Boo.
Kanye West sucks.
I’m aware that in a fairly pro-West world, a loaded statement like this leaves me in the minority. After all, it’s an easy cop-out to say something sucks, so what I should really say is this: I think Kanye West is a self-righteous and insincere jerk. (My blanket statement, by the way, is based solely on what the media and the Internet tells me; it’s common knowledge that whatever happens on TV is 100-percent real and everything written on the Internet is completely factual, right?)
I wasn’t always a West hater. In the summer of 2004, I enjoyed watching “Through The Wire” at least 12 times a day when MTV2 would accidentally broadcast on channel 99 of my cable-less TV. And while “Jesus Walks” should have been a raging-ego red flag, it wasn’t until Late Registration and the slickly catchy “Gold Digger” that I noticed the subtle but snarky nature of things to come. At this point, the producer/rapper/entrepreneur/teeth-whitening spokesman was everywhere, and a certifiable Kanye West landslide was in full swing. I began to feel that his once unique approach was just a sham, an intelligent cover allowing West to take over pop music like every other Patrón-doused self-enthusiast in the rap game. He felt like Jay-Z without the hard-knock persona, expelling collaborations with everyone from T-Pain to Adele, the shiny shit pile growing into an endless mountain of mega-hits that throbbed and thrashed all over the Billboard charts.
West’s involvement in everything from pushing vodka to Vuitton was like the great Puffy bombardment of the late ‘90s, when even the biggest Diddy supporters began to wince at his increasingly lackluster raps, cheap-looking clothing line, and, eventually, the mere sight of his beady little eyes. Now in 2009, West is king, and I feel crushed under the weight of what I perceive to be completely phony excitement by the general public.
So how can I just dislike West, when the airwaves are full of dudes trying to be just like him? It’s obvious that the mainstream hip-hop dominating American culture at the moment is built on being artificial; it’s based an unattainable materialism that promotes an extravagant party lifestyle impossible for its listeners ever to achieve. While hundreds of rappers subscribe to the music’s faux-reality, West seems the most overblown—like if you were to peel back the great West empire, you might find Parker Posey controlling the whole operation like a real-life Josie And The Pussycats.
But I digress: This was intended to be a correlative assay on the public personas of West and Lil Wayne, as a precursor to the latter’s show tonight, Aug. 20, at Fiddler’s Green. The idea was to look at West’s success propelled by false palpability and juxtapose it with Wayne’s lack of a larger mainstream appeal, based on what could be perceived as Wayne’s presentation of an “authentic self.” To prove Kanye’s ego was a hot-air balloon floating high above Wayne’s down-to-earth street credibility, I drew straight from the pinnacle of any rapper’s persona: his lyrics.
West’s “Stronger” surely exposes the self-assured chauvinist: “But I know that God put you in front of me / so how the hell could you front on me? / there's a thousand of yous / There's only one of me.” Comparatively, Wayne’s “Prostitute 2” describes that of a nurturer: “I wouldn’t care if you was a prostitute / and that you hit every man that you ever knew / see it wouldn't make a difference / if that was way before me and you girl / and you don’t ever have to worry about me long as you keep it real.”
Sha-wing.What an little angel Wayne was, I thought. He really cares about prostitutes, er, I mean, his girlfriends and their well-beings. He may be a chain-swinging, golden-jawed gentleman who wipes his tattooed tears of joy with hundred-dollar bills, but he’s a good guy. He truly loves women, and is just looking for the right Mrs. Carter, so they can do the damn thing. Hell, he even wrote an acapella declaration of love called “Pussy Monster,” which describes how much he really loves women. But West, well, he’s just a self-righteous egoist who dresses like an old, rich golfer and acts like he invented neon shutter sunglasses and Pepsi. Wayne was my man, and I wasn’t buying West’s bullshit for a second.
However, looking further into Wayne’s catalog, the lyrical evidence I gathered against West crumbled. Sure, Wayne may sing the praises of a prostitute, but he also warns a lady not to get used to the lifestyle he provides (“Comfortable”). And sure, West might call a woman an opportunist (“Gold Digger”), but Wayne will put his woman out on the street and slave her (“Whip It”). And to ice my theory cold was the biggest trump card in any theory: reality.
Misleading yet believable perceptions aside, the facts are all there: In real life, Wayne has two children by two different women, and is awaiting the births of two more babies by two more women. West, no matter what a raging pig he seems to be, has handled his business accordingly, and has no children. Don’t get me wrong—there is nothing wrong with having kids, or even having kids with more than one person. But the math is simple: Wayne + two children + two more on the way = 4 kids, 2 angry women, some really bad PR, and one fat moral clean sweep of a win for West. Congrats, Kanye, you are less of a jerk than Lil Wayne.
But for the record, I still think you suck.
(No Aggggggge)
