Front Burner - Kanye West’s words and consequences

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, made a name — and a fortune — for himself making and saying whatever pops into his head. But for nearly a decade the things he says have increasingly become rooted in bigotry, ignorance and hatred. His recent and repeated antisemitic statements emboldened a group of people to throw Nazi salutes and unfurl a banner above a Los Angeles highway that read "Kanye is right about the Jews." His comments also resulted in the termination of his hugely lucrative partnership with Adidas and he was dropped by CAA, one of the world's major agencies. Despite this he remains one of the most influential and deeply embedded cultural figures of the 21st century, a reality that is hard to shake for many people. Today on Front Burner, Elamin Abdelmahmoud, a longtime chronicler of Kanye, senior culture writer at Buzzfeed and host of the CBC podcast Pop Chat joins us to discuss the rap star's long history of saying things he shouldn't, absorbing the consequences and coming back.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Last week on a Los Angeles highway overpass, a group of demonstrators unfurled a banner and threw Nazi salutes. The banner read, Kanye is right about the Jews.

Yet another controversy for Kanye West, also known as Ye. He's been locked out of his Twitter account now, the platform suspending him after an anti-Semitic tweet. That tweet said, quote, when I wake up, I'm going death con three on Jewish people. His tweet continued saying, quote, the funny thing is I actually can't be anti-Semitic because Black people are actually Jew. Ye is a musician, fashion mogul, and cultural lightning rod formerly known as Kanye West.

And he's been called out many times over his nearly 20-year career. But it seems that his blatant anti-Semitism is the last straw. And he's telling me, like, yo, I want you to visit the Holocaust Museum. And I was like, yo, I want you to visit Planned Parenthood. That's our Holocaust Museum. When I wore the White Lives Matter T-shirt, the Jewish underground media mafia already started attacking me. Paparazzi taking a picture of you, you ain't getting no money off it.

You just get used to getting screwed by the Jewish media. He was kicked off Twitter, he's been dropped by CAA, and a completed documentary was indefinitely shelved. Balenciaga Fashion House cut ties with him and perhaps, most shockingly to Ye himself, I could say anti-Semitic things and Adidas can't drop me. Now what? Adidas canceled their partnership with Ye, which is estimated to generate $2 billion a year

for the German brand, nearly 10% of its revenue. As is usually the case when Ye says or does something outrageous, offensive, bigoted, there is already talk about how or if he can recover from this. And that's because that cycle of controversy and comeback is how it's always worked with Kanye. Today, we're joined by Elamin Abdul-Mahmoud, longtime chronicler of Kanye, senior culture writer at BuzzFeed, host of CBC podcast Pop Chat, and last but not least, friend of the pod, to discuss Kanye's long history of saying things he shouldn't, absorbing the consequences, and coming back. Alameen, hey.

Hey, what's up? Not much. Thank you very much for coming on. Of course. So look, Ye's latest comments are not the first controversial or even bigoted things he's said or done in his nearly two decade career in the spotlight. And I'm wondering if we can kind of pick apart how Kanye became such an embedded figure in the culture, you know, like to the point where he certainly felt that he could say

anything and face little consequence. I feel like the most obvious place to start is the music. And what is it about Kanye's music that has made him so hard to let go for so many people, you think? Yeah, I think this is maybe one of the things that people don't necessarily understand about the relationship to Kanye is that Kanye burst down the scene with a trio of albums that are considered sort of instant classics in their own rights, college dropout, late registration, and graduation. And the way that he arrived was like, he was fully baked. It was like a vision of someone who knows exactly who he is what he has to offer the culture uh it was a counter-cultural moment at the time so he

i would say he courted the image of being like this conscious rapper who was rapping everything that was like opposite um what the rap moment was calling for at the time it was like a very materialistic rap moment and he came on the scene and he was critical of this. You know, one of the first moments that we heard him, just like at all, rap was him coming out on All Falls Down. And he questions himself for saying, you know what, why am I so materialistic? Why am I into all of, you know, flashing my bling and flashing my bling and flashing my jewelry. We buy a lot of clothes, but we don't really need them. Things we buy to cover up what's inside. Because they made us hate ourself and love their wealth. That's why Shorty's telling where the ball is at.

Drug dealer by Jordan, crack kid by crack. And a white man get paid off for all of that. This is the guy who got on the radio with a song called Jesus Walks. That's unusual. That's an unusual rapper to come on the radio was a song called Jesus Walks. That's unusual. That's an unusual rapper to come on the scene, but he was so good at crafting the narratives in his music, but also his signature sound, which was taking old soul samples

and then remixing them and making them into something new. It was just a pleasure to spend time with him. He is one of the most critically acclaimed artists of his generation, if not the most critically acclaimed. I remember when he dropped My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010, the Atlantic's tagline was American Mozart. Like, that's the level we're dealing with here, right? Is that like, this is not just a guy who raps.

It's someone who reinvented the form and probably helped push rap music to become the dominant form of popular music, at least right now. His next artistic slash business venture is into the world of fashion, which actually is what ended up making him a billionaire, right? And can you go through Kanye's journey into the world of fashion and the success he found in it? I mean, even that is like not even, you know, the straightforward story. Kanye started with this internship at Fendi in the late aughts. And he was laughed out of the room quite often. He had a lot of interesting fashion ideas that he wanted to bring to the table. But the fashion world kind of saw him and said, you know what? Like there is fashion.

There's like high fashion. And then there's like street fashion. And never shall the twain meet in any kind of way. And he was angry. And that made him really frustrated. And then somewhere along the way, his clothes, which are a lot of neutrals, a lot of minimalism into his clothes. They started, they were being panned for a while. But then they started getting decent reviews.

And then his fashion line Yeezy sort of found different partners, first with Nike and then later with Adidas. And he became like a staple in the fashion industry, which is to say that his clothes regularly sold out. TMZ reports that according to Sotheby's, Kanye sold a pair of prototype Nike Air Yeezy ones for a record-shattering $1.8 million. This easily crossed the record for most money spent on a pair of sneakers. By the time that we get to maybe this year, he's premiering new fashion lines at places like Paris Fashion Week.

Like this is a guy who became known as much for his fashion as he is for his music. There was a really big concert that he held at Madison Square Garden, which was like supposed to be quote unquote, a listening party for the life of Pablo. And at that, he basically played his new album while also premiering a fashion line on stage of Madison Square Garden. I mean, this is not the scale of, you know, new fashion designers that we're used to. And I feel like it's also worth mentioning his six year marriage to Kim Kardashian, which did also bolster his fame beyond the music and the fashion world when we're talking about how enmeshed in the culture he is, right? It did. That was that was one of those

sort of snowballs of fame where they just constantly made each other more famous, you know, every time that one of them did something and then the other would comment on it and then you get two headlines for the price of one and there is something really remarkable about the way that kim now talks about uh her relationship with kanye and it's specifically in terms of fashion because she's talked openly about how she was very stressed out after the divorce because he dressed her. Even now I'm having like panic attacks. Like, what do I wear?

And then there's a few headlines that we got out of, hey, who's the next muse that Kanye is going to have? Who else is he going to dress? Julia Fox, the actress, was one of those people for a little while. But that's because I think Kanye has a natural talent for making himself headlines. Outside of his music and his imprint on fashion, Outside of his music and his imprint on fashion, he has long been known as someone who says what's on his mind, which at first was actually maybe a factor that endeared him to people. I know you pointed this infamous moment during a telethon in support of victims of Hurricane Katrina. Tell me what happened there. of victims of Hurricane Katrina. Tell me what happened there.

Right. So after Hurricane Katrina, a bunch of celebrities get on TV for an NBC fundraising telethon. This was back in the days for the children who are listening. This is for the back in the days when celebrities would get on TV, right? And then they would say,

hey, call this 1-800 number and give us your credit card information so you can donate to this cause. What happened to telethons? RIP telethons. Bring them back. I agree. So Kanye West gets on the screen, and he's with legendary actor Mike Myers. And both of them are looking very serious.

And Mike Myers starts to speak. There's now over 25 feet of water where there was once city streets and thriving neighborhoods. Then it's Kanye's turn. city streets and thriving neighborhoods. Then it's Kanye's turn. And he looks at the camera to the teleprompter, and you can clearly see that he's no longer reading the script. When he begins to read, I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they're looting.

See a white family, it says they're looking for food. And you know it's been five days because most of the people are black. He was emotional. He was sort of overcome in his delivery. You could tell that he didn't specifically have a plan for when he was, you know, about to speak, but he was right in calling out sort of the media racism and covering Hurricane Katrina. And then the way that we remember that moment now is the phrase, George Bush doesn't care about black people. And Mike Myers is, first of all, out to sea here. He's standing next to a guy who's clearly not willing to stick to script.

Mike Myers has no idea what to do, except we just keep reading his script, the poor guy. to script. Mike Myers has no idea what to do except just keep reading his script, the poor guy. It just, the whole, the awkwardness of the moment made it, you know, kind of instantly iconic. And people were grateful for Kanye for just being willing to say something that is off the cuff and emotional and kind of, you know, spoke for a lot of people at the time. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's also worth us bringing up another moment a lot of people will remember when he crashed the stage while Taylor Swift was accepting an MTV Video Music Award, which was criticized pretty hard. Like Barack Obama called him a jackass, which is usually not a thing that the President of the United States chimes in on. What's he doing?

He's a jackass. Yeah. Barack Obama doesn't usually weigh in on these pop culture moments, but this was one of those. This was one of those where it made headlines in about every arena you can think of. It's the story that made both of them household names in ways that I don't think we would have seen if that moment

hadn't happened. Kanye gets on stage in the middle of Taylor's acceptance speech. Taylor is overwhelmed and so excited for receiving this massive honor. And Kanye says the now iconic words, I'm going to let you finish. But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time. And then he kind of does the shrug, which was so confrontational, right? Taylor Swift is like, well, I don't know what to do about this. I don't know what to do in this moment. And I think what gets written out of that,

that story quite often is that later in the night, Beyonce brought out Taylor Swift to sort of finish the speech. But of course, she was rattled, everybody was rattled. It was like this really strange moment that seemed to, at least for a little while, destroy a lot of the goodwill that he had built by the number of albums, number of excellent albums that he had released. But he bounces back from that for sure, hey? Oh, so does he ever. In 2010, so a year after that, he releases probably his most critically acclaimed album, which is My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. He talks about that incident head on. He talks about himself as a jerk, as an asshole.

He sort of frames himself as this kind of person who will need to figure out how to rein himself in. You know, one of the famous lines from that album is him saying, quote, fucking up my money so yeah, I had to act sane. And it's because it cost him a lot of money in sponsorship, in relationships for him to become branded as this kind of international jackass. And so the way that he did it is by releasing one of the best albums of his career. And I think that set in motion, this momentum, this back and forth relationship that we have with Kanye, where he does something ludicrous, and then he delivers a product. And then people are like, Yeah, all right, but the product is

pretty good. Like that is a cycle that we are in still now he you know after how many provocations everyone said well he releases an album and it's the most listened to album of that year or it's one of the most acclaimed albums of that year and kanye is kind of back in people's good graces In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cops. So after this, you know, the examples start to get a lot darker, right? Like,

some of his merch from a 2013 tour had Confederate flags on it. And even then, this discussion of whether Kanye was being subversive or was just promoting racist imagery began to take shape, right? And what do you make of that claim that Kanye is somehow flipping the meaning of the Confederate flag or the MAGA hat when he wears it? I mean, I think it's a silly line of argument. No one sort of thinks that just by simply picking up a symbol

that people associate with hate or people associate with something negative and simply by wearing it that automatically undoes the harm that symbol has done nowhere is that clear than with the confederate flag his wearing of the confederate flag did absolutely nothing to either rehabilitate or add anything to the meaning of it aside from you know know what, it's Kanye and he wants to be a little bit provocative. And he gets a couple of headlines out of it. And then we all kind of move on with our life. That's something that was quite frustrating. I know is quite frustrating, especially to a lot of black people I know, who associate the Confederate flag, I think,

rightfully with the history of slavery in the South. And so that's when we kind of get the idea that Kanye is being a bit of an attention manipulator. And he's regularly using, I think, the pain of black people as a as a bouncing off point to make headlines. And that that began then, but it has not stopped as a behavior. And talking about using the pain of Black people jumping ahead in 2018, I remember he was doing this interview with TMZ where he makes this outrageous claim that slavery was a choice. When you hear about slavery for 400 years, for 400 years, that sounds like a choice. Like, you was there for 400 years and it's all of y'all? You know, like, it's like we're mentally in prison. And while he was doing that, Van Lathan, a TMZ employee at the time,

called him out in that moment about how his, like, quote, free thinking actually has real-life consequences. We have to deal with the marginalization that has come from the 400 years of slavery that you said for our people was a choice. Frankly, I'm disappointed, I'm appalled, and brother, I am unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something, to me, that's not real. And watching the clip back, it is striking to me. It really doesn't seem like Kanye understands

that, even still, hey? No, not at all. You don't get the impression that Kanye fully comprehends the weight of the stuff that he's saying. If I can give a sort of impressionistic idea of watching Kanye move over the years, I really don't get the impression that he's thought through a lot of these ideas that he's putting out. I think he knows that they're going to be provocative, and that he can, he's above the outrage, that whatever outrage it causes, it will be good for him in some kind of way. Now, I also remember a few, it was a few weeks after that TMZ moment, when everyone was criticizing Kanye for saying that slavery is a choice. He went on a Chicago radio station.

And Chicago is his hometown. And he talked about the idea that he depends on a few people in his life to not look like an idiot or to not look like someone who's deliberately trying to cause pain. And those people failed him or are no longer in his life. I think that people act out and do things because they're lacking the love and lacking the feeling and lacking the family, you know, environment. Because I even had people that was with me at TMZ that could have stopped it. They could have stopped it. They could have said like, yo, this is going too far. You know, the downfall of Kanye West is directly related to Don C not being around. Wow.

I don't know if that even, you know, colors or changes how people read that moment. I just kind of read it as an interesting vulnerability from a person who's talked about how if he doesn't have the support with him, then he doesn't trust himself to act rationally in public. Just to go through a little bit more of the chronology here, he becomes a gospel artist at some point since then. He ran for president which i had actually completely forgot about until today he's very publicly split from kardashian

uh during his album rollout for donda he was also doing weird performance stuff right dressing and what i don't know i guess i would describe as like anti-social clothing like he's wearing masks spikes you know he's seemingly commentating on cancel culture, I guess, by bringing out and working with accused rapist Marilyn Manson. A lot of the outbursts start revolving around right-wing politics and conservative culture war ideas, abortion, cancel culture. And, you know, does this come at any cost for him? I mean, you would think that it would right you would think that it would because um it's one thing to dress as anti-social clothing you're

absolutely right like it was like well this is a bit of an odd move kanye but he made quite a few headlines by bringing out um marilyn manson during the donda rollout and at the time marilyn manson had been facing and is still facing horrific rape rape accusations from people that he's dated and people that he's worked with. He brought out DaBaby, who at the time was facing accusations of homophobia because he made an AIDS joke that was quite distasteful. And one might say, hey, I'm trying to make this statement about cancel culture, about how even these people deserve some kind of redemption. Whether you agree with that statement or disagree with that statement, it didn't seem to cost Kanye anything because Donda was still one of the most streamed albums of 2021. And it still ended up being nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammy. So like, there is just like a resting Kanye influence level that you would, you know,

that seemed for some time unshakable. Like there's nothing you can quite do to sort of get this guy off his massive influence. His fashion line is still wildly successful. His shoes are doing incredible. The music is doing incredible. He opens a school at a certain point. He has made a talent, I think, for evading consequences, or at least so he believed up until the last couple of weeks. Well, it feels like part of the defense has always been

that he is grappling with mental health issues, right? And that is always put forward as sort of an explanation for these outbursts. And I know you've even written in the past about his mental health and that he deserves some grace here as someone who's loved his music and looked up to him. But at a certain point does that grace run out like i mean he just wore a white lives matter t-shirt yeah the the grace ran out about a month ago is that i would say like it's i think there is there there has been some time uh with kanye west where we see think, the expressions of pain coming from him, and associate that with the mental health struggles that he has had. He's been open about dealing with bipolar

disorder. He's been open about taking medication. He's been open about not taking medication and stopping taking that medication. We can sort of chart that because he's literally talked about it in his music. But at a certain point, it actually becomes deeply offensive to all of us who have friends who struggle with mental health issues, who ourselves struggle with mental health issues, who are not walking around deliberately provoking people to the level that he has. I think the White Lives Matter shirt is a good example of this. It's not like he had an interesting artistic answer for why he did that, by the way. His answer was, it's obvious because they do.

And it's like, Kanye, that's like not at all. Like there's no point to this. What's the point? There's no point to this. Not at all. There's no specific argument that you're trying to make here. And so I think it's dawning on a lot of people. And I would say I put myself in this boat, that, you know what, like as much grace as we

might have had for this person before, he's long gone. And by long gone, I don't mean mentally, I mean, in terms of his desire to not provoke people, not to be specifically a provoking force that is like, hey, I'm going to make you angry. And then when you get really angry, I figure out a way to make money out of that. That's a tiring cycle. And I don't blame anybody who has decided that this last month, this is like, this is where you get off the bus. It's like, I'm done with this Kanye circus. Enough of this. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I think it's important to put a fine point on what you just said. Like, despite the mental gymnastics, Kanye or the right-wing pundits or his supporters

may do to frame it differently. Like, we're talking about hate here. I mean, I literally just read a report on CNN before we had this interview that has sources saying that Kanye has a history of praising and admiring Hitler. And that this stuff has real world consequences. Like we talked about in the intro, the banner that people throwing Nazi salutes unfurled after the Holocaust Museum of LA offered Kanye a tour, which he turned down, they were flooded with anti-Semitic comments and messages.

Right. exactly that. So there are no mental gymnastics left to be done in defense of Kanye. Like he is someone who's being quite explicit about the hate that he's peddling. And I should say that, look, some of these ideas, this is not the first time that they've reared their heads in Kanye's work. Like he has before been very openly an admirer of Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, who is also explicitly anti-Semitic. I think now that we find ourselves in a place where he has been given plenty of opportunities to slightly

walk back some of the comments that he's made, and he's chosen to double or triple down on them, um some of the comments that he's made and he's chosen to double or triple down on them um there's like there's nothing left to say it's like well why are we sticking around this person what is there to get from sticking around this person um is he going to make new music yeah probably i think that's going to be one of the ways that he sort of tries to get out of this um but being enmeshed with and engaged with the project of kanye i think a lot of people have taken this moment to say i'm i'm out i don't think i can do this anymore and for argument's sake you know let's say he does drop some some great music right like uh because it does always seem to come back to his music like and and people back to him. What does that say about us that he

could go this far and in a way still conceivably have a route back? I think it says that we are generally simpler than we believe ourselves to be. That sometimes if an artist makes music that sounds fun, and it sounds like it's a really great song to play in a car or in a club or at a cookout, that you're willing to excuse quite a bit, or at least quite a few people are willing to excuse quite a bit. I think that makes me uneasy, like it's uneasy to sort of admit that. And you know what, like, it's not a matter of separating the art from the artist. I think it it's like if you want to listen to his music privately i guess you can i myself i'm like not i i i'm not interested anymore in sort of advancing the cause of kanye i'm not going to be sort of praising this person's music anymore no matter how good it might be because that i think

is you know giving more fuel to this particular fire. The other day, as I was walking down the street, I saw someone wearing the Yeezy shoes. And I thought, I wonder what that person thinks about that shoe now. Because for a little while, it was a signifier of cool. It was like, oh, man, that person can get their hands on Yeezys. They look great on your feet. They look great with this outfit. But is this something that you're still going to be proud to do a week from now, a month from now? Or has it taken on a new meaning and maybe possibly a more toxic one? Yeah. Elamin, thank you. It's such a pleasure talking this through

with you, as always. Thanks, pal. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Jamie. All right, that is all for this week. Front Burner was produced this week by Mackenzie Cameron, Shannon Higgins, Ali Janes, Rafferty Baker, and Derek Vanderwyk. Our sound design was by Sam McNulty. Our music is by Joseph Chavison. Our executive producer is Nick McKay-Blocos. I'm Jamie Poisson.

Thanks so much for listening, and we, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.