you give them a pass, but at least you can understand what is going on with them.
A bi polar person going through low level psychosis can do some crazy, otherwise inexcusable stuff. In my opinion then excusable.
The whole "bipolar doesn't make you act this bad" thing is like really pretty ableist. To me, it shows how much people are only willing to accept and support mild mental illness. 100% he's still accountable for his actions but the way people decide that they're too uncomfortable with his actions to believe it's mental illness is wild to me. I don't think it's intentional or anything, but I do think it's a problem.
@@rhi-y8d people are just flakey, we create narratives, use narratives as long as it fits OUR narrative.
So in your words his actions are the result of him being bipolar because you feel it…
Then what am I
there's one line on Yeezus that's very telling: "soon as you like you, make 'em un-like you"
the entire culture let him down during the yeezus era. he was talking about glass ceilings and structural forces that even a superstar as big as 2013 kanye west couldnt get through. after 5 straight classics and changing the genre and the cultural sound and style and fashion. boldly declaring he doesnt need the systems approval "soon as they like you make em unlike you, cause kissing people ass so unlike you" seconds before calling out the billionaires and corrupt government agents profiting off of black people.
the response to his cry for help was "why is he so angry" and "yeezus is trash where are the soul samples". i fully understand how he stopped trying to do anything for his culture and just went on his own after that. hip hop deserved a poser like drake who doesnt care about the culture and instead enforces the oppressive systems for the billionaires as the biggest artist of the genre. its fitting.
@@NacrunoCreations they will never get it, Kanye is easy engagement tho so kudos
@@NacrunoCreations "declaring he doesn't need the systems approval" yet was upset that they weren't embracing him and giving him the seat at the table he wanted. He really just came across as bitter for not being able to get his way, especially when certain people were tryinv to tell him to make his own way and prove them wrong if he wanted it so bad...yet he managed to lash out at them too despite the fact that they were trying to help him.
Regardless of what he'd done for hiphop up to that point, he wasn't entitled further fandom and keys to the city because of it...especially in the context of trying to break into a different industry. You wanna form partnerships in this world, then it's a hard reality that you have to put in the work to prove your worth first - not lash out when people can't see your vision.
@@Chrisratata Well he proved them wrong in the end.
@@FrancoisDressler yeah but he was being childish as to how he was pushing back on some very basic advice: if you have a passion and a vision for something yet the people up top don't want it, then figure out another way to make something happen. All Sway and Charlamagne was telling Ye is that he wasn't broke so figure something out - they were being supportive yet Ye lashed out at them anyway.
Nobody seems to talk about the death of his mom, and how his behavior became so much more outrageous and anti Black after she passed.
Just to clarify - I don't mean this as "he's grieving." No. I'm saying he doesn't have to "behave" for her now that she's gone.
He was never an anti black.
I've commented the same theory in a few places. I think you're absolutely right. I genuinely believe she was the last person in his life who challenged (especially in constructive ways) his behavior and ideas.
My theory is he got comfortable sticking out or being controversial and began to associate that friction with progress. But he surrounded himself with sycophants which meant to get the same level of challenge he had to get increasingly radical.
@mdwoni425 but he is. And he was.
Let's not forget he was spending heavily on his mum out of love, and that's what ultimately ended her life... he paid for the surgery that ended fatally, and if I was in his position, I'd go pretty off the rails mentally too... I'm not saying the theory in ur comment is wrong about him no longer needing to behave, but I think it's a horrible blend of multiple factors. I think it's the fact he knows he caused her death, but also, she's not there anymore to reel him in. That could give even the most mentally stable person a lot of stuff to work through to the point it might never be reckoned with.
@@itmeurdad Absolutely this
Kanye wasn’t ever really conscious, he just came up in a time where if you weren’t gangsta rap you were conscious and as that changed the true Kanye was revealed
That explains why he gets more credit than he deserves for being a "visionary" or thinker ahead of his time.
Best example is insane people giving him crazy "credit" for exposing the current conflict in the middle east.
People are just marrying the 2 but those rants were self-serving, shallow, hateful tirades.
What real truth bombs or knowledge did he drop?
Kanye music was definitely conscious.
kanye was conscious rapper, all falls down what rapper was rapping about being insecure.
This is a terrible take
He was def conscious at some point in his music from Jesus Walks to All Falls down and Diamonds from Sierra Leone. His old MTV interview with Swae about the rampant culture of homophobia in rap back in 05. He wasn't always so reactionary
There have been times when I have written you off or taken time away because of my own intellectual and personal journey. But I really appreciate how consistent you are. I come back and you make more sense than before
I’m a Gen Xer from the bay and the sway interview was the moment I completely left Ye alone. The Bay is where hip hop got independent spirit. The fact that Kanye was telling a Bay legend he only saw success through the eyes of white people was heartbreaking. Musically he had fallen off for me by then. But I didn’t have a problem with him or his character until after that. Then slavery was a choice was the point of no return.
I was working at the Medieval Times gift shop right around the time “Late Registration” came out. Kanye, with posse in tow, stopped by every register demanding he be given things for free. Using that all too familiar line of nepotists and c-listers, “Do you know who I am?” It spoke volumes about him, and I was never able to take him as genuine ever since.
Best retort to "Do you know who I am" is _"Do I care?"_
@@bazzfromthebackground3696 I always liked the retort where someone declares they don't care if they're an even bigger figure, they still have to pay. e.g. "I don't care if you're the President of the United States, that's still gonna be $10.50."
I like the reply “I do now”. But you gotta be capable of delivering it right to make it burn properly. But I always favour subtlety in my retorts. It might not hit as hard in the moment but the burn lasts way longer and leaves a permanent mark on their subconscious when delivered properly.
@Mextazectaces Damn bro. The saying "all our heroes have feet of clay" seems appropriate here.
Sucks to hear these things, but unfortunately not too surprising at this point.
i can’t believe people say that irl
i think your point abt kanye's antisemitism is great. he's not abt the NOI, his antisemitism actually comes from anti blackness i think. he's very focused on the idea of jews as elites/manipulators, but almost exclusively as damaging white/american hegemonic culture.
♡ a jewish sociologist
This is was a perfect analysis. Deserves more thumbs up!
I dont think Kanye actually thinks through the implications of the things he says.
Lol
I think it comes from him realizing that he was being used for their benefit. He woke up to the whole "we don't control everything, but if you say something about us we will ruin your career and prevent you from getting a job etc etc". They started NWA (Jerry Heller) which started the gangster rap movement and has decimated their culture to this day. I think I would be upset to.
You missed the whole point. His antisemitism comes from hating Zionists and what they believe, but if you identify with them too good job for making yourself known.
Sir your mind is brilliant! I'm happy the algorithm helped me find you! ❤🎉
Hearing 2024 Kanye say 'yo dot I got you' reads like a neo-nazi defending Mel Brooks films.
this is so fucking funny
Him and Kendrick believe the same things
Kendrick and Kanye are not too far off from each other artistically or mentally. Yall just pick and choose
@@RADIOACTIVEYOUTH I must have missed all of the times Kendrick condoned Hitler or blamed black people for slavery.
I was in highschool when Kanye dropped graduation. At the very least, Slowjams is in every one of my spotify yearly wraped lists but at a certain point you've got to death of the author the shit out of someone and accept that no matter how talented they are they dont deserve a platform to make the world a worse place.
@@RADIOACTIVEYOUTHgive some examples.
As a person with bipolar disorder, I empathize with Kanye. Having BD can 100% make you act like an asshole during manic episodes because your perception of what is appropriate becomes so warped. Whenever I come out of a manic episode there’s this terrible comedown from having all that energy & anger & being hypersexual & I’m trying to navigate that while simultaneously cleaning up whatever messes manic me made. It’s not an excuse to harm others. My therapist helps me check myself sometimes & I’m learning to fix my behavior. Ijs I can imagine that having fans & yes men constantly validating your behavior would make it hard to see when you’re wrong because you can’t actually trust your own feelings.
🙏🏾🥺
Sending you love and light ❤️ praying for healing less and less episodes for you ❤️
thanks for sharing this, I felt kinda the same way when I learnt that Kanye has or might have BD, my sister has it and her journey is so hard. Of course it's no excuse to Kanye's behavior towards BIPOC and women. The way BD brain is wired might scare those who've never been close to someone that has it or empathetic enough to someone with BD.
Same - people don't care, though. They just hate on people like Kanye when he's clearly in the middle of mania, and then they'll put out a cute little tweet on World Mental Health Day to "show support" - people are fake as hell. They need people suffering below them on the psychological ladder so they can sleep better at night and feel better about their own misery.
im pretty sure hes also dealing with a psychotic episode that he wont get out of or heal from while surrounded by yes men
FD really fighting my inner Kanye fan 😂
💯. I'm totally aware and still listening 😞😑😑😑😑
@@grandlotus2 I keep giving his music a chance, I must be a masochist at this point.
@@KinggDC I know I am
@@KinggDC I hate being a kanye fan, it.....
not that amazing anymore..
@@NeoEvanA.R.T it hasn’t been amazing since I was in highschool before all the maga hat bullshit and before he told Jay Z to call him on stage.
Just started listening to you last night and I’m hooked
Thank you for saying this. Knowing that your audience is primarily men makes this 1000x’s better because they will not listen to me when I tell them that Kanye is not “great” or “genius” for being a unafraid to be a brazen contrarian. Anyone can do that, but we choose not to because we’re sane, reasonable, and not crying out for attention and that’s a good thing. 🤷🏽♀️
saying kanye wasnt a genius atleast one point in his life is just objectively wrong, he's not a great person but you cant discredit everything
I think he was always ahead of the curve artistically. That wasn't hype. But I've never trust him as a spokesperson or representative of anything. I don't why people (usually men) do that.
Screams white
@@ronaldorobertson4697 talented, yes. genius no
Kanye was a genius when it came to making music in the past. Only in music was he that anybody acting as if he was a genius outside of that is delulu.
The thing that changed about Kanye was he lost his restlessness. The restlessness he had made him focus on rapping and getting what he wanted. After he got what he wanted, he started saying his beliefs. He never tried to hide anything, his priorites just changed, and he forgot his past.
Yes, and he got to complaining, rather than pushing for change and excelling to his potential.
19:31 Chris Tucker’s look then will always get me every time lol
Bro so unintentionally funny, Chris Tucker is a legend😂😂😂
I definitely screamed 💀
I’ve only been hip to you for a few weeks. But I’ve watched/listened to at least 10 videos; you’re easily the best journalistic RUclips platform by far!! No bias, while acknowledging bias in every video, yet still not showing it. 🙏🏾‼️ while some might say the videos are lengthy, I think the back stories are needed, most of the likewise styles of yours, don’t do so, which leads to them spreading misinformation or inaccurate takes. We need more of you!! 🙏🏾
This honestly makes so much sense. It explains why Doja, Logic and other rappers that grew up in white spaces view their old rap -that they used to push them into star dom- with such "distaste"
It's so sad. They parade in blackness until stardom so they can throw away blackness for the whiteness they always wanted .
Logic definitely doesn't fall into that category. He sold out with everybody/COADM era but his heart is in the roots of boom bap and old hip hop. And he grew up in a mainly black atmosphere, he just gets perceived as white cuz he's so light skin
@@ceefahie Logic is white lmaoo
That self-hatred is crazy
He grew up in Gaithersburg MD. Not exactly the Chocolate City DC Is/was but racially diverse nonetheless. I agree with the first part of what you said tho@@ceefahie
Trite
i love mike myers' face after he drops that. he's just in total shock lmao
Even back when everyone loved Kanye all I could wonder is "Why did he use a song about a woman being good to her man to make a song about women being trash?"
The man hasn't even changed, he's just become more obvious as the internet grew.
which song is that?
@@bleachjazz1726gold digger samples i got a woman by ray charles
@@bleachjazz1726 Gold Digger, it is built around a sample of "I Got a Woman" by Ray Charles where he sings "she give me money when I'm in need"
But Kanye tries desperately to fit it into a "women be shoppin" narrative going so far as to have the music video start with Jamie Foxx singing "She take my money..."
Pure divorced dude energy right there, that's so _bitter_ of him 😓
@@radishfestGold Digger came out way before his marriage
This is so good man, I would f love to see this type of content about hiphop, thank you FD❤ this is a pure gem. Also your video about Canibus was phenomenal. Not considering the fact that when I was a kid I was surfing RUclips to find more information about my favourite hiphop artists (who mostly were underground like canibus and there were nothing besides hours of interviews lol). To see you talk about all these old live performances, interviews and freestyles is f wholesome, back in the day I would beg to see something like this, damn😩. I wish I'll have a chance to see you do a video about Organized Konfusion, they got pretty interesting story, of them being so freaking good but struggling with labels and contracts. I remember listening to Pharaohe Monch's verse on Releasing Hypnotical Gasses (from their self titled album 1991) and I was shocked that there were nobody talking about it, not gonna lie, i was fiening too hard with this song, I thought it was too far ahead of it's time, it sounded like it was released by outkast in late 90's. I kinda forgot about how good Canibus was, but this video throw me back to those days when i used to listen to old underground artists and groups who weren't that famous but had so much creativity that it keeps amazing me to these days. Thank you for your content sir, love from Russia❤
as a white boy who went through the whole "saying wildly offensive shit is actually just a haha funny" phase as a very isolated teenager I found that my days spent spewing right-wing talking points and outright hatred under the thin facade of comedy and eventual rejection of those ideas to be a really formative moment in my devlopment and people like you (not you specifically cuz this was like nearly 10 years ago now but I'm pretty sure youll have a similar impact on some of the younger generations) who make this sort of informative left-wing thought pieces had a pretty big hand in that, so thanks for that or something idk this has little to do with the video but I fealt like saying it... yeah.... bye
If you start to think for yourself and get in touch with your emotions, you'll discover that all of the extremes are kinda shit. But the first step is to go outside and talk with real people. You'll constantly live in that bubble at home with extreme opinions coming left and right at you but we often forget that there's a real world out there and being angry will only bring harm to yourself and won't change anything. This is almost a form of self-abuse to stay at home on the internet and listen to all these political and extreme statements.
I agree that isolation like that is self abuse and that you shouldn't blindly follow what people on the internet say and should form your own opinions and world view, and of course you should go outside and make friends. I just don't agree that extremes are wholly bad (also I wouldn't call this video/content-creator extreme unless you deem anything beyond the status quo as such) or that anger is entirely harmful, I mean every product we consume comes at the cost of someone thousands of miles away suffering and often dying and I think everyone should be angry about that if we want to have a chance at stopping it, the devices you and I typed these on have likely had someone die to harvest the materials, someone suffer to put it together, those people will be payed pennies while those at the top will get millions. But anyway one more thing I've found that my political bubble as you call it has largely followed me into the real world with most of my friends having similar views to me and the ones who don't really don't care when I go into my more extreme rhetoric in fact arguing over those things have been a bonding experience for us so it's not like you can't exist outside of the internet with extreme ideologys both on the left and sadly with groups like neo nazis on the right.
@@w花bthe “extreme” left outside of deeply online takes like “Pol Pot did nothing wrong” is good actually
@En-Ki-Lil do you even know what the extreme left is? You have a weekend because of the extreme left
@@PrincessMadeira To speak twitter: extreme rhetoric ≠ "extreme" positions
But seriously, hot takes and twitter style discourse is generally counterproductive to actually changing someone's mind. I feel that that's part of what OP is getting at with his discussion about "extreme online discourse". The quick, witty one liners feel good to write, but tend to stifle an actual conversation.
It's kind of what FD is getting at with Kanye's contrarian statements. Kanye might say radical things, but it looks like that's coming out of attention seeking rather than actual belief in what he's saying. If you actually believe "radical" things, then you should genuinely explain why you believe it. That's the way to turn "radical" into "common sense" the same way as it has for the 8 hour working day.
Of if you would prefer to speak twitter again, you could read that entire paragraph as: "touch grass". Your choice.
Honestly I got to a point where I stopped saying I miss the old Kanye and just started saying, I miss his old music. But now that I'm older, I can see he has always had a grandiose personality that was probably unchecked and slowly became unhealthy.
People don't realize that the whole music industry changed and kanye tried to stay relavant while also being innovative. He had his hits and misses. People have no idea how hard that man works and his vast output. Like many of our black artist he doesn't get enough credit for all he does and has done.
@@KareemDaKing he gets an appropriate amount of credit.
@@JillStJohn-qj8gs not really when people are posting videos claiming kanye was never good. 😮💨
@@KareemDaKing To be fair he's saying personality he still says the music is amazing
@@danrandy1884Was*
I’m leaving a second comment to just say I’ve never seen a comment section as interesting as the video. Everyone’s making great add ons.
Thank you. I appreciate these essays very much
Dawg been told us to wait til he get his money right
THIS
Lol damn. Truer words.....
He stayed true to his word... that's commendable 🍂
Yeah, okay. I'll be listening to Tori Amos' chord progressions in the meantime😂
OooooO
I just love your breakdowns, FD. You’re so good at what you do. So glad you exist on this platform.
"Y'all we leaving right now" from that woman at the Kayne for President rally the moment after he said "Well Harriet Tubman never actually freed the slaves, she just had the slaves go work for other white people."
I owe somebody at RUclips a graveyard staycation for trying to sneak this video on me while I was half sleep Ye is the Goat. Don't recommend or auto play me any nonsense like this.
Hahahaha wow
You really a fan of new Kanye music?!
@foreverNwonder Jesus Lord, OG Forever Rolling and OG Time Moving Slow, Take Off Your Dress, and Unlock whenever it releases is still gas. Sick to my stomach this video even got a play from me because I'd never click or sit through something like this consciously. This is also apparently one of the places that braindead unplugged controller meme sprouted up in too, completely overlooking Lucian's conspicuous absence at Drake's side during the beef. Hell I'll go listen to a Like that Remix right now with a spliced in Dababy verse just to pressure clean my ears of this BS.
ppl blaming kim for kanyes descent is just misogyny
The alleged insider details are that Kim and her team helped Kanye immensely, often without him even knowing what they did to prop him up, and without them he’s been flailing business and financial wise
@@wplants9793 I wouldn't be surprised, she's always maintained the position of "he's the father of my kids I have to try and help him". I bet she would feel very guilty for her kids if she contributed to it
yeah her family saved him a couple times from bankruptcy in the life of pablo era
Do you even know what the word means
Kanye had jesters privilege lol
28:45 That lady's "Jesus Christ, Candace" was just perfect. I mean even growing up in white church, I still learned what a call and response is. It's pretty fundamental to like, every church service I've ever seen or participated in.
Fd I wanted to say that your videos have been a part of my healing journey and thank you for what you are doing.
Thank you for this, I'm a musician/composer and have been on a deep dive on Kanye for a little more than 3 months now and you really put into words the theories I'd been drawing about Kanye the man and how he has evolved over time.
There's so much to comment on here but to talk about one thing, maybe to give a little more credit to Kanye's sense of civil duty but to reframe why he's off the mark: "Yeezus" has some of the most hard hitting "conscious" subject matter in any of his records from talking about his individual experience breaking into the fashion industry as a black man all the way to talking about the prison industrial complex (in 2013, mind you) and how the government incentivizes and collaborates with the private prison industry to disproportionately imprison and therefore enslave black people. While this theme is prevalent in Yeezus, the narrative of the album describes a man battling systemic injustice who deduces he must be the one to solve it since no one else is making the strides he is but he is riddled with his own demons he has to overcome; in essense and in Kanye's mind, the systemic critique is reduced to an individual problem. In Kanye's interview run accompanying Yeezus' rollout, when asked about capitalism and how it fuels the private prison system and injustices within the racist Euro-centric arts/fashion spaces, Kanye goes out of his way to clarify that he blames the people running the companies and not the systems themselves (ie crony capitalism).
Kanye's strong sense of ego/self combined with the capitalistic framework of "individualism" stops Kanye from fully being on the mark with his critiques because, as the representation of black wealth in hip hop in the 2000's and especially as he became the richest black man in US history in the mid 2010's, he is diametrically opposed to the idea of class criticism and how it intersects with race.
When describing how MTV wouldn't allow Michael Jackson's videos to be played because they were too "urban" (a comparison he drew to mirror his being walled from the fashion industry), Kanye said "Michael Jackson isn't even black: he's Michael Jackson"; I believe Kanye ascribes to this idea of divorcing himself from the general black populace utilizing the rationale that his individual merits withing the white capitalists system *should* displace him from blackness in that system's eyes. Very much the OJ quote.
As someone who was in high school in Kenya between the years of 1999-2002 when Neo Soul was huge as a genre, i can tell you that Kanye fell off in the same fashion that John Legend did. They both seemed "grounded" when they were around artists in the Neo Soul genre, whether the rapping or singing end. The minute they went mainstream and didnt have people like Dwele, Selena, Talib, etc around them, i knew they weren't for me and i knew they'd make lots of money obviously, but many of their fans would wake up YEARS later. Its happening now for Kanye and it already happened for John Legend. I'm just thankful i moved on from their toxicity before i was even 20.
I dunno man but ill ruminate on your sentiments
kenya mentioned🇰🇪🇰🇪🇰🇪🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅
Bruh Kanye was still around all of them people around him even when he went mainstream. Most of them grew tired of being around kanye & did there own thing
Kenya West
@@tredadon444 I should've said "making music with" instead of just "around". The process of making music is very deep and involving especially if you're around people who are self aware like most of the artists in that genre were back then. I'm pretty sure hanging around Jay Z isn't the same as hanging out with the gentlemen of Slum Village, as an example.
in my opinion just based on kanye’s past interviews (before the antisemitism) i feel like he’s been very consistent that he’s not trying to get the attention of white people specifically, but rather trying to break into spaces that were traditionally reserved only for white people. that’s the main point he was tryna make in the “how sway” video. and he did just that, without kanye there is no virgil abloh getting creative director at LV. he paved the way for others to follow in his footsteps in rap, fashion, and business. he stood up and said that he will be respected by CEOs, nations leaders and industry moguls as a black man and for a time he received that respect. even one of the situations you bring up with taylor swift had nothing to do with appeasing white people. it was about championing beyoncé and her getting what she deserved and he wasn’t afraid of the backlash of majority white hateful country fans going after him to make that statement.
aside from that tho i do think you nailed it with the contrarian thing. kanye has always loved going against the grain and that def has recently taken him down dark paths but i don’t think that means that everything he’s done previously can simply be chalked up to him taking the contrarian path. i do think he used to do things with more intention.
update: just wanted to edit and say that i love your videos and the amount of research you put into them. one of my favorite channels tbh
Man, I have to give you respect. You have low key become my favorite analyst of Hip Hop culture. One of my very favorite RUclipsrs. Keep doing you big cousin.
I'm at 22:30. That little goofy grin is fascinating to me, because it's exactly the same face my brother, who also has bipolar, makes when he's manic and is trying to wind people up. It's almost like he wants the energy in the room to match his own heightened energy. That little goofy grin ALWAYS precedes the most obnoxious, tailored to make me angry, nonsense I'll hear all month. It's weird. My brother chooses not to manage his bipolar because he believes he doesn't need to and the more I hear about Kanye, the harder it is not to map one onto the other. I don't know how to explain the way that it feels like I can see the, i don't know, *flavor* of the assholery change when my brother's going through an episode. It is absolutely impossible to draw a hard line between what is "him" and what is attributable to his mental illness, but that little grin reminds me so, SO much of days when ALL he wants to do is make everyone else as excited and upset and loud as he's feeling.
He has been like this since he was little, it's always been how he picked on me, but like I said the *flavor* of it 100% changed when he got older and the family bipolar definitely kicked in. I have no attachment to Kanye, at all. I mourn the relationship I used to have with my brother and how I'll probably never get that back because he doesn't care enough to do anything about it. I WANT to be able to blame it on the illness, and to just say he has no agency in being an asshole, because how else can I hope to get him back? He's my brother.
Praying for your brother's mental health & that yall can get yall relationship back...
Before i even watch, grew up Chicago adjacent (Evanston) 38 years old. Mr. West had been telling us from jump he was going to be a problem. You all know the line
“Wait till i get my money right, then you can’t tell me nothing right”
A under looked at turning point was him getting an honorary degree from the art Institute of Chicago. Watch the clip of him getting that degree and you will see the last time Kanye was left stunned for words.
He made Diamonds are forever though🥲
Fr
Crazy how everyone says "he made Graduation" as his saving grace, and that's his 8th best project.
That song takes me back every time I hear it.
Man. You just said the Dixie Chicks. I swear. I am such a fan of your channel… I grew up as a wanna-be hip hop head. NAS- “I know I can..” and CREAM. I always think what happened to the DC’s?
The Chicks were on point about the war. I listened to Immortal Technique. I miss both IT and DC!!! You WIN the internet!!! So much to say here!
I hope you also lecture on a campus somewhere to help young people understand how we grew up on a whole other level! Thank you for being here and for all you do!!!
Hiding in the backroom watching this at 1.5 pretending I can't see how busy it is out on the floor
If I worked with you I'd be mad but understanding of this lol
Watching anything at 1.5 is legitimately insane
Good for you. You deserve a break once in a while too. I support this.😂
@@Psilocin-Citytutorials
HEY, GET BACK TO WORK 🗣️
Need a 'Lupe Fiasco is Underappreciated' video, sir
That’s never going to happen
That's my boi.
Fr
@@Renegade-kf8fp why
I think Lupe gets the right amount of praise from the people that matter. His new joints are boring. Good emcee though.
Playing “Jesus Walks” to ignore it and work on a Memphis Bleek jawn is mental 😭😂
This was extremely insightful, thank you for sharing here.