Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
IS YE CLOSE TO BEING CANCELLED?
Kanye West is obsessed with the limelight and will do whatever it takes to remain relevant
“LOOK at how quiet it is right now, it’s only God. God is of order, the devil is of chaos,” said Kanye West as he took a moment’s pause from his waffling about, as far as I could tell, God’s divine power.
It was an odd choice of anecdote from a man whose behaviour over the past few weeks – maybe years – has been, quite frankly, chaotic.
In his rambling interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson last week, Ye, as he’s legally known now, also shared somewhat muddled views on a range of topics such as his pro-life stance (around his neck he wore a lanyard depicting a foetal ultrasound), the Kardashians, and his affinity for former US president Donald Trump.
To say it has been an eventful few weeks for the rapper and fashion mogul would be an understatement.
The drama began when he wore a White Lives Matter shirt to his Yeezy Fashion Show. As the storm began to form, Ye doubled down on this controversial antic by referring to Black Lives Matter as a “scam”.
Then, a few days after this stunt, Ye once again caused a public uproar when he took to Instagram, then Twitter, to put out some anti-Semitic posts.
Having initially seen his Instagram post (in which he accused Diddy of being controlled by Jews) deleted and his use of the app limited, Ye took to Twitter to threaten that he’d go “death con 3 on Jewish people”.
He seems to have been referencing “Defcon 3”, which is a term used by the US Armed Forces to symbolise the Air Force’s readiness for an attack.
Unlike the right-wing fraternity Ye is pandering to these days, he doesn’t bother with ambiguity. He spews his bigotry openly, with the kind of clarity that leaves no room for doubt.
When I think about it, I doubt Ye believes some of the stuff he says, or that he is so tone-deaf that he does not understand the wider ramifications of, say, wearing a White Lives Matter shirt.
This brings to mind how, in 2013, Ye started selling merchandise with Confederate flags on it during his tour. In the face of widespread condemnation, Ye would explain: “Any energy is good energy. The Confederate flag represented slavery in a way.
“That’s my abstract take on what I know about it, right? So I wrote the song New Slaves. So I took the Confederate flag and made it my flag. It’s my flag now.”
Once more, Ye is baiting the public and revelling in all the attention. Not one for logical thinking these days, he has been using his platform to literally think out loud and ramble on about whatever radical, half-baked ideas cross his mind.
“It’s like with David, he tended to the sheep, but while he was out there he had to fight all kinds of animals,” he said at one point during the interview with Carlson, as he explained how someone had called him and
threatened to beat him up for his “White Lives Matter” stunt.
“So when it was time for Goliath to come, they thought that because he was a sheep herder that he didn’t have the skillset to take down Goliath.”
In this part of the interview, Ye seemed to suggest that despite the odds, he was well-equipped to take down the mainstream liberal media,
whom he accused of polluting society with their immoral standards.
To bring home his point, he referenced Grammy award-winning singer Lizzo. “When Lizzo loses 10 pounds and announces it, the bots – that’s a term for like telemarketer callers on Instagram – they attack her for losing weight, because the media want to put out a perception that being overweight is the new goal when it’s actually unhealthy,” he said before adding: “It’s actually clinically unhealthy, and for people to promote that … it’s demonic.”
In response to Ye’s antics, his business affiliates at Gap and adidas have sought to put some distance between themselves and him, and many of his celebrity friends have publicly denounced him.
And yet it is apparent that he isn’t “cancelled”. He’s as relevant as ever, perhaps more than before.
When asked what had driven him to wear the White Lives Matter shirt during his fashion show, Ye told Carlson: “The answer to why I wrote White Lives Matter on a shirt is ‘cause they do, it’s the obvious thing.”
The truth is, Ye did it for shock value, as he always does. The “obvious thing” that a narcissist as obsessed with the limelight as he is would do is find the most controversial stance possible and stick with it.
Attacking Black Lives Matter and Jews is about the most surefire way to elicit public outrage there is. There’s no genius in that.
And if there was any genius in Ye to begin with, it has become increasingly overshadowed by his obsession with the limelight. He’ll do whatever it takes to remain relevant.
Through his antics, Ye seems to be living by Oscar Wilde’s age-old adage, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”.