By Jack Lev ’20
For a while now, legendary rapper and artist Kanye West has been out of the music mix. The media, the fans and the music industry as a whole missed Kanye, but on April 28, 2018, West made his comeback to the music world, and to say the least, it was not what I was expecting.
On April 28, West released two songs following a Twitter outburst in which he spoke of his newfound love for the president.
A number of Kanye’s fans are frustrated with the fact that the artist has been so supportive of the president because they see President Trump as a symbol of white supremacy, therefore they feel by Kanye standing by Trump he is supporting white supremacy.
The songs West produced are called “Lift Yourself” and “Ye. vs the People.” In “Ye. vs the People,” Kanye utilizes a great beat from the Four Tops “7-Rooms of Gloom” while he and rapper T.I. have a back-and-forth on the topic of defending President Trump. Furthermore, the two of them rap about what Kanye is doing now and how it goes against everything he has ever stood for. The artists speak of the “sunken place,” which Kanye seems to describe as a dystopia he was in when he decided to wear his “Make America Great Again” hat that caused outbursts from his fan base.
On this track, T.I. represents the views of the people; Kanye’s fans who believe that through his defense of the president, West is therefore defending white supremacy.
Simply put, this song was bad. Not only did it prevent the fans from breaking away from Kanye’s ridiculous Twitter persona, but the lyrics were also unsatisfactory. West discussed how Trump’s current presidential reputation has proved that he could be president in 2024, which is absurd judging by his political background that consist of nothing at all. Although Trump did not have much of a political background either prior to being elected, he was an experienced businessman who was very successful as a real estate mogul, while Kanye is solely experienced in the music industry.
Aside from this, by Kanye showing continuous love and support for Trump, his fan base has grown more agitated, tweeting things such as “HOW DID YE RUIN EVERYTHING THAT FAST?” and “Every ****ing time people are ready to give a 2nd chance for the 100th time, he ****s it up.” Despite these showings of West’ fans agitation, Kanye is still profiting and enlarging his brand as he has gained 100,000 followers on social media for a total of 27.9 million.
On the other hand, Kanye released the song, “Lift Yourself.” I don’t mean to be a harsh critic here, but I would be doing an injustice if I said anything about this song was good. It was atrocious. I love Kanye, but when you don’t start rapping until the last 30 seconds of a song and the only words you say consists of “Poop, scoop, diddy and whoop,” it is actually embarrassing. The only positive about this song was that it made me laugh because it was so bad it was actually comical. On the other hand, is it possible that Kanye is actually so intelligent that he is making these ridiculous remarks and lyrics in efforts of gaining attention to promote his new album? As the saying goes, any publicity is good publicity, maybe this was strictly a business move on the part of Kanye.
So, the return of Kanye West was not what his fans or anyone for that matter hoped it would be; overall, I would give “Ye vs the People” a 7/10 and “Lift Yourself” a 2/10. On the bright side, West has not been losing money based on his ludacris remarks and artists in the industry clearly still have the desire to work with him. This is evident as West has two albums being released this June, one on June 1 and the other June 7.
