For someone like Kanye, whose descent into pariah status started when he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone wearing a crown of thorns (see a pattern?), there is no right or wrong in his statements there are only his statements and the backlash. To them, such a comment only adds to the legend of the man. "But Lennon was right!" these people say. Kanye, on the other hand, always seems very serious, and while I'm not going to defend some of his more outlandish stunts (some of which truly are beyond defense), there seems to be a certain double standard at work when the people who fly into a rage over the latest Kanye blog post are the same ones who express disbelief as to why 1965 America was mad at John Lennon for saying the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.
We, of course, ate that up just as much as we did when we thought he was being serious. Joaquin Phoenix made fun of it by lurching around with a beard and sunglasses for awhile, saying he was going to make a rap album before revealing - surprise! - that he was just f ucking with us. Somehow, we're able to recognize the inherent ridiculousness of this 24-hour exposure into the lives of famous people without wanting to give it up. We just never heard ninety percent of it because it wasn't done over Twitter.
The thing is, I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that a large majority of artists over the past forty or fifty years have been like him - spouting off, making this claim and that claim, putting people down, building their own reputation up. Especially with someone as vocal about himself as Kanye West. The second one is fairly easy to ignore, if not escape entirely the first, not so much. Review Summary: Not the voice of a generation the voice of Kanye West, which is so much better.Īnonymity makes everybody into a distinguished critic the great challenge of listening to music in the Internet age is being able to separate the music from the artist who made it and the opinions of everybody who purport to know what they're talking about.