Firstly, I care about Kanye West because I think hero worship is funny in its weirdly excessive self-deprecation and apparently other people do too so I feed into that. Secondly and more pointedly, though, I care about Kanye West because he’s the one figure in all of hip-hop that’s been able to snag the elusive term of “genius” without letting it turn him (completely) into a joke or a caricature. Sure, 2Pac is a genius – a thug genius. Jay-Z’s a genius too – but a business genius. Kanye’s managed to take that term and force the general public to come to terms with, if not the certainty, then at least the looming and very probable possibility that he’s a genius on a creative and musical level. It doesn’t really matter if he is or not to anyone who isn’t invested in his music. It only matters that he’s defiantly shouldered his way into the center of that discussion (either in spite of or because of his antics).
Kanye West is the type of rare artist that’s somehow managed to part humanity into two polarized sides on every aspect of his personality like Moses did the Red Sea: or, at least, everything but his music. That, we’ve somewhat grudgingly conceded, he’s got covered (easy to forget in the wake of Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s ascendances and subsequent warring for the metaphorical throne of hip-hop that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was one of the most unanimously and immediately praised hip-hop albums in the genre’s history, and that came after all of the amazing shit he did before it that I could write and have written about for thousands of words). That’s also why Yeezus won’t ever be one of my favorite Kanye albums, because it finally permitted Kanye’s polarizing nature extend to his music in a way it hadn’t before (Watch the Throne and Cruel Summer were big steps in that direction, but breaking the string of universally praised Kanye solo albums is a big deal), in the process shattering Kanye’s final and most fundamental barrier from public ridicule.
I’m doubtful that the recently strengthening tides against Kanye (71% unfavorable, according to Rasmussen) have the Kardashian clan to thank as the proverbial straws that broke the camel’s back. In my mind, it’s because Kanye’s finally showing cracks in the unassailable helm of “creative genius” that he wore so proudly for a decade. And thirdly, that’s why I care so much about Kanye – because if Kanye isn’t a genius anymore, whether because he’s actually making worse music or because the public has decided that Kim Kardashian and/or his consistent barrage of shockingly, incredibly, unbelievably dumb declarations in the media, that means that hip-hop is having to stake its reputation (and potentially its hopes of ever shedding its primary status as a shallow music form) on the likes of the afore-mentioned Kendrick and Drake.
Yeah, I know and you probably know that hip-hop is more than that, and I know and you probably know that Kendrick and Drake are both generational talents who are very potentially capable of transforming and shaping a genre like Kanye before them. But that’s beyond the point, because most of the public doesn’t. Drake is the guy who raps about girls who don’t love him back and calling them at 5AM, and Kendrick is the new guy who raps about swimming pools and really deep shit about the hood in some order. Kanye had built up a reputation with critical and public acclaim – not one that Drake and Kendrick can’t build, but one that they haven’t just yet.
So that means that in the wake of Kanye meticulously self-destructing every facet of his public reputation, hip-hop has to hope that someone can step up and grab that “genius” mantle, because especially in the wake of this kind of over-generalizing, stereotyping, predetermined-narrative-searching bullshit, hip-hop needs a figure that can be taken seriously outside of its own bubble. And it doesn’t look like Kanye can be that person anymore.
Now go listen to the best Kanye song and remember why he’s one of the most singular talents hip-hop will ever have.