Kanye West has finally been cancelled. After making a series of anti-Semitic remarks – including the declaration that he would go “death con 3″ on Jewish people – the likes of JP Morgan, Adidas and Balenciaga have ended their expensive contracts with the troubled musician. With West it was always a case of not if but when. The question, then, is why now?
West – who sometimes goes by Ye – was once a green and excitable music producer from Chicago. By the mid-noughties he reached astronomic success. But the narrative arc is a tragedy. A man once described as American Mozart has been reduced to little more than a racist provocateur with a clothing line.
The troubling thing about West – as has been noted before – is that he has got away with such vitriol for years before now. He has long been a petulant, complicated, unpleasant incendiary with a penchant for racism and a thoroughly entrenched messiah complex.
In 2018 he said that 400 years of African-American slavery sounded “like a choice” by the enslaved. He blamed George Floyd, the 46-year-old black man murdered by a police officer in 2020, for his own death. He wore a White Lives Matter T-shirt at a recent fashion show, claiming he did not understand that the connotation of the slogan extended beyond its literal meaning.
Why has the watershed moment only arrived in recent weeks? It took until October 2022 for several of his lucrative deals to be axed and for vast swathes of people to publicly distance themselves from him. In 2016 he cozied up to Donald Trump, beginning a public relationship that much of the GOP barely even raised an eyebrow at.
Before now, it seems West’s erratic behaviour was dismissed as a standard-issue byproduct of a mentally ill visionary artist. His words were not something he could ever be truly held accountable for, so long as he made great music. West received special allowances – and millions of dollars – simply because he embodied the trope of the tortured genius.
But now, in full view of his precipitous and ugly downfall, can we understand exactly why indulging anyone as a “tortured genius” is such a mistake.
We have a tendency to draw links between an artist’s mental struggles and the quality of their work, as though they are completely dependent on one another. The awfulness of the man becomes a necessary condition for the brilliance of his output. Creativity and suffering – as with van Gogh, and Caravaggio, and Lautrec – are contingent.
It is as if to say the impulse that led West to make the album The Life of Pablo is inseparable from the one that led him to peddle base anti-Semitic conspiracy. It says the world cannot be beautiful without being fiercely poisonous too. This, of course, is a foolish proposition that assumes life is a constant struggle between polar extremities, rather than muddy and ambiguous.
[ Kanye West’s Donda is a message to his estranged wife Kim KardashianOpens in new window ]
By making mental illness and art inextricably linked we elevate mental torture to an almost desirable trait – something that aspiring artists should covet, or perhaps even imitate. We lend credence to artists simply because they are unwell. And we undermine the reality of severe mental illness in the process, implying it is a mere font for inspiration and not something that also causes some people to say and do abhorrent things too.
Lastly, the tortured genius excuse for West only works if the work he produces continues to display an essence of genius. It seems his defenders were prepared to turn a blind eye to some of the worst things he’s said, so long as it was a trade-off for more great music. Only now, when the music is no longer good, does West face any serious reckoning with years of bad behaviour.
That it took to end the reign of West was not any particular comment, but that his poisonous screeds could no longer be excused as a byproduct of his brilliance. West the Needless Provocateur can exist, it seems, so long as we get a few good songs in recompense.
Of course, none of West’s former music – the stuff that was genuinely revolutionary – is rendered any less good because of this. And it is not wrong to consume – or even enjoy – the art of morally complicated people. And, a man who is so clearly sick deserves help. But this does not exonerate him of all responsibility. It certainly does not exonerate the aiders and abettors.
One of the most important qualities of a healthy society is offering the capacity for redemption. People make mistakes and say terrible things and should be allowed to apologise, be offered forgiveness and move on. This is also an unavoidably Christian impulse – something West would no doubt understand. Redemption might always be possible no matter how hard won.
But if there is a line – a point of no return – there is little doubt that West has already crossed it. In fact, he’s crossed it several times over several years. We should be suspicious of the backs that are only turning now.