This Is My Rifle: The Day I Deleted Kanye West From My Life Posted by Jason James on 02/12/14 | Filed under Opinion, This Is My Rifle

During the past eight weeks I've had the flu twice, my close friend's dad passed away, my own father had a heart attack and just recently my lifelong friend lost his mother to cancer. Then, of course, sprinkled in between all of the horrific tragedies were a number of micro-disasters that were not significant enough to mention here, but still had a "fuck my life" level of force. So with that said, it's only fair that I warn you; this might be my whiniest, complain-iest article ever. In the coming weeks I will eventually work myself back into the frantic state of paranoia that drives the balls crazy conspiracy theories you've all come to expect from me, but today the invisible cry baby that lives inside of me has risen and demands to be heard.

Yesterday morning as I was clearing out my iPod to make room for podcasts and other music, I did something that I thought I would never do- I deleted all of Kanye West's albums and erased him from my consciousness for the foreseeable future.

Prior to the mass deletion I didn't think much of it. In the past I had done the same thing with a vast number of artists- most notably Jay Z. I didn't view it as hate or as if I was making some silly little statement to myself, I just saw it as a temporary break from an artist that I have the utmost respect for but no longer relate to. I'm sure that at some point I'll give Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint a few more spins for nostalgic purposes, but at this time in my life I just don't have any connection to anything Jay does- past or present.

Contrary to what I previously thought, this time around it actually had a sizable impact on my perspective for the rest of the day. I kept thinking back to all of the "wow" moments I had when listening to College Dropout, Late Registration, Graduation and MBDTF, and questioning myself as to why I no longer valued these albums as priceless gems like I once had. What happened? I can still vividly remember listening to every one of those albums for the first time and shaking my head in disbelief, knowing that Kanye West was as good as it could get and as long as he was active creatively he would be somebody the entire culture could look to for direction. MBDTF and College Dropout were particularly flawless- clunky and loose, yet full and precise. They were the products of a mad genius in his prime, hell bent on perfection and struggling with his own private blemishes publicly for the entire world to see.

Understandably, I felt slightly emotional as I wiped his music from my present day soundtrack. As much as I wanted to hold onto them for no other reason than to flip past them in my library, I had to be honest with myself; I haven't listened to these albums in well over a year and I won't be anytime soon. But why?

There has only been one other instance in my life that has caused me to stop listening to an artist based solely on the way I feel about them personally. As a rookie MC in my late teens and early 20's I opened for a lot of big name rappers. Most of the veteran artists I interacted with were really nice people- particularly Raekwon and The Roots- but there were a few who were complete assholes. For the most part I took the shitty attitudes in stride, laughing it off with my friends and raiding their dressing rooms for free beer and weed while they were on stage. We were kids back then and we had a reputation for being wild; if the headliners were dickheads we reacted accordingly. But of all the artists who were less than pleasant towards me, the one who left the greatest impression was Talib Kweli.

Now, I want to be straightforward when I say this- I do not know Talib Kweli personally and I'm sure he's a great guy. There are probably a number of reasons why he didn't like me and did not have any interest in speaking with me on any level. Maybe he was just having a bad day and didn't feel like talking to a bunch of 19-year-olds who were very obviously inebriated and unaware of their surroundings. I've been in his position before and sometimes it's just too hard to grin and bear it. Whatever his reasoning, he dismissed me like I was a nobody and I’ve never listened to any of his music since. I was a huge fan of both the Black Star and Quality albums, but after the way I was treated I threw away both CD’s and never went back.

This is how I feel about Kanye West. I tried really hard to like Yeezus. I understood the direction and I appreciated the stripped down approach he took with the album. But after watching his now legendary interviews with Zane Lowe, Sway and a host of others, Kanye’s message is painfully clear; he is anti-establishment as long as he’s locked out of it. Once he gains entry he intends to become the very corporations he’s speaking out against and sell us even more useless overpriced garbage than is already being marketed towards us at breakneck speed. The hypocrisy in his message is too blatant to overlook, and to even insinuate that he is a god, in any realm and on any level, is so far beyond egomaniacal it borders on sociopathic. His self-image has become so distorted that I can’t justify within myself supporting him in any way. His contempt and spite for his own fans is obvious, and his lack of humility has isolated him from the rest of humanity. Not because of his supposed genius, but because nobody, not even the most ignorant of us, can relate to him as a person.

Although I have never met the man (and as much as I know that this article will come back to bite me in some stupid way), Kanye West has come to symbolize for me the shallow, empty ideals that western society perpetuates; a culture of well-dressed idiots, self-absorbed and unable to perceive themselves honestly. The artists that model themselves after him exemplify this and the music they create is a shadow of the man they seek to emulate. If Kanye West has any superiority over the rest of the artistic world, it’s in the greatness of the music that his ego may eventually destroy. I, as an artist myself, am well aware that I will probably never reach the heights of what Kanye has accomplished. But on the same hand, Kanye will never stand on the same plateau as artists like Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix or Miles Davis simply because he is so adamant in sitting so far above the rest of humanity that he doesn’t share the same universal respect as the aforementioned artists.

In closing, I sincerely hope that someday Kanye West comes back to reality. Outside of Chance The Rapper and a handful of others, I barely listen to Hip Hop anymore and losing my appreciation for Kanye West has been a much more saddening experience than I thought it would be. While the antics of the College Dropout-era Kanye were endearing, the post-MBDTF Kanye feels destructive and delusional. I want to be a fan again and I want to return to the “wow” moments of old- I just don’t want to cringe my way through them.

(Jason James is an artist, freelance columnist and writer for RefinedHype.com. You can read/download his free eBook, "This Is My Rifle" and listen/download his most recent album, "Pyramids in Stereo". You can also contact him here and here.)

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