Ha, this is funny. I wrote this tweet in February and just saw Jeff again on Friday. I can assure you that it’s very cathartic, especially the “fuck NOOOOOOO” part.
By making many people that would have listened or bought it ... not. He can have all the magabucks he wants. Selling your legacy to the alt-right. Good move.
By getting his name circulating in the media. He knows he has his cult following that will purchase his album and just having his name in headlines/trending lists will get curiosity levels high enough for people not in his cult to stream his new album online when it’s released. He doesn’t seem to have a high level of integrity. Posting himself wearing a MAGA hat has to be more than just him supporting Trump. It’s him wanting to be controversial as well.
Let’s check in in two months or so and look at some numbers. I think this will hurt him. How much I don’t know, but let’s see.
I’m not saying it will work out for him and cause his album to have an excess amount of sales after his cult makes their purchases, but he is definitely trying. I won’t be streaming it but there are definitely people out there that will just because they see his name all over the internet.
The whole "Controversy = Publicity" theory I think is bunk because, as far as we know, Kanye won't even release physical copies of his new albums. It will all be iTunes and streams. And I'm sure the first week numbers will be huge just based on curiosity. But if it doesn't have legs, who cares? I think where he'll be hit hard is concerts because I imagine a decent chunk of people won't shell out big bucks to see a MAGA rapper. And all these right-wingers that are owning the libs because they're posting their support for him on Twitter aren't going to spend money/energy on seeing him in concert because they know they hate his music and prior to the past two weeks, they hated him.
This whole episode today kind of actually upset me to a surprising degree, way more than I think is good for me right now. So I put the internet down for a few hours and played video games instead. I had a really good time and it turns out I still like things that have yet to let me down. Just wanted to share that in case anyone else is feeling down and feeling down about feeling down. PS: The new God of War game is really good.
If it's PR, then it's completely misguided. The MAGA trolls aren't just going to go away after one album cycle. He's gonna be a lasting part of their culture like Pepe and red hats and everything else. Whatever control he had over his own narrative is (probably?) gone.