I Miss The Old Kanye
Black Mental Health Matters.
“Y’all won’t ever give me nothing I can’t handle; so please don’t ever give me records I can’t sample” They Say (2005)
Ye promised us that the universe would never give him anything he couldn’t handle. His bravado and honesty made him the most beloved dropout on college campuses. His avant-garde production made him the first pretentious art geek to be accepted by the streets. Yet, at some point, his passion overtook his patience, and his peace of mind became pain.
The 2005, pink polo Kanye and the new Ye have a lot more qualities in the middle of their Venn diagram than you may think. He has aways been brash, ambitious, and even narcissistic. These consistencies beg the question: is the “new Ye” a change in his reality? Or a change in our perception?
“As soon as people like you, make ‘em unlike you; cause kissing people ass is so unlike you” I Am a God (2013)
Music is the most powerful transferral of energy that you will feel from a stranger in this lifetime. As soon as the energy in Kanye’s sound shifted from an underdog with a lot of bark to a vicious Pit Bull with no empathy, we tucked our tails and cowered in fear. His fervent self-comparisons to God on Yeezus took away the innocence Kanye had maintained for the first decade of his career.
”Today I seriously thought about killing you. I think about killing myself and I love myself way more than I love you.” I Thought About Killing You (2018)
We have always loved Kanye for his willingness to exaggerate and vocalize the thoughts that we are too fearful to confront. Yet, On Ye in 2018, his lyrics were so candid that even if we related to them, we wouldn’t dare recognize it, let alone tweet the lyrics or use them as Instagram captions. His own declaration of mental illness naturally distanced us from him.
To be fair, these bold lyrics were accompanied by wild inferences voiced on TMZ and questionable meetings with Donald Tr*mp. Nonetheless, once again, the energy in the music drove a wedge between the Kanye and the crowd that once embraced him.
“I almost killed my daughter.” (2020)
Hearing Kanye speak without having any new music from him is like driving without a car radio and being stuck with your own irrational thoughts. For some of us, it took over 10 years, a pandemic, and a social revolution to recognize that Kanye is ill. The rest of us kept our fingers on the pulse of his music and felt the rhythm of it become irregular and incalculable.
In 1889, Oscar Wilde suggested that “life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”
The erratic nature of Kanye’s music evidently has been reflected by his personal struggle. As we approach new music with knowledge of how forthcoming and vulnerable Kanye is, it is impossible to predict what kind of tone this next album will carry. All we know is that we will be paying attention to Kanye because somehow, we always are.
We Still Love Kanye
We are not yet ready to accept mental illness in hip hop. We still look at as an aesthetic. When it actually manifests itself in the worst time on the biggest stage, we are ready to turn our back on it.
This is not to excuse Kanye from his actions or absolve him from the consequences. This is to say that we still love Kanye now because we loved him then. Black mental health matters.
