West a new hero to GOP? Let’s review his work
Can I have all my conservative, Donald Trumploving friends please put their hands together and rap along with me:
“I’m a sick (expletive)/ I like a quick (expletive)/ I like my (slang for male sex organ) (inappropriate word, in context)/ I’ll buy you a sick truck!”
Oh, yeah! We’re all Kanye West fans now, am I right? That’s from his latest track, “I Love It.”
I’ve been a fan of the Chicago rapper’s music since his first album, “The College Dropout,” came out in 2004. Brilliant producer, powerful rhymes. Good stuff. And as one of those George Soros-funded left-wing radical types, I don’t mind the profanity one bit.
But my conservative friends are new to the Yeezy train, having just hopped aboard this year as President Donald Trump forged a bromance with Kanye, one that culminated Thursday with a meeting in the Oval Office.
It’s funny, because back in 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, conservatives hated Kanye after he blurted out the words “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” during a hurricane relief concert. Thirteen years later, the rapper pops a red “Make America Great Again” hat on his noggin, drops an f-word in the Oval Office before hugging Trump and all is forgiven.
He’s in pictures grinning with White House officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, a hero among evangelicals. I wonder if they chatted about how Kanye, who speaks freely about how much he watches pornography, was the creative director for last month’s Pornhub Awards, a celebration of the popular adult film website.
I suppose we’ll never know. What matters is that I help those of you who suddenly admire Kanye get up to speed on the mercurial man’s music.
Here’s a classic Kanye lyric from way back suggesting that President Ronald Reagan intentionally introduced crack cocaine into black communities:
“How we stop the Black Panthers?/ Ronald Reagan cooked up an answer/ You hear that? What Gil Scott was hearin’/ When our heroes or heroines got hooked on heroin/ Crack raised the murder rate in D.C. and Maryland/ We invested in that, it’s like we got Merrill lynched/ And we been hangin’ from the same tree ever since.”
This one’s also quite good: “Hands up, we just doing what the cops taught us/ Hands up, hands up, then the cops shot us.”
These are some more recent rhymes: “And I’ll never let my son have an ego/ He’ll be nice to everyone wherever we go/ I mean I might even make him be Republican/ So everybody know he love white people.”
They’re going to love that one down at the Heritage Foundation!
And one of my personal favorites: “Whatever comes first I’m prepared for the worst/ Whatever comes second I’ll be there with my weapon.”
Start memorizing those bits so you can sing along when the songs come on at the next Trump rally or at church or wherever.
Fox News and conservative websites like Breitbart were over the moon about Kanye’s Oval Office visit, and some writers on the right have hailed the rapper as “heroic” for supporting Trump.
It’s cool to see how they’ve come around, because back in 2011 when Barack Obama was president, the rapper Common was invited to the White House for a spoken word poetry event, and Fox News folks like Sean Hannity just about lost their minds.
Hannity condemned the event: “It baffles me that this is the person the White House chooses to set as an example for our kids.”
He sifted through some of Common’s lyrics and said: “Here’s the point, he uses the N-word. He talks about cops, the reference about Bush, women, Italians — hang on a second. This is the president of the United States of America. You know what? This is not a good message for our kids. This is not the guy that you invite to the White House for poetry reading. This is the guy that we don’t want our kids to listen to.”
But Hannity’s cool with Kanye. On his Thursday night show, the Fox News host said he had spoken with the rapper: “What I really liked about it is all he wants is answers. All he wants is solutions. All he wants is opportunities. And that’s what impressed me.”
Awesome. Funny thing, though. Kanye and Common have been friends since they were teenagers, and they’ve collaborated on a slew of songs, including “Get ’Em High” on Kanye’s first album. Here’s the chorus: “Now throw your (expletive) hands/ Get ’em high/ All the girls pass the weed to your (expletive) man/ Get ’em high/ Now I ain’t never tell you to put down your hands/ Keep ’em high/ And if you’re losin’ your high then smoke again/ Keep ’em high.”
It’s a great song. And now that you all love Kanye, I’m sure you’ll enjoy digging deep into his work.
“Gotta get mine/ Gotta take mine/ Got a Tec-9/ Reach my prime.”
Because if you love Kanye the Trump supporter, I assume you also love Kanye the artist. Fawning over him solely because he’s a high-profile black celebrity enamored with a president who is, at best, white nationalist-curious would be awfully insincere.
Maybe at his next rally, Trump can show up a little late, then wow all the Kanye fans in the crowd with one of his best buddy’s lines: “You should be honored by my lateness/ That I would even show up to this fake (expletive).”