The Prophet Blog

Kanye West’s ego and ignorance truly knows no bounds. Every single time that you tell yourself that Yeezy can’t get any worse, he somehow manages to find a way to outdo himself. His latest string of offensive word vomit comes from a twenty minute breathless rant on radio station KDWB where he was supposed to be promoting that pretentiously-titled new album of his. Yeezy’s ranting was so in-depth that I’m just going to break down some of the most absurd quotes, complete with my own little rebuttals to each one.

“There’s no way a reporter could break it [Kanye's new album] down and say ‘you’re not doing this, you’re not doing that’. I’m offering so much more! The songs are seven, eight minutes long: like, how do you even send it in for reviews? Why would people play it to themselves, like, to review it? Like, how do you even review something where Rick Ross comes in six minutes after a guitar solo? You haven’t even heard that before!”

- Having lengthy songs is something that’s extremely common in the non-commercial field of music. You didn’t invent it, Kanye. Just spend five minutes on Pitchfork and you’ll see that there are millions of artists with songs that extend over the usual three minutes of your standard radio music. I never realized that the “genius” Kanye West was actually so ignorant about other genres of music.

“I’ve never got a classic rating or a perfect rating, but I made College Dropout, Late Registration, Graduation — set the tone for all rap music after the fact that that thing [album] was coming in and getting three-and-a-half stars and some dumb shit that writers wanted — just please, don’t even give your opinion, there’s only a couple of people walking the earth that’s really going up until 8′oclock in the morning dedicating their entire life — I put no anonymity, I put myself in the line of fire. It’s straight up the kid in Tiananmen Square in front of the tank. I’m in front of the social, the media tank. Jesus died for our sins, Michael [Jackson] died for the sins of our media… I feel like I’m fighting that battle that Mike had.”

- OK, first of all, those three albums Kanye referred to all received universal critical acclaim, including ‘perfect’ ratings, so I have no idea what the hell he is talking about. If an album doesn’t reach the success of ‘Thriller’, is it automatically not good enough for Kanye? Secondly, how can he abuse these critics for giving their opinion of his album, yet he was allowed to deliver his own opinion right in the middle of Taylor Swift’s VMA acceptance speech? Hypocrite. Last of all, did he actually compare himself to Michael Jackson and JESUS CHRIST?

“Everybody’s like ‘It’s the alcohol’: no, it’s not the alcohol, it’s the system. It’s the way it’s set up, it’s the fact that the last four albums of the year at the Grammy’s were Dixie Chicks, Herbie Hancock, Ray Charles and Taylor Swift. It’s… that’s not accurate! It’s just not accurate. That has nothing to do with race, I just named two black people.”

- Beyonce just set a record for the most Grammy wins in one night, including a songwriting Grammy for a song she didn’t even arrange, produce or write. But I guess that’s fine since Kanye West likes Beyonce, but when it’s an artist he doesn’t like, suddenly it’s not “accurate”. Am I missing something here, or is Kanye just contradicting himself as usual?

“If you could see the emotion in Justin’s [Timberlake] face when he lost to the Dixie Chicks… I can’t even tell you a song that they won for. And I don’t have nothing against the Dixie Chicks, but it was just wrong, though. It was so incorrect.”

- OK, not only are the Dixie Chicks one of the most commercially and critically successful acts in American music history, but the album of theirs that swept the Grammy’s that year, Taking the Long Road, was spawned from one of the most iconic pop culture and political moments of the past decade, when the band’s lead singer Natalie Maines spoke out publicly against George Bush and America’s invasion of Iraq, and experienced a near career-ending backlash from the American public. The song they won that Grammy for was titled “Not Ready to Make Nice” and was a direct response to the situation, and it also happened to be produced by the most iconic and respected music producer of the past 20 years, Rick Rubin.

Is Kanye truly THAT ignorant? Once again, he is showing a surprising lack of knowledge when it comes to genres outside of pop and urban. First he blundered with alternative and indie music, and now it’s country music. How much does Kanye actually know about music, because it’s common knowledge that his most experimental album, 808s & Heartbreak, only ended up the way it did because Kid Cudi wrote half of it and strongly influenced the sound. Hmm?

“I am empathetic to [George] Bush, with us being public figures. You can’t choose to be the number one rapper in the world, you can’t choose to be the president, people choose you. And you have a responsibility at that point to represent their feelings, and if you show a lack of compassion or something there will be an outcry. So with my moment, with Taylor, 12-year-old girl [in a mocking, sarcastic tone] 18-year-old girl [laughs], me cutting her off showed a lack of compassion with everything she went through to deserve this one moment [mocking tone again] that caused her to have, like, 100 magazine covers and sell a million first week. But that shouldn’t have been categorized with the greatest living artist we have today [implying Beyonce], to even be put in the same category. It’s just disrespectful — it’s retarded.”

You’re not the number one rapper in the world: Eminem is. Then probably Jay-Z. Then Tupac who has been dead for over fifteen years. Then maybe you. Secondly, did you actually just have the nerve to not only mock Taylor Swift, but also to take credit for her success again, as well as the first week sales of her new album?  Click here to read my previous post breaking down some of Taylor’s astonishing PRE-Kanye achievements.

“…It’s not when I get written off as an asshole, or so arrogant. It’s like, what’s so arrogant about that moment? If anything, it’s selfless. I’m walking around now with half an arm trying to sell albums and having to walk in rooms and be afraid of my food getting spat in, like people going ‘I lost all total respect for you’ [mocking tone, again], and nobody wants to just sit and look at the reality.”

- Kanye is the last person in the world who should be preaching about reality.

“I want people to like me because I’m likable”.

- Not only is Kanye West not likable, he is possibly the single-most un-likable person in history. At this stage Hitler is shaping up to be better company than Kanye West.

“I feel like I’m a crusader of opening peoples minds.”

- The only thing Kanye West has opened our minds to is the fact that he’s a hypocritical narcissist with a deluded view of reality who has already peaked in his career.

“Just as Mandela, and forgive me for using such grandiose political comparisons, but just as Mandela blew up the buildings and eventually became president, sometimes, contrary to popular opinion, you have to blow up the buildings. You have to make a change.”

- Well, he’s already compared himself to a former President, the most successful and legendary musical artist of all time, and the son of God. Why not Nelson Mandela, too?

Trust me, there’s more quotes from this interview, but it was either two painful for me to continue transcribing, or simply just long-winded rants about his creative genius and how incredible his new album is. You can watch the interview yourself below.

Now everybody, be sure to boycott My Magic Fantasy, or whatever the hell it’s called, when it hits stores later this month. You can do that by picking up a copy of Ke$ha and Nicki Minaj’s new albums, which drop on the same day as Kanye.