It Could Happen Here - The Kanye Spectacle Ft. Prop: Part 1

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

In this crossover episode with Hood Politics, Prop joins us to discuss Kanye West’s religious political projects and recent antisemitic controversy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Could it happen here? I don't know, but I get paid whether or not we find an answer to that question.

This has been the introduction to the podcast. I'm Robert Evans. Hello, everyone else hello hello good uh morning afternoon this is garrison uh we have shereen and we also have our friend prop from hood politics here hello greetings y'all talk to me nice i fully respect the transparency about like, well, you get paid regardless. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Whether or not we learn if it could happen here. Here's the thing.

When I used to teach high school, which believe it or not, I did, taught ninth graders. We was like maybe eight years apart at the time. And there was at one point, and I taught inner city. uh there was at one point and i taught inner city and it was it was at one point i um i got this idea from one of my like uh like mentor teachers where i was like okay check this out so i made you remember overhead transparencies oh god yeah i do for sure so i made one of my check it was like i'm just gonna put this because i'm just gonna put this up here because like y'all could do your work or not you know what i'm saying like i get paid either way yeah i get paid either way i care that's why i show up and i try so hard

you know but you're not hurting me by whatever rebellion you're practicing here like this this is life goes school ends at three o'clock at 305 i forgot everything you said to me you know so you're not hurting me now if you want to make me earn this then let's get busy you know and it was like no man you're gonna earn this i was like all right let's go then you know i was a great teacher so it worked do you know i mean i may have turned off a few people but i don't know that you know what i'm saying do you know what does hurt me prop what hurts you oh god garrett what a segue the the mainstreaming of anti-semitic rhetoric um so wow wow no you did a good job there garrison great work you know what you know what put putting in for a commendation

for you you're gonna get a little trophy from the company for that one hey homie that was trophy garrison that was yeah so that's varsity bro that was varsity fam unfortunately today we're gonna be talking about Kanye West there's a lot of elements to this topic of discussion between the media's coverage of what's happened the past month

isn't it ye now Garrison I don't know it's yay okay prop you don't sound happy It's yay. It's yay? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Prop, you don't sound happy about this. I'm so glad. I'm so glad Prop is here. The thing is, like, at some point, probably now, I have refused to talk about this.

Same, yeah. You know? And specifically even covering it, know on the pod but it's definitely time to be like you know whose mans is this um yeah like come on somebody come get somebody come get your mans here you know i'm saying um yeah there's a lot of different kind of parts of this between how the media has been covering it the past month. His own history of attention-grabbing spectacle, the whole mental health side of things, there's religion, his uptick in anti-Semitic comments,

and how the right's been reacting. There's a lot of stuff based on a few not great statements, and a lot of interesting things have revolved around him i'm just like pick your just pick your favorite subversive artist from 15 years ago and then picture that person doing this the guy's just like oh yeah come on. Come on, man. My favorite subversive artist from 15 years ago might have been Dave Chappelle. Oh, no.

You know, my favorite subversive artist from 15 years ago was probably Steve from Blue's Clues. Hey, Steve remains solid. Yeah, he's a hero. Oh, wait, no. I'm now seeing on Deadline that he has recently embraced white nationalism. Oh, God, not Steve. He said the 14 words, got an 88 tattooed on the back of his head next to the blue paw print.

Oh, dear. Wow. That's a joke. Steve is fine. He's kidding. That didn't happen. Yeah. But, yeah, absolutely. is fine he's he's kidding that didn't happen yeah but yeah absolutely because you're like

and knowing all of it's it is and i hope i'm not i hope i'm not co-opted this whole show but it's it is the tyra banks clip from america's top model where it's like, we fought, we believed, we all believed in you. Just furious. Like, we, God damn it, we believed in you. You know, yeah. Yeah, and as the perspective of like a younger person who wasn't really around for, I guess, when Kanye was better. The old Kanye. This stuff has not been surprising to me

because I've only been watching him the past decade. And that's kind of what we're going to talk about. It would probably be fair to call me like a casual knower of Kanye, but I'm much older than you, Garrison. And so I remember George Bush doesn't care about black people, which was like. That's the height of old Kanye. That seems accurate. That was the high water point to where we were like, he's for the generation.

This is a new breed. But what's ill is like it was obviously a sign of his manicness. In retrospect, it was like, oh, he was in a manic episode.

I mean, and the other thing is that he really just has a history of basic contrarianism so yes he'll he'll he'll oppose george w bush because that's the contrarian thing to do at the moment post 9-11 everyone was very pro obama so instead he's going to be pro trump because he's gonna he's gonna try to be that subversive element exactly and that's definitely been a pattern throughout his career I'm not a I'm not it's just such to see it go ahead I'm not a I'm not an expert on his music I wasn't particularly a fan but the thing I know that like everyone talks about is the motherfucker sampled blood on the leaves like and now that's a but also

at the time it was like wow this is you know, you know, he's trying to say something. And now there's a degree to which it's like, well, was that just the most contrarian, like, attention-getting move he could be making, right? Yeah. I don't know. And like what you said, Prop, like initially when this, when the, when the t-shirt stuff was happening at Paris Fashion Week, I really did not want to talk about this. When the t-shirt stuff was happening at Paris Fashion Week, I really did not want to talk about this because I thought it was just another one of Kanye's publicity stunts kind of in line with his mega hat and Trump appearances from a few years ago. And I didn't want to like play into the media cycle of just amplifying these stunts that Kanye does, which I think kind of feeds into and encourages this kind of behavior. But then Kanye went on Tucker and started posting on the internet and things have gotten a lot worse since then. And now I feel like it actually is.

We should now actually talk about this because there's some interesting things going on. And ideally, we could talk about it in a way that's actually useful and that we can gain insight from and not just, you know, highlighting the bigoted and unhinged things that a public figure has said. the bigoted and unhinged things that a public figure has said so and i think kind of feigning shocker surprisement at his recent actions and behavior and statements is mostly not useful like as opposed to just like clearly condemning bigotry and anti-semitism and doing like deplatforming and also upon this upon the news of the t-shirt stunt and the pointless matter stuff and anti-Semitism, I was not actually really surprised because I kind of saw this as a natural evolution of the logical progression of the type of bit that Kanye has been doing, particularly for the past five years.

And that's kind of the angle that we're going to approach this with. I think we should probably start by talking about the types of alignments Kanye has had over the course of his career towards christianity and how that kind of reached the peak in 2019 so you can see the kind of earliest hints of this type of thing it's pretty dope a song like jesus walks in 2004 um and then he kind of does some cool stuff we get to the album yeez, which kind of revolves around self like deification. I never expected to hear you say Jesus. Awesome.

Okay. So which is, which is a pretty good album and it kind of, it's, it's, it's before he gets actually into like Christ. It's, it's more like God as like a spiritual force that you can interact with and you can like

align it can like align yourself with um can i can i fill in the uh can i fill in the the yeah absolutely walks area yeah like uh a port important context about kanye one is understanding how the south side of chicago is you know and what it's like to be black there's like you're not how do i say this church is as normal as dinner yeah with in in our community specifically in the south side of chicago of course of, your daddy's a deacon. Of course, your mom teaches Sunday school. Of course, the most hardened of criminals will stop and talk to Mother Johnson when they see her on the side of the road because she was your Sunday school teacher. You know, so and you still come every Sunday.

Like, it's just such a part. So the Christian idea is such a part, an integral part of our of our community and of course of his community because he's just one of us you know um that of course he's going to do a song called jesus walks you know um of course and of course he actually probably the whole time believed he was a christian you know because of because we all are you know saying like and um unless you come from like the foi or like nation of islam stuff situation like specifically just with black people we're just we just went to church you know so and all of our all of our musicians you take the greatest musicians of any of our times they used to be choir singers they used to be in the worship band like we just it's just a part of our life

you know so so for him to do that was not strange no what was strange was him thinking it was unique well that was the part that was so weird about like why you think this is there's like you know yeah there's the aspect of thinking that some of like the gospel type stuff he was doing was unique which yeah maybe was unique for me on such a large platform but it was not new and the other thing that is different is that there is a difference between the type of the type of like um black church that you're talking about and white christian evangelical born again ideology around conversion which is what he starts getting into in the late 2000s yeah what he became you know i'm saying but that's not that's why i was like let me give it that so that's why like at

first and i'm speaking as somebody who also came from like a very person of color experience with Christianity. And then finding, you know, sort of white evangelicalism and thinking because we're using the same words that we're talking about the same thing. Yeah. And then about five minutes sitting at that table you're just like oh oh y'all different yeah just kind of like make the little peace out sign and let me slide out because clearly we don't believe the same things you know i mean i i first found your music as i was kind of me and my family were exiting evangelicalism yeah um and that was a very useful kind of step that was still using some familiar language

but it was like going in a better direction yeah that's dope you know yeah yeah um so i think the next kind of notable thing is the more gospel-esque album life of pablo uh allegedly inspired by the life of the biblical paul and there's the song ultra ultra light beam uh which features contemporary gospel superstar kirk franklin and chance the rapper who's also a very open christian yeah uh then he gagne has a few years of dealing with mental health stuff he gets hospitalized he comes out of the hospital and then in april he some somewhere around 2016 he kind of endorses trump kind of um but then yeah but then in april 2018 west sends out a series of tweets expressing admiration for trump including that he felt he was his brother and they both have quote dragon energy um hilarious people like

trans rapper initially came to west's defense uh saying that black people don't have to be democrats which he later apologized for and a lot of tweets that were up that are now gone yes and then one of the kind of worst inclinations of where things are kind of going was a fucking tmz interview which was supposed was which was supposed to be about conge's support of trump but then he went on to make some pretty gross comments about black people choosing to be enslaved. I don't think people necessarily understand what happened last week with the Make America Great Again hat. What are you trying to do with the message you're sending? Well, it was really just my subconscious. It was a feeling I had, you know,

like people were taught how to think, we're taught how to feel. We don't know how to think for ourselves. We don't know how to feel for ourselves. People say feel free, but they don't really want us to feel free. And I felt a freedom in, first of all, just doing something that everybody tells you not to do. I just love Trump. When you hear about slavery for 400 years, for 400 years, that sound 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.

I like the word prison, because slavery goes too direct to the idea of blacks. It's like slavery, Holocaust, holocaust jews uh slavery is blacks so prison is something that unites us as one race blacks and whites being one race uh that we're one we're with a human race and fun fact like van who stood up to him i think to this day especially among like uh black media figures he's as far as i can remember like one of the only that confronted him in the moment boldly didn't mince his words you could tell he was like almost weeping because i mean that's the way i felt watching it where it was just like oh what are you what are you saying like it's just it's just so hurtful because you're like you can't believe like come on man like drop the act bro like now now we're all suffering i it's

like it's almost like i get i get it we get it looking back yeah even college dropout that record was just him being now we used to think it Dropout, that record was just him being, now we used to think it was like revolutionary. No, it's just him being a contrarian. I don't have to go to college. You know, now I know like, oh man, it wasn't as deep as I thought it was, you know? Yeah. But in the moment.

Yeah, at the moment, you're like. He's like a fucking genius. This is dope. Yeah. Dark Trusted Fantasy was like the most amazing album I had ever heard up to that point. Brilliant. Brilliant. Yeah.

And even that, as you guys are talking, there's like sprinkles of religious stuff in that one and a lot of his stuff yeah he just takes it one step too far because i just remember thinking like oh this guy's a musical genius and then when you see that genius kind of turn on itself it's just really disappointing but yeah shout out van for like confronting him and directly saying you're wrong this hurts and i can't believe you say that and you owe your community an apology that was pretty dope yeah so after that incident he took to twitter.com to clarify slash defend slash double down on his slavery comments talking about being mentally enslaved and how it's we need to you know this is just an

example like and how his comments were just an example of of free thought it's just an idea and once again i'm being attacked for presenting new ideas and then he ended this kind of tweet thread with a fake harriet tubman quote saying i i freed a thousand slaves i could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves which is not not a real harriet dublin quote say that no that that doesn't seem like a thing she would say at all and all of all the tweets were later deleted but it was it was kind of doubling down on some of the same rhetoric and then allegedly um some of the tmz staffers have also now come out and said that he said some anti-seemitic things during the interview that were cut out. Now, that's not verified, and TMZ is obviously not a great source.

But just an interesting note on him possibly saying some other things that people thought were kind of weird and just thought that we may as well just cut this out because it doesn't seem super relevant at the time. Anyway, so around the same time in 2018 kanye befriended someone named candace owens who was at the time the communications director for the far right group turning point usa led by man with face too small for his head charlie kirk um kanye tweeted quote that he loved the way candace Owens thinks. Candace Owens basically makes all of her money by being paid by rich conservative white men

to say that racism isn't a problem anymore. Days after his Candace Owens tweet, when there was the mega hat wearing TMZ visit, he was accompanied to TMZ by Candace Owens. That's something that a lot of people miss is that know that owens is owens is a core vector point for all of the stuff around kanye

and much of kanye's rhetoric in this vein of like slavery being thought to control a lot of that directly comes from owens that that that's the talking points that she gets. Yeah, his free thinking. Yeah, all of those talking points come directly from Owens, which come from her being paid by the Koch brothers. And then, obviously, West solidified his position in the pro-Trump camp with the heavily publicized White House visit in late October of 2018, where Kanye gave like a 10-minute long monologue while wearing the mega hat. I love this guy right here.

Let me give this guy a hug right here. I love this guy right here. That's really, yeah. That's really nice. And that's from the heart. I didn't want to put you in that position, but that's from the heart. These are like the intersections

that are being vectored in this scenario in this thing is like like i said like i i didn't i did not want to cover this but now that it's like it's clearly necessary to do just for even for this context like there's a certain i i saved i saved the word coon. Like coon is not something you throw around. Like that's to me, it's the, yeah, it is. As far as a black person or me as somebody who works in justice and stuff like that, it is the worst thing I can call you. You know what I'm saying? So like I save that term.

that term and I and it's because of the same reason why it's hard for the totality of our of the black community to ever really fully disavow somebody it's because of our history of collective suffering like our we've survived because of our communal protection of each other so even when somebody is losing it it's just like baby, baby, just come home, baby. Okay, listen, no, he had a bad day. You know what I mean? You just, you want so much to protect them because you understand how much internalized like self-hate and racism,

how much you internalize that stuff, you know? So you just want so bad, so bad to be like, okay, Candace, let's turn the cameras off. Like you getting your money, right? That's this, this is what we doing, right? You just, come on. You could tell us. You just give, you getting your money, just tell us, you know, it's like, you know, nah fam, you don't really believe this, do you? You know? And, and then we get to be like, baby, don't get your money like that. Like, don't, don't get your money like that like don't don't get your money out based on our suffering like you because you're thinking that there's no there's no way there's no way this is really you you know and so so so when you put those two together it's like like why did it take

us so long to disavow r kelly why did it take us so long to dis... Why is Chris Brown still a star? You know what I'm saying? It's because of that. It's just... You don't ever want to... You got to save Coon. You got to save that for when you really mean it. You know what I mean?

For me personally, I'm like, I don't pull that word out often. Yeah. And then there's moments when you're just like, I don't know what else to call this. Like, I just, you, if you,

if you are selling your own people out for the purpose of making money, that's coon, that's coonery. Like, I don't, and it's just hard for me to say it. But anyway, go on. Tell us more about Candace Owens. The girl that sued her school board for racism. She sure did.

Yeah. She sure did. We'll get back to Owens in a bit. By the time 2019 started, you know, this is when Kanye went public about his born-again conversion to Christianity and kind of his full pivot towards the, I guess, mostly kind of untapped mainstream Christian rap market, which is kind of... I'm going to try to frame some of his decisions here as being more monetarily driven than what a lot of people assume. Because I can totally understand these as business choices especially coming after the trump visit his his his state of alignment with trump and friendship with candace owens handed him a partially alienated fan base accompanied by a new wave of fans from right-wing christian evangelicals

to alt-right you know turning point usa daily wire type supporters but then by the beginning of 2019 west kind of tamped down on some of his explicit uh trumpian political persona type stuff and in its place came this weekly pseudo christian gathering known as the sunday service just like a weekly mostly invite only choir packed music gathering that changes locations every week, sometimes at properties owned by Kanye, sometimes at churches, outdoors, all around the country. Yeah, see, and this is where things get uncomfortably, start to get uncomfortably culty.

This is where things get quite culty. Yeah. And it's like, and don't get it, like, let me not cap. They were objectively dope. Like, as music's concerned, these are objective. And that's the hard part about Kanye, where it's just like, this shit is dope, though. Look, you go back a couple of decades, that was not untrue of People's Temple, right? True.

They had great artists. They put on great music. That was a big part of their appeal in addition to the fact, yeah. And Kanye for Sunday Service hired a lot of extremely talented people to lead up those programs. Yeah, a lot of legendary gospel singers, you know, and very recognizable names. And again, given that his history and context,

and then the context is just black people in general part of it felt like at the time okay he's trying to return to his roots it's like this is what you grew up in and you realized like maybe you've gone too far maybe it's like i'm so far into this hollywood world i you know i'm starting to, so I'm like, I'm going to do my best to like, like anyone does. Like, let me return back to what I know was the safest moment in my life. And it was Sunday services. So it's like, so I gave him the benefit. I gave him the benefit of the doubt because it's like, that's what we all do.

You return home, you start praying again. You know what I'm saying? we all do you return home you start praying again you know i'm saying and just i would i would totally believe that if it weren't for the fact that he tried to trademark the term sunday service right like what yes once you start doing that you're like huh i wonder what's actually going on wait a minute yeah um yeah like performers and attendees had to sign ndas and adhere to a strict dress code that changed every week um the service featured gospel inspired remixes of classic songs from different genres and also straight choir led gospel tunes with the occasional biblical servant often often given by like a white guy in his 30s

or sometimes kanye yeah it's it's it's probably mostly known for attracting celebrities to come and then also playing at Coachella in 2019. Yeah. Well, there's nothing wrong with Coachella, so. Yeah, nothing ever bad's happened at Coachella. And there. They're just normal booking promoters that are just looking at numbers

and saying these people will buy tickets. I know I showed this to you, Garrison. Prop, have you ever seen the movie Marjo? No, I have not. There's a couple of, it's about the evangelical movement right at the start of the religious right, the Falwell days and everything. And there's a couple of moments that show an early mega church with a majority black congregation and incredible singers and incredible music acts and then a bunch of like old white people running things

and taking all the money um i don't know it yeah it makes me think about that a little bit familiar i don't know entirely. Yeah. And the thing is, like I said, you know, obviously as a fan of the show, you know, I'm familiar, you know, Garrison, with your history. And even you describing your history at church is just like, God, it's just not my experience. Like, that wasn't the church we were in because I was just in a whole different tradition. You know? Yeah, yeah. So when you come across, and like, I can't stress this enough.

When you come across, you know, the Nashville of it all, the like, the CCM of it all, like, and these bigger, you know, suburban mega white churches, like, you, again, you think you're saying the same thing like you you just it's this weird like and i know one of the things for me was like and then uh oscar grant happened do you know i mean and then mike brown happened and then i'm like and then you realize like oh yeah no we're not we're not and then that begins then you realize like, oh yeah, no, we're not. We're not. And then that begins,

then you start questioning your own background. Like, dude, well, like, well, what did we believe when we was kids? You know what I'm saying? And then looking at this Sunday, looking at this Sunday service, I was like, yo, this is, this is youth group. That's what we did in youth group.

You just, you know, you get a good singer and they remix a Jodeci song and just put praise in it. You know what I'm saying? I'm like, oh, this is, you're just singing a pop song and you're just giving it Christian words. This isn't clever. Like, you know, we've been doing this, you know? And, but then like, yeah, like same thing. Like once you exit that, like, you know, that subculture and you start, like, breathing the air and you're just like, oh, so you're telling me Muslims don't have horns and aren't, you know what I'm saying, immediately going to hell.

It's not like that. Oh, yeah. Turns out they're just wonderful human beings that believe beautiful things. Then you start looking back and you're going, damn, maybe I was kind of, maybe I did kind of drink that kool-aid you know but yeah and we're talking about you know when we're talking about how kind of the white suburban church can be sometimes saying the same words but also be very different we'll be talking about joel osteen in a little bit oh god oh yes oh yes oh yes the smile and like i'm telling you dog like you just you just and then yeah once you once once the veil comes off and you realize like the way these people are talking to you and for me it was like

oh shit you use the same the same words you're using about my experience you're using about the queer community absolutely yeah you're using about the trans community and then you start going oh shit oh okay oh it's on now you know i'm saying now you're like oh okay nah i'm cool on all this let me let me go let me go to ethiopia you know let me see what y'all think about this you know but yeah any anyway yeah that that that that aspect and then i mean i'm i'm i'm rambling because it's such it's so close to home this kanye shit is so close to home that like you're like because i can see how you'd fall for it is what i'm trying to say sure i could see how he'd fall for it you know welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Kind of at the height of his Sunday service stuff in 2019 is when Kanye started openly talking about his born-again conversion to Christianity. I'm gonna quote a Fox News article. Quote, Yay, must be born again!

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian shared their Christian faith in a big way over this weekend. Adam Tyson, a pastor from Southern California, told Fox News recently that he's been leading West in a Bible study for months now, and would, quote, teach from God's word about how salvation is only by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Great. Cutting edge journalism by Fox News. A little reformed Calvinist talk.

Yeah. This is always interesting and I guess meaningless because they don't have to be consistent. But I can remember when Kanye said what he said about George Bush afterrina and the degree to which fox news treated him like a fucking ghoul yeah like like the incarnation of satan yeah some of the cruelest and most racist shit i ever saw on fox news yep was focused around that but no now he's now he's publicly praying so like he's back on our side we're all good you know that was that clip was this is around the time of like ringtones. It was my ringtone.

You know what I'm saying? George Bush doesn't care about black people. That was my ringtone. Well, one of those things, fucking somebody needed to say it. Somebody needed to say it. Somebody needed to say it. Yo, and then when you see, I don't know if y'all remember this, but George Bush did a post-presidential interview. And they asked him like, what was your lowest point when you were president?

He was like, when Kanye said I didn't care about black people. I was like, not the multiple invasions. Wow. Not the two times you invaded foreign countries. Yeah, none of that. None of the war crimes. None of that. Oh, cool. When Ye said you ain't care about black people

that is I gotta say though that's also kind of I remember when he said that how happy everybody was just because it was nice to see George Bush sad but it's also kind of another harbinger of well that's maybe too much cultural power

for one man to handle no one man should have all that power exactly we got there robert we got there yes good work yeah because it definitely added reference i knew how to make yes it definitely added to kanye's cachet because it was like bro you you did it you took down a president yeah you know the last rapper to take down a president feel bad yes the last rapper to take down a president was Eazy-E and Ice-T like it took a long time before we could get somebody like Eazy-E we're talking about you know the jerry curl juice

dripping on the white house like that's that's Eazy-E you know what I mean and then you know with body counting cop killer from ice t like that was the last time anybody was able to take out a president you know so i'm like you didn't you in the annals of history now fam that's what we thought at least yeah so i think i think stuff like that made him think he's like he transcended blackness the same way like oj thinks he has you know what i mean i think that mentality plays, in my opinion, a lot into the Messiah complex that he clearly has. Yeah. Yeah. After the Kim Kardashian baptism and the Adam Tyson Bible study groups, Kanye started talking much more openly about the

evangelical style born again conversion that he had in 2019. While at the biggest mega church in the country based out of Houston, Texas, Kanye talked about his recent conversion to Christianity to the 16,000 people president at the church's regular Sunday service. Kanye declared that he no longer cares for fame and money, but is only in the service of God. And in conversation with the celebrity pastor, Joel Osteen, at the church, Kanye said, quote, the only superstar is Jesus.

And I know that God has been calling me for a long time and the devil has been distracting me for the long time. Here's a pro tip. The only time you'll ever hear someone say, I no longer care for money, it's because they're rich as God. Yes. Right, because they have enough as god yes right because they

have enough of it yes yeah you have more than you could spend in a uh in a radio interview kanye went into more detail about his uh conversion saying that he began reading the bible during his 2016 hospitalization for mental health issues and started quote writing and copying out Bible verses. Uh-oh. Which is not... Listen, y'all, like... I don't want to be just, like, blatantly anti-Bible, but if you're in the hospital for mental issues... They probably shouldn't let people... They should not let you access any religious text at all.

Like, any religious text. This is... But, like... Like, this whole, the story is, it is standard inner city church talk. Like this is par for the course. You're like, look, dude, you know, you go up and you give your testimony and testimony service. You know, I was, listen, I was outside. I was doing all the gangs.

I was with all the girls. And then one, I was, listen, I was outside, I was doing all the gangs, I was with all the girls. And then one day I was high, you know, I was in nine gangs and I was, and I was at a four day binger. And I just looked up and I said, God, if you could get me out of this, you know, and then over in the corner, I saw a Bible. Like it's, it's standard, you know? Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, it's, there's so much about it that's standard also just to evangelo again i brought up the whole i no longer care about money but every one of these rich mega church pastors who is making hundreds of millions of dollars a year will have speeches where they're like i don't care the money means nothing to me it's all for god everything like he's the only real star up here yeah like it's it's it's all very again if

you're i think this hit people like a brick who aren't familiar haven't had experience particularly with like strains of southern christianity yeah but the way kanye's been talking makes a lot of sense but it's also i think that chunk of people were all flummoxed by the black Israelism stuff, which I'm guessing we're going to talk about later. The Hebrew-Israelite stuff? We sure are.

Yeah, that's more northeast and midwest, right? The Hebrew-Israelite stuff. Woo! All right, let's go. A lot to say there. A lot of thoughts. Yeah.

So around this time in 2019 is when Kanye announced that he's no longer making secular music, which is a term I heard a lot as a kid. Yeah, I bet you did. Secular music. Secular music. Listen to secular music.

Absolutely not. No. No way. That's worldly, man. No. Absolutely not. Yes, worldly. When's the last time I heard the phrase worldly?

Yes. Yeah. That's worldly. You're up there. I'm in the world, not of the world. That's right. That's right. In and out of it, baby.

So this led to his late 2019 album, Jesus is King. Objectively, it's a good album. It's also borderline Christian dominionist in some themes. The very first words in the album are God is king, we are the soldiers. And that song ends with the army of God and we are the truth. So, you know,

that goes into the ideas about the kingdom of God, we're the soldiers. So in this idea there's this battle between the antagonism against the godly community from the forces of spiritual darkness. And, you know, shout out and woo-woos and there-there's for every Christian rapper of the world who had this guy make one record and then cover everybody's charts. So now no one cares about y'all.

cares about y'all you've been serving at these like you know camp can of cooks you know rapping to these 12 year old white kids and trying to get your trying to get your albums out and then this fool kanye just cleans up your whole subgenre he had the uh pretty funny song in my opinion closed on sunday you might trick filet which i I think is funny. Now that is, that's actually pretty good, but the man is talented. No one's arguing about it. It's also probably sincere. Cause that song ends with Jesus. Listen and obey.

So like it's, you know, um, no, it's, it's, it's a, it's,

it's funny. It's like that. It is. There's this, there's this like with hip hop, you know, as a rapper, there's this like fine line between clever bars and dad jokes.

Like it's real. You got to teeter on that. And I was like, yo, you are dancing on that border with this one, you know. So evangelicals kind of embraced Kanye in this period. Some were obviously skeptical based on him being a black person and his general past. But overall, a lot of people were happy to have kind of to use him as a token figure almost. Yep. We love Kanye. In a Guardian piece titled Kanye West is Spreading the Gospel of White evangelicals, Malaika Havali writes, quote,

Like other black conservatives, the rapper and designer downplays racism while promoting bootstrap virtue signaling. While signifying black cultural and religious traditions, his album is peppered with samples of black church staples like James Cleveland's God Is. West advances the gospel of white evangelicals. Although he has challenged conventions in nearly every aspect of his artistic life, Kanye West has been born again as a conservative. And that whole article is a really good piece kind of going into how specifically he's, the type of thing he's engaging with. Is distinct from the black church tradition.

And is just like. Joel Osteen shit. Absolutely. The Hillsong of it all. Exactly. Are we going to talk about Hillsong at all? I don't have anything of Hillsong in this script. This script is already too long.

It might need to be a two-parter at this point. I think we'll probably doong on btb at some point yeah yeah hillsong was a big part of my childhood yeah hillsong is a big part of the whole fascism thing it's a yeah my childhood i really feel like i really feel like just as just secular just just the idea of just, like, secular, like, academia, anybody who studies culture, I feel like the effects of something like a Hillsong is always siloed into this, like, study of religion, you know what I mean? This is just this thing, but, like, really, the cultural societal impact global like of something like a hill song stretches so far past just a theological or religious thing i think i don't think people really understand like the influence something like a hill song would have and just like any other thing it's like you know i soiree'd in there so i met some cool people there you know i'm, cool homies, you know what I mean, there's some stuff that I was just like,

all right, yeah, nah, y'all weirdos, but, you know, but generally, it's like, I mean, yeah, like, you just, DMX went to Hillsong, New York, you know what I'm saying, like, so, Just the type of influence over so much of the, even just pop music. It's like, y'all understand, like top, you know, number, top 40 pop songs were actually written by their worship band. Like just stuff like that, like the effects of something like a Hillsong, I feel like is grossly underreported and underrated. Another interesting note. University of Virginia professor Ashen Crawley wrote for NPR saying, quote, Kanye West has used the concept of salvation to disallow thoughtful engagement with his politics, which I think is an interesting sidebar to kind of everything we've talked about, Which I think is an interesting sidebar to kind of everything we've talked about, especially with his more evangelical stuff coming directly after his Trump stuff.

Now, obviously, I don't know what's going on inside Kanye's head, nor can I judge his sincerity of faith. But I can certainly see the business aspect of Browning yourself as basically the first extremely christian rap artist in 2019 i can totally i can see from a business perspective what happened in 2018 with his politics i can i can see how this may have been a gamble that he took um so throughout 2020 after his sunday service kind of era kanye was kind of running for president, but like not really. It mostly seems to be a publicity thing. His campaign obviously did not result in him becoming the main president, but it did result in his wife divorcing him in favor of Pete Davidson. The most notable aspect of his campaign is in July at a rally in North Charleston, South Carolina. Kanye broke down in tears as he

claimed that him and his wife had discussed aborting their first child. This allegedly left his wife mortified and, quote, deeply worried over Kanye's mental state, which eventually led to their divorce in 2021. Kanye continued and continues to focus on abortion, but he continued to talk about that throughout his quote-unquote campaign, and in interviews later that September, he said that God revealed to him, quote, the black genocide that is abortion. God revealed that to him. Is this the same lie? Yeah. I'll say this. I don't have a lot of nice things or a lot to say at all about uh kim kardashian but one of the first thing i thought back when he got institutionalized during

his mental health outbreak is like oh people actually care about him like he actually has people in his life who love him and are making him seek help um which a lot of very famous people who have, you know, psychotic episodes and stuff don't, don't have that right. No one around them is willing to be critical enough to be like, you need help right now. Yeah. It does seem like she really tried to help.

Yeah. It's crazy to think that like, or like on your, on our like 2020 bingo card, that the adult in the room was going to be Kim Kardashian. Yeah. I would have not predicted that.

Her actions in the marriage make sense to me. Yes. Yeah. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So with all of that context, this finally leads us to our main topic of discussion. Oh boy.

Oh, we haven't got there yet. Kanye's recent actions and comments linked to white supremacy and anti-Semitism. So this most recent circus started at the beginning of October during Paris Fashion Week, where Kanye literally hand in hand with far right media personality Candace Owens debuted his new line of T-, but the more formal, like, White Lives Matter movement is, like, an explicitly neo-Nazi group tied to the Aryan Resistance Society, the National Socialist Movement, and the loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. So, it's like, the actual group is explicitly, like, Nazis, but obviously the slogan is not, it's easy to come up with the slogan White Lives Matter.

It's not like – that's not like, where did he get that from? Yeah. Come on. So Kanye's promotion of the slogan saying that, quote, anti-white racism and White Lives Matter are now mainstream. This is an unambiguous win. And then Tucker was very quick to do a segment on his show where he wondered what the T-shirt was really about. Oh, my God. Days ago during Fashion Week in Paris, West, accompanied by his friend Candace Owens, unveiled a T-shirt that read simply,

White Lives Matter. The response from the fashion industry and international media was instantaneous and uniform. Shock, horror, rage. There is no excuse for this, thundered the New York Times. West is legitimizing extremism, shrieked Rolling Stone, et cetera, et cetera. What was strikingly missing from the coverage, however, thundered the New York Times. West is legitimizing extremism, shrieked Rolling Stone, etc., etc. What was strikingly missing from the coverage, however, was any explanation for why West did this. What was the T-shirt about? No one seemed to think to ask him, much less to listen to what

he had to say. Instead, the enemies of his ideas dismissed West, as they have for years, as mentally ill. Too crazy to take seriously. Look away, ignore him. He's a mental patient. There's nothing to see here. I don't know who's to say, who's to say really. I'm surprised all the All Lives Matter people weren't in such an uproar about that. Yeah, I wonder why. I wonder why. Interesting. The next Monday, Kanye wrote on Instagram, quote, everyone knows that Black Lives Matter was a scam. Now it's over. You're welcome.

Unquote. This is this is this is direct. This is like direct Candace Owens shit in a way that we'll explain later. But so a few days after Kanye and models for his new Yeezy lineup donned the White Lives Matter t-shirts at Paris Fashion Week, he himself made an appearance, to quote Rolling Stone, on the show where white lives matter the most. Tucker Carlson's Fox News show, Tucker Carlson Tonight. Honestly, solid, solid turn of phrase. That's dope. Yeah.

That's a good way to write that. Yeah, nailed it. Good trophy. Thank you, Comrade Rolling Stone. So you made reference to the White Lives Matter T-shirt you brought out at Paris Fashion Week. Why did you do that and what did it mean? You know, I do certain things from a feeling.

I just channel the energy. It just feels right. It's using a gut instinct, a connection with God, and just brilliance. You know, like if you ask Tanya Harding how she did the triple flip or the triple spin. She was in so much practice that when it was time for her to skate in a competitive format, it just happened. Like it happened outside of practice. It happened in the real format.

And that's what's happening. God is like preparing us for the real for the real battles and we are we are in a battle with the media like the majority of the media has a godless agenda oh that's brilliant so um in in the cliff he talks about this idea coming to him as like a feeling um this is basically the same explanation that he gave for wearing the mega hat it's like a spontaneous gut instinct or feeling the the spontaneous decision to make to make model and sell overpriced printed t-shirts he also said that about like wearing a kilt i remember for one of the records okay he said he had that feeling

over that he was gonna do it in chicago because he wanted to set young black man free so he's gonna wear a kilt uh he also said when he was gonna run for president that it just happened in the shower and he just started laughing and he was like i'm gonna run for president i'm gonna be the president i don't like not believe him that these ideas come this way. Exactly. Like, yeah, probably. But it's funny to frame the decision to like do these very planned out things as just a single like gut moment of spontaneous instinct.

Because making and producing t-shirts takes like, it's like a process. And he talked about this as if he decided to do this like right before going on stage at paris fashion week which like yeah no like this was like a decision that you made and you then took steps to execute um so in that in that section of the interview kanye did go on to dismiss the assertion that his behavior is the result of any mental health issues then in a segment talking about lizzo and body positivity, Tucker and Kanye had this exchange referencing body weight being demonic and a part of, quote, black genocide. It's actually clinically unhealthy.

And for people to promote that, it's demonic. You know... Can I ask? I've noticed this also. Yeah. Why do you think they would want to promote unhealthiness among the population? It's a genocide of the black race. They want to kill us in any way they can. Kanye then goes on to talk about like abortion also being

black genocide which he has been talking a lot about in the past few weeks um that yeah that that lizzo clip like man it's that was like just like i mean like i i can only wait i can only think of like vulgar phrases to describe it where it's just like just just kick me in my balls dude like i'm we're already on the ground just that's what if it just felt like a ball stomp or it's just like you don't have to come on man you're down bad bro like really I got nothing man

like why you gonna like it's exhausting yeah that's what I'm trying to say it's exhausting yeah all of the con gay coverage is exhausting and feeding in and like the feeding into it as media spectacle only encourages this type of like unhealthy behavior and it does not help like it it doesn't

help to be a regular person on social media having like strangers interact with you in a weird way let alone if you if you're one of the most famous people in the world like it's it's not it's not healthy facts i'm gonna quote from New Republic, and this is kind of about his White Lives Matter shirt and his initial Tucker Carlson appearance. Quote, little more than a troll, another tiresome and mediocre provocation to stir up attention by using a contrarian slogan that until now was mostly associated with far-right white supremacists. West has, in recent years, made more waves with his efforts to trigger the libs than he has with his music.

White Lives Matter is a slogan associated with hate groups, but he got what he sought, attention and amplification from Republicans and right-wing media. West earned a sit-down with Fox News on Tucker Carlson tonight to talk about his boy Trump and the response he has received to his overall mega-ification. Carlson was hardly alone in celebrating West for not only rejecting Black Lives Matter, but promoting the same sense of white grievance and victimization that he has trumpeted on his Fox News program for years. The Republican House Judiciary Committee Twitter account spent hours slobbering over the interview, taking a victory lap of sorts for its new generation of edgelords.

And a tweet from the Judiciary GOP account is still up that just reads Kanye period, Elon period, Trump period, which my God, if that's the state of the republican party like is this your king yeah so at first kanye appeared to relish in the t-shirt controversy writing on instagram that my one t-shirt took all the attention after the the t-shirt incident, Adidas said that they were placing its lucrative sneaker deal under review. The previous month, Kanye exited his deal with The Gap. And, you know, several contemporaries of Kanye did push back on this shit that he was pulling. Including rapper Sean Diddy Combs, who condemned the design in a video on Instagram and said,

don't wear the shirt, don't buy the shirt, don't play with the shirt. This is not a joke. And what happened next took things to a new level of grotesqueness. West spent the next few days spewing anti-Semitic vitriol online. First on Instagram, where Kanye posted screenshots from a private message exchange between him and Combs, where he suggested that Combs was being controlled by Jewish people, saying, I'm going to use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me.

So obviously not great playing into basic jokes. While clearly being influenced by right-wing thought. Yes, by fossil fuel billionaires, essentially. But yeah, obviously not great playing right into the kind of ideas that Jewish people control the entertainment industry and have direct influence on what people say you know basic anti-semitism stuff

so soon after this his Instagram account was suspended and then after he was locked out of his account Kanye decided to rejoin twitter.com after a two year hiatus and was welcomed back by Elon Musk saying,

Welcome back, friend. Minutes later, minutes after Elon's welcoming of Elon, minutes later after Elon's welcoming of Kanye West, Kanye tweeted, I'm a bit sleepy tonight, which is a weird way to open this tweet, by the way.

I'm a bit sleepy tonight. Okay. But when I wake up, I'm going death con three on Jewish people, Jewish, Jewish, Jewish people in all caps. The funny thing is,

is that I can't actually be anti-Semitic because black people are actually Jew. Also, you guys toyed with me. God, say the whole word. Jewy? That was a TV joke. That wasn't Garrison being anyway, whatever. You guys have toyed with me and tried to blackball anyone who ever opposes your agenda with a follow-up tweet saying, Who do you

think created cancel culture which uh it well that's also okay i i do want to stop at that that is a much deeper nazi reference than you might guess there's a book called the culture of critique there is a deep understanding among the og nazis back in the 20s and 30s, that literary criticism, that like the idea of sort of cultural criticism, that these were all Jewish plots in order to like, you know, it's actually similar to a lot of what the right says today in order to like make white people feel bad and shamed about their culture. Nazis today, there's a book called The Culture of Critique or A Culture of Critique that's about the same thing. This is actually a really deep idea.

Robert, are you saying that the cultural Marxists at the Frankfurt School invented political correctness to undermine Western civilization? No, I'm saying that, yes. But I'm also saying in a deeper sense that the Jews invented the concept of feeling bad about bad things in order to make white people feel bad about conquering the world, which was the original. That's the OG shit. Before we water this shit down. Yeah. Oh. Before it becomes cultural Marxism, back when it's good old-fashioned cultural Bolshevism.

Yes, cultural Bolshevism. Dang. That's the OS1 version. Yeah. that's the that's the i don't know the iphone one that's the sidekick you know i'm saying you want you want a blackberry racism yeah that's right so this is basically a lot of like textbook anti-semitism um mixed in with some black hebrew israelite shit um about you know being the true chosen people of god kind of akin to like the if people listen to the show they'll they might be familiar with like the nazi christian identity idea of white christians being the real israelites everybody want to be a real israel here yeah it started so we get the

start of black israelism in the northeast and to an extent the midwest i think it's kansas and new york city are two of the big early cities in the 1890s and it's like it's number one anti-semitic from the start an awful lot of it is based around like a hatred of jewish people um but it's also this like idea that there's X number 13 lost is tribes of Israel. And then the black people are the lost is tribes of Israel. And so there would be mixes of like taking actual elements of like Hebrew religious worship and mixing them in with kind of weirder stuff.

Anyway, it's, it has a long history. It is concentrated. Like the part of this like if you have ever spent time in like new york yeah like philly or whatever you have run into black israelites on the street like they're it's it's a thing that you will encounter um there's not a ton of them i think most estimates like 20 or 30 000 yeah but they're they're very vocal yeah the the the phrase now with like most of the Hebrew Israelites is like the two children of Israel are the black Latino

and the so-called Native American. Yeah, so it's just this idea. And here's where it gets tantalizing and complicated. I'm saying this as a black man, you know, in i'm saying this as a black man you know is you open your bible and at the back of every bible got a map and you looking at it and you going what is where the shit take place right so you're like well how come y'all only teaching us about europeans you only talk about every painting got these white people everybody you just like nah this don't this shit don't make sense this can't be it and then

I'm getting I'm getting deep cuts here it's like you and then you get into the book of acts where it's supposed to be the bible like where the gospel spreads and the first time they leave the first time they leave Israel is Stephen meeting an Ethiopian. He's meeting this Ethiopian eunuch and the Ethiopian goes to where was Moses when Moses, this is back in the Exodus story, where did Moses go when he fled? When he fled Egypt, he went to Midian, he went to Ethiopia. So you're like, this shit took place in Africa, right? And at the time we you still believe like the Sinai Peninsula that's North Africa you know so you're like these are brown skin people why is your narrative and everything you tell me about white people so if you still believe if you were still sort of like in awe of the story and the person, this like this subversive, you know, socialist, you know, anti-imperialistic, anti-empire character of Jesus that, you know, your Arab and Muslim friends still understand as, you know, as Isa, as like a person.

Then you're like, yo, we might be talking about the same man here. And he was as, as, you know, as he says, like a person, then you're like, yo, we might be talking about the same man here. And he was as Brown as us. So, and if you're like, and if you're like the God, you're like, dude, the gospel went South. We hit, we hit in Ethiopia. There's Axum, the first Christian city. Like at some point you like the shit didn't go north until 400 years later so you you just draw this conclusion that like if you're gonna box me out my only response if you're gonna box me out of all of the clear history that took place among brown-skinned people then i'm gonna be like i have no choice but to be like well fuck y'all not a true israel over here and if you read again if you you can't not possibly be black and read the book of exodus and be like well shit that's us you know i'm saying

you can't pop like how do you not see it you know so so it's it's so alluring especially again when you go to the when the white pastor talking about like, well, your poverty is your choice, and hey, well, you know, and your Reformed Calvinist person was like, well, that was the Lord's divine will, you were, you know, you were divinely ordained, you know, to be suffering people, and at least, at least you got the gospel, because you were a slave, maybe God was sovereign, you like, fuck that, that can't possibly be the God I'm reading about in this book, you know, so you're like, okay, well, I guess, you know what I'm saying, and then it's like, I'm ranting on this, because I feel like, like, it's, especially for this audience to really understand that context,

you, this, this street, in a lot of ways, like, it became like this street religion, it gives these young men dignity, you know what I'm you're you're offering them a sense of history and importance and dignity and and and order that we you usually just get from the streets you know i'm saying it's not happening in sunday school because at church that's just old black that's just old women singing these hymns in the big hats. It's like, I'm not getting that sort of like that, that masculine hit, if you will. You know what I'm saying? So like this, a lot of this faith, like it really, it attracts young men because it's like, it's like we, it's like we needed that order. We needed somebody to like come and like be a little more military about us, but then tie this longer history. because if the only history you hear about yourself

is your oppression for somebody to be like no you the chosen people of god you're gonna be like well hell yeah you know and then again like i can't stress this enough part of this is in reaction to what white evangelical did by trying to erase brown people from the history you know i'm saying it's like i'm i can't i'm like, that's clear, he clearly, your picture is Michelangelo's boo thing of, of, that's, that's an Italian man, like, that can't possibly be the dude in these books, you know, so you like, I, I, I mean, he was, Jesus was black, like, I would, like, you just, that's your only conclusion. And you like, and these people are saying, yeah, you're right.

Absolutely. And you're like, well, shit, I'll rock with y'all, you know. And it's definitely unclear what the extent of Kanye's belief and stuff around black Hebrew Israelite type stuff is. Because he still has a lot of the evangelical type stuff going on and what he's saying. So he could have just picked up these types of things from cultural osmosis. We'll hear a little bit more about what he has to say about this in the next episode,

but we're going to have to, I'm going to have to call it there. That's going to be a day. And join us after the weekend for a special, special part two on on on the feed talking about uh more of the same more of the same thing but getting slightly worse um and turns out when you get kicked off twitter that doesn't stop you from saying bad things you just start saying them at other places um so anyway, yeah, that's that.

I'm very impressed, Garrison. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. Danny Trejo and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.