THE WEST WING
Kanye releases new track defending his love of Trump
Kanye West put his Trump loyalty on display Saturday when he dropped a rhyming duel with rapper T.I., in which Yeezy declares: “You on some choosin’-side sh-t, I’m on some unified sh-t.”
Later at a rally, Trump returned the compliment, saying, “Kanye gets it.”
Rappers Kanye West and T.I. are in the middle of a commander-in-beef.
Kanye dropped a surprise new track to defend his pro-Trump advocacy — and to debate his stance with T.I.
“You on some choosin’-side s--t, I’m on some unified s--t,” West raps in “Ye vs. The People,” apparently recorded Thursday — the day after he tweeted a picture of his Trump-signed red MAGA hat.
“That hat stayed in my closet about a year and a half,” the 40year-old performer continues. “Then one day I was like, ‘F--k it, I’ma do me.’ ”
“OK I gotta say it, Ye, you sound high as a bitch,” T.I. raps in response. “You wore a dusty-ass hat to represent the same views as white supremacy, man, we expect better from you.”
“Bruh, I never stopped fightin’ for the people — actually wearin’ the hat’ll show people that we equal,” West insists.
“See that’s the problem with this damn nation: all Blacks gotta be Democrats, man, we ain’t made it off the plantation,” he raps, echoing a similar message tweeted by Chance the Rapper on Wednesday.
“You gotta see the vantage point of the people,” T.I. counters. “What makes you feel equal makes them feel evil.”
Trump, meanwhile, continued to boast about his new bestie, announcing to cheers at a Michigan campaign rally Saturday night, “Kanye West gets it!”
West launched his latest controversy April 21, when he tweeted praise for Candace Owens, an African-American commentator who has condemned what she calls the Black Lives Matter movement’s “victim mentality.”
After his comment — “I love the way Candace Owens thinks” — sparked backlash from fans on social media, West upped the ante by tweeting videos of pro-Trump analyst Scott Adams.
“You don’t have to agree with Trump but the mob can’t make me not love him,” West tweeted Wednesday. “We are both dragon energy. He is my brother.”
“Thank you Kanye, very cool!” Trump posted in response.
West, who visited Trump Tower during the presidential transition, has expressed support for Trump since.
“Kanye West has performed a great service to the Black Community,” Trump tweeted Friday.
But naysayers dismissed West’s political messages as a publicity stunt, noting that “Ye vs. The People” is his first fresh solo work in more than a year — and that he has announced plans to release a seven-track album in June.
In his lyrics, T.I. voices another possibility.
“You’ll deal with God for the lack of respect,” he raps. “Startin’ to make it seem like Donnie cut you a check.”
Ayear and a half later, it turns out that life in Trump’s America does not much resemble “The Handmaid’s Tale.” It’s more like a playground for behaviorally problematic toddlers at which no one remembered to bring snacks.
Liam just ran head-first into a wall again. Samantha is spinning around in circles looking terrified. In the sandbox, Tyler has somehow managed to bury himself up to the neck. Everyone is cry-screaming.
To borrow a phrase from the left: This is . . . not normal. People used to be able to keep their spit together if, for instance, their taxes were reduced or joblessness was at the lowest level in a generation or a celebrity said he liked the president. And yet, here we are. When Kanye West praised President Trump for having “dragon energy” and being “my brother” in a tweet noting, “You don’t have to agree with trump but the mob can’t make me not love him,” social media went full Chernobyl. You’d think the “Make America Great Again” cap that Trump signed for West was a white hood. In his return to Twitter after a long hiatus, West also urged “breaking out of our mental prisons,” said “the thought police want to suppress freedom of thought” and gave a shout-out to Dilbert cartoonist (and Trump explainer) Scott Adams.
West’s praise of Donald Trump shouldn’t be that controversial. Sixty million Americans voted for him. He’s our president. If you don’t like him, that’s fine. But why go berserk every time you learn someone else does?
Yet for someone as young, black and cool as West to give a thumbs-up to Trump was like an electromagnetic pulse that fried the left’s thinking circuits.
“There are no excuses for trash politics,” said Jezebel with an almost audible harrumph. “Explaining exactly what’s going on here might be beyond our or anyone’s abilities,” gravely intoned Vox, the forum where 24year-olds cheerfully explain how to solve health care or sexual violence. “No one wants to deal with this,” wrote Sean Fennessey of The Ringer in a lengthy screed, as though West had just praised the Holocaust. “In the days since he returned to Twitter . . . Kanye has clipped the barbed wire around his mind and begun espousing the empty phraseology of alt-right thinkers who rallied around President Trump.”
For a week, then, liberals were given a glimpse of what it’s like to be a conservative in the United States. When you’re right of center, every day of your life you hear political commentary from beloved athletes or entertainers that sounds completely asinine to you. The only possible responses are to wall yourself off in a cultural basement stocked only with James Woods movies and Ted Nugent eighttracks or simply to agree to disagree with celebrities about politics. I’m neither going to stop enjoying the work of Bruce Springsteen, Steven Spielberg and Meryl Streep nor curl up into the fetal position every time they express a political view with which I disagree.
Kanye’s comments recalled the fouralarm dismay when Nicole Kidman and Roseanne Barr suggested Americans come together and support Trump. Even country singers are apparently no longer allowed to sound conservative: Shania Twain — in that neo-Bolshevik rag The Guardian, no less — was forced to explain why she said she would have voted for Trump if she could have (she’s Canadian). “Even though he was offensive, he seemed honest,” she initially said. “If I were voting, I just don’t want bull---t. I would have voted for a feeling that it was transparent. And politics has a reputation of not being that, right?” After getting lambasted, Twain published the Twitter version of a hostage video, saying, “I would like to apologize to anybody I have offended . . . The question caught me off guard. As a Canadian, I regret answering this un- expected question without giving my response more context . . . I do not hold any common moral beliefs with the current president.”
The irony underlying the agony in all of this is that Trump haters routinely say they can’t stand his bullying, his pettiness, his gratuitous attacks. So they respond with bullying, pettiness and gratuitous attacks directed not only at him but anyone who supports him, even tepidly or silently. A Philadelphia accountant was thrown out of a West Village bar simply for wearing a MAGAhat a year ago. If that had happened in Texas to someone wearing an Obama T-shirt five years ago, it would have been national news. Today the attitude on the cultural left toward any Trump fan who gets slapped is, “Serves them right.” Unfortunately for them, on the president’s side there is still plenty of dragon energy.
The left erupted when Kanye West said he admired President Trump’s “dragon energy.”