You know how you sometimes read the comments made about an article, and once in a blue moon, someone will crystallize your thoughts and write them in a way you wish you’d thought of? That happened to me this morning.
With Kaye West in the news again, after asking Mark Zuckerberg to invest $1 billion in “his ideas,” and then turning to Google’s Larry Page for a billion when Zuckerberg didn’t answer right away. He gave Tidal the exclusive rights to his new album to drive traffic there and is now mulling a lawsuit against The Pirate Bay after more than a million people decided to download the album for free rather than pay a monthly fee to have access to it. He also mentioned in a tweet that he’s rich and can buy furs and houses for his family the day after claiming he’s $53 million in debt, and solicited prayers for him to overcome. And among the lyrics in his new album are those in which he wrote he might still have sex with Taylor Swift because he made her famous. Dude’s had a week in fairy-world, all right!
After reading of this circus on Ars Technica1, one of the comments on the article resonated with me. User dfavro wrote:
Kanye West is the personification of my being generation-gapped. He’s the point I finally transitioned from “gets youth culture” to “get off my lawn”. I got Taylor Swift and her contemporaries. I got Jay‑Z, Lamar and such. I admit I really struggled with Drake, but I got there, sort of.
Kanye I don’t get at all. I’ve read the (glowing) music press about his work and I just don’t see the appeal. The lyrics aren’t great, the production is interesting, the actual sound is muddy and unpleasant. But dammit, if the press and the millennials don’t love the guy as an artist.
And I just don’t see it. It’s unpleasant at best and painfully bad at worst. With “No More Parties” I kept thinking that it must be a joke that I’m just not getting.
It’s either an “Emperor has no clothes” or I’m officially my parents.
Even ignoring Kanye’s acting like a child in an adult’s body, I don’t understand why he hasn’t already faded into obscurity. I suspect that the gossip mills have become popular enough to keep an artist in the spotlight despite their having long passed their ‘best before’ date. Just look at his wife. What did Kim Kardashian do? A sex tape. That’s it. It’s depressing. All I can do is my part to make sure I don’t personally support either of their continuing popularity with a single cent of my income. And this I certainly do!
Just when I found myself really down in the dumps, user Statistical found the silver lining:
The good new is once you finally accept you are no longer young and hip it is kinda liberating! You just do your own thing.
Isn’t that the truth? The older I get, the less I care what others think and it is more than a little liberating!
- Sebastian Anthony, “Kanye West reportedly considering legal action against Pirate Bay over Life of Pablo,” from Ars Technica, 2016-02-19.
Shawn
Well said and I am in the same boat. I don’t get him either. What I do get is that he is in the entertainment/gossip news at least 4.5 out of 5 work days. When this stops, both him and his wife will fade into non-existence. Sadly, there will be someone else to take his place
Rick
Agreed. I’d hoped it would stop where it started with Paris Hilton. She’s out of the spotlight, but the Kardashians stepped in to fill the void.