Understanding Kanye: 101

 

Lately, all throughout the media we have seen one name:  KANYE WEST.  But most of it hasn't been for his recent tour, or his impact on music, or even his lecture to architect students at Harvard  University.  Why is this?  It is simply because lately the modern-day poet has been viewed as a stubborn man who cannot break his way into the fashion industry; whose statements are being misconstrued by others as tirade.  I will admit that although his delivery is not taken well by the masses the best, his latest argument makes total sense. 

Recent interview showed the 36-year-old in a different light to some.  People focused more on his fascination with fashion and money than what he was trying to say as the big picture.  After watching his interview with the Breakfast Club (twice), looking at his interview with Sway on Shade 45, researching a few articles on what he was referring to in those interviews, and when I woke up this morning to a letter Russell Simmons wrote via Global Grind entitled "The Genius That Is Kanye West".  When you carefully dissect and interpret each interview, use Ye's latest album, Yeezus as the  soundtrack to the visual.  He understands that Yeezus was not perceived well and he is okay with that.  While Charlamagne kept trying to deliver that "you don't need money to do that", "that's not why we love you man.  We love you because of the music..." hoopla, it is because we are so commercialized as a people that we cannot see the bigger picture.  You DO need money to have control.  Everyone should own something, but niggas don't understand that.  This is NOT science.

What the Bound 2 rapper was basically trying to say is that you ain't shit, unless you own something.  In little to less, that is the bottom line.  It isn't science to me and others who have an open mind and looks beyond the screaming that Kanye delivers in his speech.  My uncles have instilled this same gospel in my family since we have jumped off the porch.  "Let me tell you something about George Bush and oil money and Obama and no money" he said explaining to the Breakfast Club during an interview earlier this week.  The world is all about connections.   It's who you know, not what you know; as the old heads would say.  He takes note that there are only seven Black billionaires in the world, but we're okay with that.  We have become so complacent with what we have and feel that since we are not legally called slaves anymore that we are not still enslaved.  "Can you guarantee that your daughter can get a job at this radio station, but if you owned this radio station you could guarantee that!"  Words from a god, right?

It is his generation that has this power. He knows it. He feels it. He tastes it. And he so badly wants it like mad. So, you may think he’s mad when he goes on his “Yeezy rants,” but it is a different kind of mad. It is a mad that keeps you up at night, knowing that if you fall asleep, you are wasting time. It is a mad that makes you go into the lab and work seven days with no sleep, cause you want to perfect your craft. It is a mad that sees the world still unfair for women and people of color, that makes you want to break down every door that they say is locked and can never be open. It is a mad-scientist kind of mad. One who wants to uplift his people to the top of the mountain, so in unison, they can chant from the top of their lungs, “No One Man Should All That Power!” He is fighting for his generation, his people, his country, his planet earth….like a motherfuckin’ monster! 

 

That passage is an excerpt from The Genius That Is Kanye West by Russell Simmons.  It best describes what Kanye is trying to say from another point-of-view.  The self-proclaimed genius realizes that although we are free as a people, we are still slaves; New Slaves to the corporations.  So what I want you to leave here with after reading this is listen to the interviews again, really listen to what Kanye is trying to say and listen to what he is really trying to say here. It is should be definitely an eye opener to many but of course the majority does not see it.  I see it, I receive it, and I am here for it.  God!  #teamYeezus!

-Reggie West