We all know Kanye can be egotistical. All he's doing is proving that even by alienating basically his entire fan base, he can still put out songs that top the charts. He doesn't know the first thing about politics (he even admits this himself in a recent Kimmel interview, saying, "I'm not worried about the details.") He's just trying to show that he can go 180 degrees opposite of what he's "supposed" to do and still succeed on a grand scale. That's why he likes Trump, not for his politics, but because he became president even after doing everything he wasn't "supposed" to do. Kanye just fails to recognize the repercussions of these actions.
He was working and being mentored by Rick Rubin in 2012-13, so I assume so. I think he's mostly surrounded by yes people though, including Mike Dean, Chance The Rapper, etc. They're not going to challenge opinions because they borderline worship him. I also think what attracts Kanye to these nutjobs is their ability to play the victim when they're challenged by the other side. This is the way Kanye has been for a long while - it's everyone's fault but him. He refers to the cast of SNL telling him to take off his MAGA hat as bullying, when he can't see the other side of the loaded message it sends to so many people. It's classic Candace Owens/Charlie Kirk behavior, it gets him attention, he's the victim and he loves it.
He showed up to the College for Creative Studies here in Michigan today. There are multiple videos of him standing and walking around on the tables talking about design. Some of it makes sense, like when he sticks to encouraging the design students to continue in their studies because of the various ways their chosen field can help change the world, but then of course there are other videos wherein he launches into a diatribe about how unfairly Elon Musk is being treated and that he should be left alone. So you know. Same shit, different day.
(A very small nearly dead) Part of me, the romantic kid, almost admires his belief that he can bring everyone together. And the other more rational adult part of me goes “you’re a fucking idiot”.
"little momentum" lol I Love It just broke Youtube records. Be mad all you want but a little quality control would really help a lot of arguments
Yeah idk about all that he's still huge, idk I don't think your average hip hop fan gives a shit about this kind of thing.
Yeah, that whole piece seemed to be a little too optimistic about how far Kanye has fallen. He’s still huge. I’m pretty sure he still has all or most of his celeb friends. “Yahndi” will still do big numbers.
I usually avoid anything Justin Charity writes tbh. I just don’t care for any of his hip hop takes ever. And yea a lot of that reads as wishful thinking. Also “I Love It” being better than everything off of ye is a damn reach. “I Love It” is junk.
Telling that no one is citing his most recent album, released in June, as evidence that he's still "huge." His popularity has definitely fallen. To where is up for debate, but it's hard to argue he's a top level "superstar" when there are artists doing 500k to over 1m in the first week (he's doing 200k, and second week sales of around 75k). Still decent streaming numbers for the catalog, good tour sales and sizes, but like Eminem, he's not where his stan fans think he is.
Kendrick took Kanye's place in rap as the critical darling with commerical success to match it a few years ago and Kanye stans have yet to realize it.
Kanye definitely isn’t as big as he once was, but I also think that article is overly optimistic about how much the average hip-hop fan (or music fan generally) is going to change their listening habits based on Kanye’s political views. I definitely think Kanye has overall declined commercially since his peak, but if I’m being honest I think that has little or nothing to do with his recent political stances.
They're very different as artists and their career arcs haven't been similar at all but it just feels like Kendrick is the one making the most important (for lack of a better term) albums in the genre where as that used to be Kanye.
Lol Kanye is huge. Just look at the chart debuts of all the 7 song albums he has worked on this year. His streaming debut numbers etc would be bigger if he would engage in the well planned out marketing plans that other labels make their artists go through, but he doesn’t care about those.
*looks at numbers* Yeah, they're good, they're not near what the biggest artists are doing. Not even close. 200k SPS first week? That's really good. And yet Lil Wayne just did 480,000. Brockhampton did 100. The surprise Eminem release did 200k. Drake: over 700k Justin Timberlake: 300k. Dave Matthews: 300k. Travis Scott: 540k. Panic at the Disco: 180k. He's big. He's doing Panic! at the Disco numbers. Good for him. But Panic! at the Disco level is not what people mean when they talk about superstars. Or massive, cultural, and lasting impact on the year's music. And the idea that he doesn't care about debut numbers is ... uh .. false. Of course he cares. Of course he tries to create marketing around his releases. He's just not as good at it and the music hasn't caught on.