I’m writing this for the benefit of those who knew as little about Kanye West as I did and were curious about his music and personality.
Donald Trump called Kanye West, aka Yeezy, a musical genius.
“Those in the music business say he’s a genius, and that’s OK with me, because as far as I’m concerned, he is,” the president said during an interview Thursday on “Fox & Friends.”
Then Trump invited him to the Oval Office for a meeting which is being called surreal and jaw-dropping by many in the media. Trump may yet regret arranging the meeting because he was upstaged by the star whose performance in 10 or 15 minutes eclipsed anything Trump pulled off at his most unhinged hour long rally speeches. He may also regret it because the not particularly feely-touchy president had to endure an enthusiastic hug from the famous rapper who also dropped a few choice profanities which had to be bleeped out of subsequent broadcasts.
W Magazine (which has some good photos of Ivanka and West at the meeting) notes that “for seemingly the first time in his life, the same man who interrupted Hillary Clinton more than 50 times during a presidential debate gave his full permission for one of his fellow human beings to speak. (Though it's worth noting that almost immediately after he ceded it, there was no chance West would be returning the platform.)”
Business Insider published a transcript of West’s speech in their article about the event.
West told ABC News’ Jon Karl, “I don’t answer questions that are simple soundbites. You are tasting a fine wine, that has multiple notes to it. You better play 4-D chess with me like it’s ‘Minority Report,’ cause it ain’t that simple. It’s complex.”
CNN’s Don Lemon called the meeting a minstrel show saying that West was embarrassed himself and embarrassed Americans, but mostly African-Americans. This is how The Hill described what Lemon said:
Lemon later added that Trump exploited someone "who needs help" and "who needs to deal with his issues" during the much-publicized meeting.
"Kanye needs help, this has nothing to do with being liberal or a conservative. We have to stop pretending... like this is normal," Lemon said, before admonishing the media for covering the event. From The Hill
I never watched a West video and didn’t know anything about him aside from his shameful behavior at the MTV Video Music Awards ceremony when unscripted he came onstage and took the microphone away from Taylor Swift to praise a Beyoncé video that didn’t win.
On the West-Taylor feud It begins. On this fateful day in New York City, a 19-year-old Taylor was at the MTV Video Music Awards, accepting the Best Female Video award for unrequited love anthem 'You Belong with Me'. During her cute acceptance speech, Kanye jumped up on the stage and grabbed the mic, interrupting with the now-immortal words: "Yo, Taylor, I'm really happy for you and I'mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!" Cosmoplitan
Here’s what I learned about Kanye West
I only knew Kanye West by name as a well-known rap star. Then I paid more attention because he was one of the few major celebrities who was an ardent Trump supporter. After the Oval office meeting I wanted to learn more about him. After looking at his Wikipedia page, I decided to check out a few videos to see and hear him. These (links below) are explicit so be aware they are not the usual fare for Daily Kos.
Once I watched these I wondered whether Trump ever watched the West videos which make Trump's objectification of women look tame and the Access Hollywood take seem like like G rated Disney movies. Check out “Fade,” “Gold Digger” and “All Mine” all on YouTube if you want a sample but be aware the language is crude and demeaning to women.
-------
"Fade" features a virtually naked woman in an explicitly sexual dance without even showing West until the last few seconds.
"Gold Digger" is another song that objectifies women.
Kanye loves to say pussy, and he even mentions Stormy Daniels, in "All Mine."
Once I watched the videos I did some Internet searching to learn more about this superstar of the rap music world. Here are some of the references I found.
The song where the Stormy Daniels reference appears, "All Mine," is sonically like a cross between those two landmark albums, with West's classic sly pop cultural references used for innuendos mixed with a relatively simple beat. And I'll warn you now, in case the fact that an adult film star is referenced didn't tip you off: these lyrics are dirty. Like dirty.
"All Mine" is all about sex and lust, to put it simply. It touches on a few high-profile cheating stories, digging into the celebrity rumor mill, which is how Daniels got swept into it. This is also that song that features West rapping about the rumors that Tristan Thompson cheated on Khloé Kardashian throughout her pregnancy. Thompson and Khloé Kardashian's teams have not responded to requests for comment from Elite Daily.
As I searched the Internet I discovered that some reports suggest Mr. West suffers from bipolar disorder (something he has denied) and that his music about the subject of mental illness has been quite controversial.
(In his album) He considers this dilemma: ‘If you whoop her ass, she move in with him / then he whoop her ass, you go through it again… / She got the scars, they serve as reminders / blood still on her pyjamas.’ It’s an uncomfortable track to say the least, in which Kanye projects sexuality and imagined violence onto a child where there’s really no need to. He follows up by reminding us that he only really began to consider the respect owed to women and girls once he had a daughter. Which begs the question – where’s the track for his son? One, maybe, that directs his boy to becoming the kind of man that doesn’t see women as ‘something to conquer,’ as his father has. It’s often hard to know when Kanye is sharing his thoughts, or simply trolling. ‘Russell Simmons wanna pray for me too,’ he says on Yikes, ‘I’ma pray for him cause he got #MeToo’d / thinking what if that happened to me too / then I’m on E! News.’ The verse hangs like the thread that holds the album together, weaved between lyrics of a man reflecting on the personal and the political, while showing little suggestion that he has a sincere understanding of it all.
Here’s another article addressing his misogyny and disparaging women:
There are much more crafty, interesting ways to be provocative than by trolling victims of rape, or attacking Taylor Swift or Amber Rose: There are much more crafty, interesting ways to be provocative than by trolling victims of rape, or attacking Taylor Swift or Amber Rose.
We’ve been exposed to Kanye’s sexism, in varying degrees, for the better part of nearly two decades. It’s pervaded nearly everything he’s done with sometimes terrifying alacrity—for instance, the infectious, buoyant “Gold Digger” hook, which makes a pop anthem out of the tired trope that women are as deep as their interest in material goods makes them. On 2008’s “Heartless,” lyrics like “You got a new friend, well I got homies” offer a shaming double standard. And Yeezus contained what Spin’s Brandon Soderberg called a “spleen-vent” against women, with lyrics like “Hurry up with my damn massage / Hurry up with my damn ménage,” one among many that paint a disturbing picture of Kanye’s perception of women.
Of course, it’s a little more complicated than that: on songs like “Love Lockdown,” Kanye allows himself to be vulnerable. As he sings “I'm not loving you, the way I wanted to,” he’s humanized and relatable, and as much as 808s is a rejected bro’s tantrum, it’s also his Dear Diary confessional in the wake of his split from fiance, Alexis Phifer, and the devastating death of his mother, Donda. 808s revealed Kanye’s unique ability to play the sympathetic anti-hero.Yeezuswas trickier, but we’re supposed to read the inherent misogyny in Yeezus as a performance—a character portrayed by Kanye the same way he portrays Jesus on stage. The oversexualization of black men in pop culture can be just as troubling a phenomenon as the objectification of women, and Yeezus’s graphic sexism could be read as a response to this, confronting audiences with their preconceived notions of how a black man should act and turning it up so far that it causes an almost painful discomfort. The issue with this is that performing through someone else’s oppression—regardless of intention—makes for an exploitative kind of art.
"Keeping it real" is a concept that's helped tether Kanye West to his audience for over a decade. His moves subverted the double-consciousness: He wore his black Chicagoan roots on his sleeve regardless of the white gaze, while he refused to let any monolithic concept of blackness stifle his ambition.
But it's only recently that the same strength, which helped make him a centripetal cultural force, has become truly pernicious. The lead-up to T.L.O.P.has been chaotic: G.O.O.D. Fridays only lasted two Fridays. A petty Twitter rant against Wiz Khalifa exposed West as an obsessive neurotic; he had to go out of his way to defend his anus against Amber Rose. The title of his next album changed from an onomatopoeia ( SWISH) to a game show. Yesterday, he proclaimed Bill Cosby was innocent—in all caps—possibly setting the Freedom Tower on fire.
What to make of all this?
The President of the United States and the rich and famous rapper are a certainly well-suited pair of misogynists who apparently think nothing of saying (or singing) things that objectify women. I have no way of knowing if Trump knew very much about Kanye West (he met with him before at Trump Tower) when he agreed to the meeting live in front of millions of viewers aside from the fact that is wealthy, famous, and that he wears a MAGA which he imbues with supernatural power: “It was something about when I put this hat on, it made me feel like Superman. You made us Superman, that's my favorite superhero, and you made a Superman cape for me.”
I wonder how many GOP women even know what Kanye West and his music is all about. I wonder if they’d even care if they did know.
I also wonder if Melania every watched any of his videos about how he regards and treats women as sexual objects and what she’d think if she did.
Addendum:
Retired football star 82 year old Jim Brown was also at the meeting sitting to next Kanye West (not in this photo) This is what he had to say:
"We had the opportunity to meet with the President of the United States which everybody doesn't have that privilege. With me, at 82 years old, the only thing I could talk about was how to help other people. So, it was very positive."
Brown went on behalf of his Amer-I-Can foundation which helps inner-city youth develop life skills -- and he told everyone Trump was very good to the whole delegation.
"This is the President of the United States. He allowed me to be invited to his territory, he treated us beautifully, and he shared some thoughts, and he will be open to talking when I get back to him. That's the best he could do for me.” TMZ