This blog is going to be different from every other blog I’ve done. I am straying away from lyrical analysis for my last post, this one will be more opinion based. This blog is going to be about separating art from the artist, specifically Kanye West. 

Kanye has always been one of my favorite artists, his music has consistently gotten me through some of the darkest points of my life. One of my favorite things to do is listen to his music and really dive into the lyrics and attempt to figure out the meaning, so when the opportunity arose to make my passion blog about Kanye lyrics I knew it was the only option for me. This decision is one that I have grown to regret. 

I have always considered myself a person who doesn’t separate art from artist because at the end of the day if you listen to their music you are putting money into their pocket which enables and allows them to continue having a space where they can spread harmful ideologies or practices. Like when the R. Kelly allegations surfaced. I had no problem, no longer streaming and listening to his music. In fact I didn’t want to listen to his music. I feel the same about Chris Brown, I won’t listen to his music because he has a pattern of abusive behavior towards women.  But with Kanye it has always been different. He has been controversial as long as I have been able to remember. 

I ask you, where were you November 11, 2009? Were you watching the American Music Awards? The award show where Kanye stormed on stage and grabbed the microphone from Taylor Swift because he was made Beyonce didn’t win the award. This moment was a foundational moment in my young brain, it might even be the reason I am so interested in pop culture today. He also took another stab at Taylor is 2017 in his song Famous when he says “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex. Why? I made that bitch famous.” Even though Kanye did not make her famous, she was famous before, in fact she was famous enough to beat Beyonce at the AMA’s. This is one of the first things many of us (myself included) can remember, but there had been incidents before this in which Kanye had acted out of impulse. 

An earlier example would be in 2005 when Kanye was participating in a charity concert for Hurricane Katrina relief. When he blurted out “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” George Bush was our sitting president at the time and whether we agree with the way he handled the aftermath of the hurricane or not, this event was supposed to be about those who have been affected by the hurricane not Kanye and his beliefs. But Kanye did what Kanye does best and made sure all the attention was on him. 

These incidents alone are enough to make someone stop listening to him, but I didn’t. For me he always fell into this troubled artist trope and that was okay with me. I didn’t have to agree with everything he said and believed because everyone is entitled to their own opinion. That was until recently when Kanye started making his anti semitic comments. On October 9, 2022 Kanye West tweeted he is going to go “death con 3 on the jews.”  and obviously this got the internet talking because of its anti Semitic nature, but this backlash did not stop him. He lost everything, his deal with Adidas, his billionaire status, and he even lost his divorce hearing from Kim Kardashian (even though this is completely separate from his anti semitism.) Nevertheless, on December , he did an interview with Alex Jones where he said he “loves the Nazis” and “can see good things about Hitler”.  These combined with his outburst over the summer about his divorce and custody of his kids have made me question whether or not I should continue to listen to his music. It is truly a moral dilemma because I don’t want to support an antisemite but I also find it hard to leave behind the music that helped me get through high school. But at the end of the day I can’t really separate the music from him because the more I stream the more money he gets. So, I’m curious as to what you all think of this situation and your opinions on separating art from the artist.