Just a year after this happened and it seems like everybody has forgotten about it. Yea he lost his adidas partnership but nowadays, he's been a welcomed surprise guest at Travis shows, I'm hearing his songs being popped off on in clubs and parties, and he's been going viral on TikTok with tons of praise and no criticism or mention of him being a Nazi in the comments

Is it Americans having the memory of a goldfish? Americans not really hating Hitler/Nazis/anti-semitism that much? Kanye's music is just too good to ignore? Americans just loving to deepthroat and worship anybody that's famous?

  • TupamarosShakur [he/him]
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    edit-2
    7 months ago

    Something I've been thinking a lot about recently myself, but you have to understand Kanye is not just another hugely popular artist but possibly the most influential hip-hop artist of the past 20 years, and I've seen some (myself included) rank him as one of the greatest hip-hop producers of all time, up there with the likes of Pete Rock, Preemo and J Dilla.

    You also have to understand hip-hop and where Kanye is coming from. Listen to pretty much any hip-hop song from the 90s (esp. from NYC) and it'll be littered with five percenter slang, which itself comes out of the NOI. I mean the five percenters were there from the start, at the Kool Herc parties. Both groups are...not the best when it comes to Jews. This is how you get Chuck D praising Farrakhan in multiple songs, Ice Cube going on antisemitic rants on twitter, and Jay-Z having a ton of really sus lines about Jews in a bunch of songs, just to name a few things off the top of my head. The Five percenter slang was so intertwined with hip-hop in the 90s that people were unknowingly using the slang w/o being five percent themselves. You probably know some terms yourself (cypher, word is bond, droppin science). Kanye's not a five-percenter (he's very serious about his christianity), but he started his career in the mid-90s when this stuff was unavoidable. He also jumpstarted his career with rocafella - I don't think Jay-z is five percent (though he's worn a five percenter chain, though I think that's more a nod to the culture than anything), but I know Beanie Sigel is some type of muslim, not sure about Memphis Bleek though I know Sean Price (his cousin) was definitely on some five percent shit, Freeway was five percent I think? - I'm not gonna analyze everyone in the rocafella camp, my point is five percent stuff was extremely prevalent in hip-hop in the era Kanye was coming up, and although its influence sorta started to die as Kanye's career progressed, he was undoubtedly exposed to the five percent stuff and therefore a lot of antisemitism.

    Another way antisemitism found its way into hip-hop is the fact that it was created by Black communities in NYC - where there were some very real tensions between Black and Jewish communities, esp. in Brooklyn.

    So I hope this doesn't come off as excusing Kanye, but I think it's important to note that Kanye's antisemitism can't be explained away by saying "Kanye's an idiot" or "Kanye's an asshole" because it does come from somewhere as hip-hop has had an antisemitism problem for a long time, and Kanye is an extension of that. Kanye's antisemitism is notable though because instead of staying as just basic hip-hop antisemitism, it got mixed with and amplified by the new right who want to parade Kanye around as a sort of darling of the right. So you have Kanye going on Alex Jones and meeting with Nick Fuentes - parading around the token Black man to support their views, not new on the right.

    So anyway, the reason he hasn't been canceled is probably some combination of 1) a lot of his fans are extremely apolitical (or worse, 4chan nazis - MBDTF, Yeezus and TLOP are loved by /mu/), 2) antisemitism was a part of hip-hop before Kanye, and a lot of old heads really do have extremely sus opinions on the Jews that make Kanye's beliefs...not that notable (what's notable is Kanye's antisemitism being lifted out of the hip-hop landscape and mixed up with the Nick Fuentes/Alex Jones/neo-nazi right), and 3) it's extremely difficult to extricate Kanye from the modern day hip-hop landscape - as I say above, his impact cannot be understated. He not only fundamentally changed the trajectory of hip-hop, but, in terms of production, he's also one of the best to ever do it.

      • TupamarosShakur [he/him]
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        edit-2
        7 months ago

        I don't know where /mu/ is at this point, at the point I stopped using 4chan (probably also around 7 years ago lol) I was pretty exclusively on /mu/ and it seemed like it was the least nazi-infested board. Not sure where it is now, but just meant to say there is a large portion of Kanye's current fanbase at least adjacent to that crowd if not outright part of it. Tbh even when /mu/ was the "least nazi-infested board" though I wouldn't say it was "good," just tolerable when I was fiending for some new music from one of those sharethreads.

        And yeah it is sort of funny (sad) that Kanye pretty much ended the stranglehold gangsta rap had over hip-hop, made it acceptable for rappers to show emotion and sensitivity and helped to elevate a lot of conscious hip-hop to the mainstream, yet what he'll probably be remembered for is antisemitism, his weird right-wing antics, and stalking Kim Kardashian. Not excusing it, but damn man, you could've retired at the top of the world with a hell of a legacy behind you and you go and do this.

        • GaveUp [she/her]
          hexagon
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          edit-2
          7 months ago

          The worst part is that the bigotry only correlated with his decline in quality of releases

          College dropout -> TLOP is easily one of the GOAT album runs. Imagine if he just dropped dead there or disappeared from the media forever somehow

          • TupamarosShakur [he/him]
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            7 months ago

            I’ve always thought he should’ve just settled down with Kim. I don’t think anyone thought that marriage would last, but they actually stayed together for a while and went through a lot, from where I am it seemed like an okay marriage (though I’m not up on celebrity gossip, maybe they actually had a ton of problems). Should’ve just settled down and raised his kids.

            I’m actually not a huge fan of his post-mbdtf output, save for bound 2. Mbdtf is his peak for me, though I know yeezus and tlop have huge fanbases. Kids with ghosts I know a lot of people also enjoy. Daytona (pusha t) also gets a lot of accolades, though I’ve never really listened. But yeah I agree, his work in his later career gets extremely hit or miss, with probably more misses than hits.

      • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
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        7 months ago

        Anyone who still goes on 4chan at all post 2016 is, at the very least, an extremely sus individual

    • Tunnelvision [they/them]
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      7 months ago

      This is the only comment worth reading in this entire thread. I’m not a big hip hop person, but I was loosely aware of most of what you’re talking about here, mostly because I’m a music history nerd kinda. I always saw the praising of nazism and Hitler from Kanye was most likely not a true heart of hearts admiration of those things, but the antisemitism in general is not an out of the blue phenomenon for him or other hip hop artists of that era. Doesn’t really matter because even if he was just trying to get out of some contracts there’s a million ways to do it other than getting on the air and saying you love Nazis. Now I just laugh when I hear flashing lights, which is now a problematic fave.