You’re gonna love me or you’re gonna hate me, but I’m gonna be me. (That is itself a contradiction: Kanye West complaining about fame.) So which is it? I am all of these things, Kanye tells us. Complaining about celebrity and the vapidity of Hollywood in “Famous” and “No More Parties in L.A. “This is a God dream.” “We ‘bout to get this paper!” A crude barb at Taylor Swift, she the strange, unending fixation of West.
They are everywhere on The Life of Pablo they are sprawled out on his Twitter feed, like household minutiae come tumbling out of an overstuffed storage closet. There’s a bunch of people that are hurt that still couldn’t have made the album that was super-polarizing and redefined the sound of radio.”īy now we know that sound: one of those “contradictions” in West’s character, which West more than anyone revels in. West himself made the point in his insufferable 2013 New York Times interview: In spite of rough early years and discomfort with authority, Bach was the picture of military discipline as a working artist. Shakespeare was a successful businessman. Van Gogh is the case that comes to mind: that sort isn’t one to brag about his insanity, and the “craziness” is actual suffering, not some kind of justification.Īnd it is also true that the creative faculty is strong with many imperfect-but-rational individuals. It is true that much great art-and perhaps the most indelible art-issues from tortured souls. The “artist as madman” meme is like many shibboleths and stereotypes-rooted in a grain of truth, but abused and degraded with popularization, used to justify rather than challenge, like the current fad of practicing mindfulness meditation to seek “happiness” rather than presence. A borderline class of person exists who calls himself “crazy” not in earnestness but in flippancy, as an in an unconscious admission of decadence and denial, as an unapologetic announcement. A truly mentally ill person never admits his mental illness. No one who is actually crazy calls himself “crazy.” A healthy person admits her illness. –Kanye West, “Feedback,” The Life of Pablo
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