How should we treat Kanye West?

Kanye West was once known first and foremost for being a prolific rapper and cultural vanguard.

With each day that passes, however, his musical legacy takes a backseat. Instead, he seems far more keen to make headlines today for his behaviour in the public eye that is certain to elicit shock, but not in a good way.

West, who now goes by Ye, most recently caught people's attention for a succession of stunts that include an appearance on the Grammys carpet with his all-but-naked wife, and a recent attempt to sell T-shirts that prominently feature a swastika.

Today on Commotion, music journalist Ian Cohen and writer/rapper Rollie Pemberton (a.k.a. Cadence Weapon) join guest host Rad Simonpillai to discuss the latest series of extreme publicity stunts and antisemitic provocations from Ye, and the media's role in platforming his problematic views.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Rad: Ian, are you still listening to Kanye … or has he dropped off your playlist? 

Ian: I can totally listen to anything that precedes The Life of Pablo, which I think culturally is a major schism. 2016 in so many ways is sort of where the world was broken. And that album was very different than his previous self-styled masterpieces…. I listened to The College Dropout just the other day. I'm just very interested to see how a newer generation would interact with this, because I grew up listening to Kanye. I cannot deny these formative experiences I've had listening to The College Dropout and Late Registration all the way up through Yeezus. Anything that he does right now does not take that away. Like, I can't deny those experiences being what they are.

I listened to Ye in 2018, with the "I hate being Bi-Polar its awesome" cover. After that, I could say, "You couldn't pay me enough to listen to Donda 2," or what have you. I mean, you could pay me enough, but just not what most music publications are paying right now. I don't think I've listened to a new Yeezy song as a whole in the past five years. Like, the last thing I can think of him being on was the Playboi Carti album from 2020. Besides that, I'm just not as on top of things. But when Rollie was saying, you listen to Donda and you get those two or three nuggets that will remind you of what brought us here in the first place — like, now I'm going to have to earmark two hours of my time today to sort through all that stuff.

Rad: As his behavior has turned way more erratic over the past decade, there's been all this speculation about his mental health. Like you said, he said that he was bipolar. Recently, he added that autism is the real reason for his episodes. So, Ian, how does that sit with you?

Ian: I also work in the field of mental health. I'm not going to diagnose anything that he's going through, but there's this sense that with him putting out the, "I'm bipolar," "I'm autistic," that it's somehow plausible deniability, or that it excuses things. And I guess my response to that is that there are many people in this world with autism or bipolar one who don't create websites exclusively to sell swastika-branded T-shirts. And so this just kind of brings to the fore the things that were perhaps underlying the whole way through it…. There's no guardrails now. And so if he ever wanted to sell this merch or say these things, there are no repercussions to it. And I think there's been circumstances where people have tried to help him or seek help for him, and he might end up suing them. So that would be how I would frame it.

Rad: OK. Rollie, when you think about everything we're talking about here in terms of the mental health state of Kanye, but also in terms of everything he's been putting out there … how should we in the media treat Kanye? Like, do we call him out or do we ignore him?

Rollie: I think his time of being relevant as an artist is long past. I would recommend, Ian, if you're going to go listen to some Kanye, I would skip most of the Vultures and Vultures 2, because on Vultures 2 he literally has other people rapping, and they put a Kanye AI voice filter over their voice — and he's trying to pass it off as him rapping. So he's not even rapping on the records at this point. He's not a musician who deserves any serious attention. I know he has a platform and he has a lot of fans. But I think we need to collectively just ignore Kanye. He's not that artist anymore.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman.