Kanye West Has Forced Me to Not Care About Kanye West
By Liam McKeone
Kanye West emerged from his social media silence earlier this week to tweet about his new Yeezy shoe line dropping soon. They look like Crocs, but that's neither here nor there. On the heels of those tweets came the announcement of a new album called God's Country, and that he plans to release a new song today, June 29. And I just cannot bring myself to care.
I love rap. I have since I stumbled upon Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt as a 14-year-old who had a lot of commuting time on his hands after volunteering to go to a high school 30 minutes away. My discovery of Kanye West came soon after that. I was stunned at how good My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was. Yeezus confused me initially but I grew to love it, and one of my big life regrets remains not buying tickets to see him and Kendrick Lamar on that tour. I paid my own money to see Kanye perform live at TD Garden at for The Life of Pablo tour. Not so long ago, I considered myself an avid Kanye West fan.
But now? I really can't bring myself to give him any more of my attention or energy. The last four years have been difficult to stomach in that regard. His public statements about slavery being a choice and all the other harebrained comments he has spewed were egregious and offensive to the ears. But even simply as an artist, it has just been a bad few years that has killed my fandom. It was a constant barrage of promises for projects and songs coming that never did. The projects that did come weren't very good (except Kids See Ghosts). Jesus Is King was awful. And lest anybody forget, he put his name on a song where the central lyric was "scoopty whoop."
Kanye West, nor anybody else, will not shed a tear for my lost fandom, but it's therapeutic to put it down on digital paper. It's sad and frustrating that an artist so central to my love of the genre has transformed enough to the point that I actively dislike him. For those who have managed to stay afloat in that regard, I salute you. But it's 2020, and Kanye West has forced me to not care about Kanye West anymore.