BeatRoute Magazine BC Edition - December 2019

MERT & MARCUS
The Decade's Most Influential Artist
8
Nº
KANYE WEST
O
ver the course of the
2010s, Kanye West’s
rise and fall from grace
embodies much of the
collective highs and lows,
anxieties and fears, and
fixations and obsessions
in a way few individuals
ever have.
For Kanye, the 2010s
started at a low point. His 808s and
Heartbreaks album had divided his
fanbase during the autotune wars.
Beyond the burgeoning trap scene
in Atlanta, the state of rap was at an
all-time low point as the ascendant
stars of tomorrow had yet to fully
rise. In the fall of that year, after
a string of excitement building
G.O.O.D. Fridays, he released My
Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,
an album of maximalist sentiment,
packed with features, samples,
overt emotions, and dense soundscapes.
The next year Kanye followed this
success with the Jay-Z collaboration,
Watch the Throne. Recorded
in the suites of some of the world’s
most expensive hotels, while
there are certainly some poignant
ruminations on what it means to be
black in America, Watch the Throne
serves mostly as a canticle for the
successful merger of hip-hop and
the mythology of capitalism.
In 2012, he continued his reign
with Cruel Summer, a G.O.O.D.
music album. Like most label
compilations it was a mixed bag,
but notable for its inclusion of Travis
Scott as a regular collaborator and
future family member. That same
year, Kanye started dating Kim
Kardashian, creating a nucleolus
of public attention for the rest of
the decade. Around this time he
also became a mainstay of Twitter,
which, in all seriousness, he was
very good at, especially when
tweeting about water bottles.
During this time, Kanye signaled
a transition towards fashion. His
infamous leather jogging pants
line aside, he spoke continually
about the industry gatekeeping he
and his partner Virgil Abloh faced,
turning his discontent to outright
hostility on the aggressive, industrial
inspired Yeezus.
In 2015, Kanye launched his
fashion line, Yeezy, climbing to the
top of the streetwear pile. With
Kanye however, this merchandise
transcended his fanbase.
Suddenly the chain was complete.
The ever-rising importance of
celebrity had reached a new level:
Kanye could tweet when he felt
like it, or disappear; and the Yeezys
created their own global mania of
have and have nots. Kanye and
Kim essentially became brands
personified.
The next year, Kanye released
The Life of Pablo, coinciding with his
second Yeezy collection’s fashion
show. Pablo became notable as one
of the first releases to get edited
after it was released, like a piece
of software, with different mixes,
verses, and even songs. It features
Kanye at his best with touch points
from his whole career.
That fall he started the Life of
Pablo Tour, which fairly quickly
derailed itself with particularly long
onstage rants and cancellations,
resulting in Kanye’s hospitalization
for exhaustion-related psychosis in
November 2016. Shortly after this,
he appeared at Trump Tower, meeting
with the new president-elect.
After this, he mostly disappeared
from public life for the next year.
After re-emerging in the spring
of 2018, donning a MAGA hat and
making an appearance on TMZ
that confirmed many Kanye fans’
worst fears, as he made strange
and ill-advised comments about
the role of slavery in contemporary
black mentality, he released several
albums from his Wyoming Sessions
to mixed reviews.
While his Kids See Ghosts collab
with Kid Cudi was mostly praised,
Ye, was largely panned. Kanye had
quite quickly gone from the most
beloved of rap’s stars to a target of
the woke generation’s ire.
Kanye has always been a
provocateur, though seemingly he
had picked the wrong side at this
point. In some ways, it seemed just
another casualty of the Trump presidency,
and its taint upon western
culture.
This fall, Kanye started a new
project, Sunday Sermons, where he
performed classic songs with a gospel
choir. Seemingly the vitriol had
inspired him to find God through
music, producing sometimes truly
beautiful renditions of his classic
songs. It wasn’t long until Kanye officially
found Jesus, released a middlingly
gospel record, and moved to
Wyoming, as if completing the latest
step of rockstar passage.
While many are skeptical and
see this as his latest scam, it’s in
some ways easy to identify with his
motivations. The last decade has
been amongst the most plugged
in, noisiest, and politically volatile.
Kanye is not alone in feeling a bit
spiritually bankrupt. Yet, despite his
many recent missteps, his intuition
is correct. Maybe what we all need
is some time in nature, and to let the
music save us. ,
By JAMES RATHBONE
DECEMBER 2019 BEATROUTE 15