Photo by Erez Avissar
Each passing month can be marked by a new defining turn in Kanye West’s audacious act(s); attempting to walk on water is perhaps the merest of them. However, Kanye’s gall is rarely off-target. He often presents the unspoken thoughts we never utter, either out of fear or better judgement. For many, West’s candor is courageous; for others, it’s insolent. One audience considers him a perfect icon, while another believes he and wife Kim Kardashian are the epitome of what’s wrong with celebrity. But in Jon Caramanica’s recent New York Times Magazine profile, West proclaimed himself something else entirely: "an activist."
To those familiar with the widespread efforts of justice-advocacy or looks to someone like Dr. Angela Davis as an example of activism, this statement seems like the sort of hyperbole that’s become Kanye’s albatross. Yet, while he’s not an activist in the traditional sense, his entire career makes clear he is motivated by, and steeped in resistance.
A decade ago, Ye was fighting to be taken seriously as a rapper, and even after The College Dropout became accepted as the exalted, paradigm shifter it is, he was still forced to claw his way into conversations about "elite rappers." Along the way, he became the voice for a legion of kindred spirits: regular people who refuse to let anyone deny their aspirations, no matter how fantastical or extravagant they are. There’s a playful defiance to the album’s opening track, "We Don’t Care", while "Last Call" is a 13-minute oral history of his transition from producer to MC, against all odds. Even the album’s title is a blatant reference to Kanye hurdling the accepted requirements for success.
From The College Dropout to Graduation, each of Kanye’s early albums include songs chronicling his rise in the face of adversity. While his tribulations most certainly exist on a much smaller level than historic or contemporary battles for Civil Rights, they’re a similar driving factor for his self-worth. The certainty of triumph, the broadcast of struggle (no matter in what rarefied quarters they occur in), the sheer, striving resilience of Kanye is a constant assertion of his humanity, of his right to exist and succeed as a black man in an America that denies them. He’s adamant about engraving his position among the genius ranks. And he should be.
That’s why he stands tall on Late Registration’s triumphant Curtis Mayfield-sampling "Touch the Sky", and experiences a moment of self-realization as the people’s advocate on Graduation’s "Champion". On "Champion", he acknowledges a degree of social responsibility ("For me giving up’s way harder than trying"), while also pointing out the irony of "the dropout keeping kids in the school." Accomplishments and ego have always been his diamond-encrusted body armor, and its radiant shine was at its brightest during this period of his career.
Historically, Kanye West has represented the gaudy and grandiose; the personification of success rarely—and literally—never being silent. Yet this obnoxiousness was never viewed as menacing until he snatched a microphone from America’s Sweetheart, Taylor Swift. The subsequent self-imposed exile may have produced one of the best albums of the decade, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, but the Kanye West that returned from Hawaii in 2010 was a different man. Criticism following the VMAs pocked that impenetrable armor, and he grew more hostile as a result. He’s faced a stream of obstructions similar to the antagonistic video game bosses impeding main characters from advancing to the next level. This will be a continuous theme in his career as he ascends each mesa of prosperity, but, since the beginning of this decade, he’s been more fierce about proving not simply that he belonged, but that he has the right to.
Kanye has always been anti-establishment, but being perceived as a menace has made him fight it. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was a resurgent, Lazarus-like effort where he embraced becoming the "abomination of Obama’s nation." To boost his crusade, he connected with Jay Z for Watch the Throne. For all of the album’s egregious opulence, it was the duo’s rendering of black nationalism that stood out, and Kanye’s influence echoes louder than Jay Z’s. Why? Because Jay Z (who, in '96, bragged that he was still spending money from '88) has been wealthy for close to 20 years. In Kanye’s mind, he has more to prove. Because elitists view both of them as nouveau riche, they positioned Watch the Throne as a "fuck you" to every oppositional institution. Where "Made in America" was about the achievement of the African-American dream, "Gotta Have It" was them rubbing every snob’s turned-up nose in it. Per the usual, Kanye went the hardest:
Hello, hello, hello white America, assassinate my character
Money matrimony, yeah they tryna break the marriage up
Who gon’ act phony, or who gon’ try to embarrass ya
I’ma need a day off, I think I’ll call Ferris up
While Kanye West might fashion himself a revolutionary with the potential impact of Steve Jobs, there’s a salience to his truth. The most compelling tension at the heart of his work is that he’s fighting against something he desperately wants to be a part of. He fought for his victories, and the only time he hasn’t been able to plow through a barrier is his foray into the world of fashion. This misfit treatment is the only real constant in his fashion career to date.
On "New Slaves", Kanye addressed experiencing the full gamut of discrimination. This extends from being perceived as criminal before customer ("broke nigga racism"), to the Gap’s "token blackie" on "Spaceship", and finally being stereotyped as a wanton materialist ("rich nigga racism"). For all of its bizarre returns, Kanye’s assertion of his creative right is evidence of his endurance. To that effect, his ambition quantifies his "activism."
Taking in the full arc of Kanye’s career, he is more glorious anti-hero than activist; his war is a vigilante mission against those trying to disparage "black people with ideas." As a black man who behaves like his (proverbial) white in-laws’ home is his own, he continually sets an example for the "Can't Tell Me Nothin'" generation he has raised up, showing they have the right to resist and the right to exist.