In my previous op-ed, I spoke about how individuals must come up with their own views, values and virtues in the context of politics. Today, I want to discuss how an individual musician has done so, in the context of a conforming industry -- Kanye West.
Kanye West easily stands as one of the icons of the 21st century. In the past decade, he has relentlessly pushed hip-hop to new boundaries and styles, and the music industry has changed as a result. Despite his music’s critical acclaim, as an individual, Kanye is under continuous attack. When the President of the United States calls you a jackass, when tabloids run misinterpretation and rumor as fact and when celebrity friends boycott your wedding, the world becomes a battle.
Enter Friedrich Nietzsche, 19th century philosopher and arguably one of the most controversial philosophers of the modern era. As early as 2007, in his album "Graduation", Kanye makes significant allusion to Nietzsche in the form of a paraphrase of "Twilight of the Idols" (1889). “Stronger,” disguised as an homage to lust, is actually an anthem to individualism and Kanye’s greatness. Kanye: “that that don't kill me / Can only make me stronger”; Nietzsche: “what does not kill me makes me stronger.”
In Seventy-Five Aphorisms, Nietzsche writes a series of meaning-laden literary gems. When comparing them to Kanye’s life, one can see significant resemblance: “Readers’ bad manners. -- A reader is doubly guilty of bad manners against the author when he praises his second book at the expense of the first (or vice versa) and then asks the author to be grateful for that” and “The worst readers. -- The worst readers are those who proceed like plundering soldiers: they pick up a few things they can use, soil and confuse the rest, and blaspheme the whole.” These statements could easily be applied to music critics and the general public. I often hear “Kanye’s album Graduation is great, but he is an idiot on Yeezus (2013), or ‘What an ***hole. Lucky for him, his music is solid.”
Kanye’s music is not new in its entirety; rather, his albums are original. Nietszche: “Original. -- Not that one is the first to see something new, but that one sees as new what is old, long familiar, seen and overlooked by everybody, is what distinguishes truly original minds.” Kanye has both pursued the new and the old. He takes the traditional bravado of hip-hop and transforms it into an elevation and evaluation of the self. His music is remarkably personal, defying the bling-and-gang genre staples, driving hip hop into new frontiers. Kanye has built a new sense of bravado, built on belief in himself, rather than the 50 Cent bling-believers. However, his innovation has not always brought praise.
On the subject of his most recent album, Kanye remarked, “I think Yeezus is the beginning of a completely new era of music. It was all new rules. It just broke every rule possible. None of the ideas were popular ideas.” Kanye notes in “I Am a God” (2013) that God’s message to him is: “Soon as they like you make 'em unlike you / Cause kissin' people ass is so unlike you.” Kanye rejects that celebrities must cater to the masses. He refuses to suit up in a popular veneer. Nietzsche remarked, “Most people are nothing and are considered nothing until they have dressed themselves up in general convictions and public opinions.” Kanye calls it how he sees it; the Katrina incident was an excellent example of this. During coverage of the hurricane, Kanye remarked that George Bush does not care about black people. He subsequently went through a media onslaught, leading him to recant his statement in an example of capitulation, only to reaffirm it years later.
In contrast to his unabashed bravado, Kanye names most celebrities as caricatures of themselves and stuck in boxes of public opinion. In “New Slaves,” (2013) he divides the world into “leaders and followers” but he would “rather be a **** than a swallower.” Kanye refuses to swallow public opinion -- he wants to dictate it; to enact a transvaluation of taste, a musical transvaluation of the sort Nietzsche advocated.
Kanye’s mood shifts are (in)famous, but he does display a remarkable ability to bounce back from suffering and loss. In "Will to Power" (1901), Nietzsche reflects on the nature of laughter in the context of suffering: “Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.” Kanye’s hip-hop bravado and explicit jokes take this form: “I'll say things that are serious and put them in a joke form so people can enjoy them. We laugh to keep from crying.”
Kanye has often been accused of over-confidence and self-promotion. However, I believe that when he says “Everyone’s born confident, and everything’s taken away from you,” he is trying to restore the confidence that the modern man and woman has lost in the face of endemic negative opinion, as well as the slavish conformity to the ‘cool’ and the ‘normal.’ Kanye’s stated goal in a GQ article is as such: “I think I have a good chance of success in building something that has longevity, high integrity, high success rate and is very fulfilling, not only for me creatively but also in adding fulfillment to people's lives. Adding ease. Adding wonder. Adding magic.”
Is Kanye an “übermensch" (overman in German), a figure who has gone beyond the normative culture to truly create his own values, his own virtues? He certainly believes himself to be. He goes so far as to call himself a god, while acknowledging that Jesus is “the most high.”However, Kanye’s Jesus is in some ways a Trojan Horse for his music; what Kanye masks in religious imagery could easily have come from Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s self-mythological figure who argues that the individual should come up with their own universe of virtue, rather than kowtowing to the pop-requirements of the day. Unlike many other musicians, Kanye envisions himself as a world-artist, a god of music. He has radically changed a genre, overcome cultural norms and believes in his own greatness in the context of self-improvement. Kanye defies the traditional hip-hop mold and the popular expectations of celebrity. It is my opinion that Kanye is as close to a musical übermensch as any other musician, having truly rapped what he believes in and having defied expectations and norms.
