When I told my parents that I would be going to Kanye West’s “Yeezus” tour, their reaction was predictable: “Um, what? Why?”
That’s a fair reaction. To huge portions of the public, Kanye comes across, as Jimmy Kimmel said, “as kind of a jerk.” There was the time when he interrupted Taylor Swift, the time when he ranted over Twitter about Kimmel’s lighthearted piece poking fun at a Kanye interview, and the time he told the world, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
Many people, like my parents, think Kanye is a jerk, arrogant or possibly off his rocker. This column will not attempt to defend Kanye on any of these fronts — many of his actions are inexcusably inappropriate. And yet, for whatever reason, a huge number of people find Kanye tolerable, even endearing, as a person. During the Yeezus concert, as I watched Kanye come out of a mountain, meet with “White Jesus” (an actor who came out to “bless” Kanye before his song “Jesus Walks”) or rant for 10 minutes on the various maladies in his life, I began to wonder why people are so attracted to this insecure yet talented man. Yet all of his faults could not prevent 20,000 people from screaming themselves hoarse during the concert.
I think the reason that Kanye is so compelling is that he is authentic — a rare characteristic for a pop culture giant. As Kanye said on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, “I have never done a publicity stunt in my life.” Everything he does is genuine. And so when Kanye professed at the Yeezus show that, “People think I’m crazy … but they don’t understand that I am smarter than all of them,” many took that to be a refreshing piece of honesty from a celebrity — honesty that simultaneously hinted at the deep insecurities that have plagued Kanye for his whole career.
It is impossible to imagine Kanye engaging in a faux-fight with one of his friends to attract publicity, as 50 Cent did via Twitter with his buddy Floyd Mayweather. Kanye does not pull those sorts of shenanigans. In an era where so many celebrities engage in silly stunts to attract attention, an era where so much music sounds largely the same, Kanye possesses the courage to create music that sounds like nothing anyone has ever heard in our lives. With each turn of his career, he expands or shifts his artistic output in an unpredictable, wildly entertaining, usually brilliant, possibly insane, wholly authentic way. His career arc stretches from the soulful brilliance of “The College Dropout” to the mournful, dehumanizing auto-tune of “808s and Heartbreak” — which, by the way, practically invented the subset of hip-hop that Frank Ocean and Drake now occupy. And there is “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” a gratuitous display of Kanye’s skill as a musician and a producer. And finally, we have “Yeezus,” which only adds to his impressive body of work.
While some rappers churn out the same mindnumbingly bland tracks in which they speak, paradoxically, of being men of the people as well as tired of all the attention, nothing Kanye has created is so contrived. And in the wider landscape of American society, Kanye’s honesty and authenticity stands out. In his interview with 60 Minutes last year, historian David McCullough cited “authenticity” as the characteristic prevalent in the great politicians of American history, but lacking in politicians today. “Every candidate running for any office,” McCullough said, “ought to study the Harry Truman 1948 campaign. I think what’s important about it, he ran by being himself. And he said ‘I’m going to go out there and say what I mean.’ Can you imagine? A politician taking that as his approach? And people loved it.”
You might not agree with everything — or anything — that comes out of Kanye West’s mouth. And you might think that Kanye does not understand some proper norms of society: that it can be inappropriate to speak one’s honest opinions, especially when those opinions are hurtful to others. These are valid points. But his truthfulness and his unflinching tendency to say exactly what he believes are the qualities that help explain his wild popularity, and these are qualities that anyone can admire.
John Connolly is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. His columns usually run Thursdays.
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