I’m not sure if it was the part where Kanye West exclaimed that the ‘Make America great again’ hat gave him energy, his 10-minute rant, or the hug he gave Donald Trump ... alright fuck it, it was the hug!
HE HUGGED THAT BAMA!
Kanye West. Southside’s own; the Louis Vuitton Don (who once brought his mom some Louis so she’s Louis Vuitton mom); Ye; Yeezy; father of North, Saint and Chicago; Donda’s baby—just hugged this sultan of spray tan; the bag of vomit with a blonde combover; the destroyer of all good things; the hater of women; the president of those who buy groceries at gas stations.
Look at this. No, seriously, look at this.
Not only did he hug Trump, he ran to hug Trump.
He literally said, “I love this guy.”
For the past few years, it feels like we’ve been watching the public castration of Kanye. Kanye has devolved from, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” to “this MAGA hat is a Superman cape.” And it’s been a slow death of one of the most outspoken black artists of our time.
That Kanye—that 2005 pro-black Kanye—wouldn’t fuck with this Kanye. That Kanye would’ve written raps calling this Kanye out for his admiration of the white gaze. In truth, I couldn’t make it through the whole video with Kanye West and the president—oh, and football great Jim Brown was there, but I blame his lapse in blackness on undiagnosed CTE. At one point, I thought President Trump was going to pat Kanye on the head.
I mean the shit was some real performative, boot shine blackness that I’ve not seen from any self-respecting black person not named Paris Dennard since Judas picked up his check for 30 pieces of silver.
To top it off, Kanye performed one of his stream-of-consciousness rants that ran for 10 minutes. You know, the ones that he usually uses to hold audience members at his concert and cast members of SNL hostage? The rants in which Kanye gets about as deep as a paper cut and basically just talks real long and randomly about shit that he appears to feel passionately about but it really just comes off like a drunk uncle that everyone ignores. Yep, he did one of those inside the Oval Office.
From what I saw, Kanye ranted about his beef with Nike and Adidas; some shit about a trap door and ending up next to the Unabomber; how he didn’t grow up around a lot of “male energy;” why Levis makes jeans in Vietnam; Trump factories in Chicago; Yeezy ideation centers; hydrogen-powered planes; Attention Deficit Disorder and Larry Hoover is a living statue.
... And that was in the first two minutes.
I couldn’t make it through this whole video but I’m leaving it here in case you are brave enough to do so. There is something so inherently sad in watching the public fall of Kanye West that it’s beginning to feel like revenge porn.
It appears that Ye is willing to die on this white nationalist-adjacent hill, and I don’t know if he believes it. I know that he’s spent an entire career attempting to draw attention to himself by going against the grain. This all feels like an act; a Banksy-esque exhibit in which blackness turns gray. Something has always been off with Ye, but we have no choice but to take him at his word.
Kanye’s dying on this hill and as long as it’s Trump-branded and the president can get a piece of the revenue, well, I doubt he even gives a shit.