It’s time we stop acting like Kanye West is OK.
There comes a point when it isn’t a gimmick, and it isn’t for show or for album promotion. I think we’ve reached that point. West might just be on the verge of a psychotic break and we’re all ignoring it.
He doesn’t seem happy. Ever. In fact, he’s never seemed more miserable than he has these past few years. When has he shown genuine joy other than when he’s interacting with his precious daughter, North West?
These incoherent Twitterrants, while sometimes comedic, are alarming. He seems manic and restless. He’s clearly going through a lot more than being “distracted from his creative process,” as he protested on Twitter. He recently told a fellow grown man, rapper Wiz Khalifa, that he owned his child via Twitter in a more than 30-tweet rant, and while that made for a day of great social media jokes, it didn’t seem to cause many people
concern.
Soon after, he tweeted “Bill Cosby innocent” and an array of exclamation points with no explanation or further clarification. Tweeting support for Cosby, a man who is currently under fire with more than 50 sexual assault allegations, is
problematic enough, but to offer no other words on the matter is even more confusing.
Most recently, he went on a Twitter rant about being bankrupt and begged mogul Facebook Mark Zuckerberg for money, $1 billion to be exact. Can we stop making jokes about Kanye begging Zuckerberg for money via Twitter instead of Facebook for a few minutes and process the fact that this man has probably lost it?
There was a time when all of his moves were calculated, and he knew exactly what buttons to press and when. Mixed in with this calculation, however, was an explosive unpredictability that drew us to him. He might’ve said or done anything, like tell the country that George Bush doesn’t care about black people, or drunkenly interrupt an awards acceptance speech.
While he may still be unpredictable, it’s not the same kind of unpredictable that had us enthralled. We already know he’ll say or do something crazy now, but whether it will actually mean anything is up for debate, thus the unpredictability.
For those who have noticed his steady decline in sanity, the Kardashians provide the
easiest of outs, but I don’t think they are wholly to blame. Kanye was unstable before he married Kim Kardashian. Losing his mother is also a factor, but we can’t blame all of his behavior on that.
Not to sound so full of doom and gloom, but Kanye is obviously going through something and in our rush to make fun of the next Twitter rant, maybe we should consider her death.
People write Kanye’s craziness off as him being egomaniacal, and he is. People also ignore his behavior and his personality in favor of his music, but this isn’t 2005, and he’s not going to put out another “Late Registration.” His delusion has reached a level that perhaps we need to start paying attention to.
You don’t have to stifle your laughter when he compares himself to Google, Walt Disney and Shakespeare in all caps. Let’s be honest, that is genuinely funny. But sometimes we need to analyze what we’re laughing at.
Maybe we should listen to him when he says “I’ve been out of my mind a long time,” as he does on “Feedback” off of his new album “The Life of Pablo.”
Kayla Randall is a 21-year old mass communication senior from New Orleans, La.