Kanye West is a controversial rap artist from Atlanta, Georgia. He started his career as a music producer, helping local musicians on their tracks. The earliest credit he has is from 1996. West gained notoriety from working with Roc-A-Fella Records.
Throughout his career, he has been known for being a very outspoken artist. Many fans have excused his extreme behaviors with this, using the excuse that he’s always been “in your face” with his opinions and stances.
Many fans of West changed their opinions of him in 2009 at the MTV Video Music Awards (VMA’s), where he interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance of the Best Female Video Award. During the award show, West said that Beyoncé, who was also nominated for the award, deserved it more than Swift, who was still pretty new to the music industry at the time, while Beyonce was already very well known.
Fans of West and Swift then divided despite the two artists seemingly being on good terms with one another even after the awards incident. This was the start of West’s image becoming seen as more rude than outspoken. Many fans saw his interruption as unnecessary since at the time Beyonce had already achieved a lot in her career and saw the act as tasteless and unbecoming of West, they saw him as crazy. The topic of what would’ve cause him to do that became prevalent, many coming back to the conversation of what’s going on with kanye’s mental health
Fans of West have credited his controversial behavior as due to his mental health. West was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2016 and as of recently, he has stated that he was diagnosed with autism. This was after his stunt at the Grammys, where his wife, Bianca Censori, appeared in the nude, although neither of them were supposedly invited to the event.
Despite his mental health, many people believe his actions are too problematic and that he should not have a platform, especially with his more harmful actions, such as his Super Bowl ad. He featured only a singular shirt with a Nazi symbol; he encouraged viewers to go to his website for his brand, Yeezy. This was following a rampage on the app X that he later deemed a social experiment, where he purposely said hurtful and controversial things.
People’s actions can be explained by mental health, but not excused. It seems as though people with big platforms can be misguided or blinded by unwavering support and in return believe they can get away with anything. This doesn’t and should not take away the viewer’s ability to take away this power, especially when it is causing harm to already marginalized and discriminated groups of people.
With big public figures like West, listeners and viewers of this behavior have to reflect on who this hurts and how, and if people like this should have a platform at all. But it also comes down to the people who continuously give their time and attention to these people and their actions, making them more money, attention and popularity. Therefore, giving them said platform.
One of the bigger issues is continuing to watch and entertain these people with likes, views, hate comments and things of that nature. In return to these actions you are only benefiting them. It’s a vicious cycle where people are loved and shoved into popularity and when they fall, it becomes a huge spectacle that the masses consume and talk about. only to turn off their phones and continue to live their life while the big figure sits in their mansion with no second thought about their actions.
