My Beautiful Dark Twisted Feelings About Whether Or Not You Can Separate 'Art' From 'Artist'

It's crazy how much changes in a decade.  The beginning of the 80's was Jimmy Carter as president and the shadow of nuclear war firmly over the world.  By November 9th 1989, the Berlin Wall was coming down and everything was changing.  Beginning of 1990, we had a Bush in office about to go to war with Iraq.  By 2001, we had a Bush in office, about to go to war with...oh.

Anyway, this is about Kanye West.

While working on my Top Albums Of The Decade blog, I considered adding My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy to the list.  Honestly all things being equal, maybe I should have.  But all things are not equal.

I bring up decades at the beginning there because the 2010's saw the seeming collapse of Mr. West's psyche, artistic ability, self-awareness and abundance of fucks to give.  But think about where he was at the beginning of 2010: A pariah known mainly for shitting on Taylor Swift's VMA moment.  For being a senseless jackass.  For being a punchline on South Park.

And also for having most recently put out a weird album that very few people liked.  Fast forward to today and not only has opinion on 808's & Heartbreak shifted, it's basically the blueprint for what music across all genres has become.  It is the one of the most prescient albums ever made, whether you like it or not.  But back then, people thought the man had lost his mind (me among them).  So with doubts about Kanye's ability, appeal and even sanity clouding the air, he had to knock it out of the park.  This is the atmosphere into which he released My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

I remember when it came out and the musical punditry of the day shouted from the rooftops that this was the Sgt. Pepper's of Hip-Hop.  After one listen I agreed.  After two listens I wholeheartedly agreed.  I made it my number one album of 2010 and it still holds up incredibly well.  I listened to it again in early 2020 and, like I said, all things being equal, it would have made the decade list.

The thing that hasn't held up over time is my ability to stomach Kanye West as a person.  I have an incredibly difficult time separating art from artist, especially when it comes to music.  If it's a book or a movie and the author/director is a shit-heel, it's easier to detach yourself from their issues because the thing you're experiencing is a made-up world.  Because of cognitive dissonance or framing (or in the case of a movie the other talents involved in production), it goes beyond merely the artist and creates a new space for your imagination to play in.

In theory, anyway.

Music is harder to do that with because it's a lot more intimate, especially with lyrics involved.  (Though to be honest, lyrics are never why I listened to Kanye; you have to ignore/rationalize a lot of whack bars to still be a fan of his.)  So when a musician does something you find reprehensible, it's a lot harder to be comfortable revisiting their work.

In 2018 Kanye West came out as a Trump supporter, started claiming slavery had been a choice for black people and put out some of the lamest singles of his career, designed specifically to troll his own audience.  He paid upper five figures for the rights to use a crime scene photo of Whitney Houston's hotel bathroom from when they found her body as the album cover of Pusha T's Daytona (which is an album where he raps about cocaine a lot).

Kanye is still hailed as a genius by some, vilified as a monster for turning his back on his community by others (and make no mistake that second one is true) but not strictly for the reason you'd think.  I don't really believe Kanye's a conservative nor even a "real" Christian (at least not to the level he's pushing it in kayfabe).

No, this is performance art.  The definition of pretension because it doesn't mean a damn thing.

This man is an edgelord.

He knows wearing a Maga hat is one of the only things that will still get shock value, so he does it.  He saw the red team come out to defend him when he was (rightly) taken to task for that, so he tries to fool the religious nuts into believing he's one of them too, but all he can come up with is "Closed On Sunday, you're my Chic-Fil-A".

And knowing that really changes how you listen to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.  If Kanye has any self-awareness at all, the themes work.  If not...shit, look at "Runaway" alone.  The chorus is a toast to the douchebags; that becomes literal if he's not self-aware.  He's embracing asshole-dom.  And considering his career trajectory from there on out, I'm not so sure it was as "aware" as it seemed in the first place.

And honestly the wide scope, ambition and epicality of the project seems kinda narrow now.  It lacks the subtlety and cool it once had ten years on.  The themes of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy are still money, cash, hoes but with a little bit of conscious rap and attempts at reflection sprinkled in.  And those sprinkles are lost on the wind of this blowhard's wet fart of a discography since.  It hasn't just been ten years since Kanye's peak, it's been ten years since he put out a good album.

The takeaway from revisiting MBDTW is that I still like it a lot because the songs are incredibly well made and I do still have a tinge of nostalgia attached to it, but I can never love it again.  Not after figuring out Kanye West is a con man, deluding himself and the world alike.  A troll and a poseur, trying to add edge to his product by embracing hard core conservatism, aware enough to know that's how you go into much darker territory but too lazy to actually commit.

I don't know whether it's more distressing that he displays a seeming total absence of self-awareness or that it feels like a veneer of someone trying to seem daring in a world that can no longer be shocked.  If he's knowingly just doing this for clickbait, I somehow have more and less respect for him at the same time because yes, it's a ballsy move but one done at the cost of all moral fortitude.

If you're willing to play-act as a far right winger or a hard-core conservative Christian but not actually believe all of the garbage you spew, you're doing it at a time when those people are trying to crush the world in the grip of fascism and you're helping their cause.  On the other hand, if you actually believe this shit and this is the art you're putting out now (Jesus Is King in particular), then you're just a shitty artist who's lost all of his creativity and aren't worth paying attention to anyway.

Those are your two options Kanye.  You chose this path.  I hope you're happy.