Kanye West’s critique of the music industry falls on deaf ears that are too eager to dismiss his valid claims as blathering. His passionate speech on Sunday was branded as crazy, insane and ridiculed to no end. This isn’t the first time Kanye's outbursts made him the butt of a joke, and, not for the first time, he’s right.
Kanye raging against the machine is nothing new. His politicizing really started with his statement that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” and it certainly hasn’t stopped since then. Sure, some of what Kanye has said in the past has been on the ridiculous side (his claim that President Obama calls his home phone comes to mind), but his critique of the music industry in his speech rang true. In fact, it cropped up earlier this year with his outburst concerning Beyoncé losing the Grammy for 2014’s “Best Album” to Beck.
“The Grammys, if they want real artists to keep coming back, they need to stop playing with us. We
Kanye vocally decries award shows so often because he realized that they don’t really care about the artists that they’re ostensibly meant to represent. He recognizes the vacuous nature of award shows, events that are more about politics than art. Award shows exist to divide artists into arbitrary categories instead of bringing them together.
As indicated in Kanye's anecdote about Justin Timberlake crying after losing the Grammy for “Best Album” to U2 in 2006, he believes that squeezing five complex pieces of art into limiting boxes with one winner coming out top is ludicrous. He recognizes, by and large, the appeal of award shows is seeing artists pit against each other, not the artistic value of the work produced by artists, meaning any “victory” is a hollow one.
This illuminates another aspect of Kanye’s speech: his critique of the media’s tendency to pit artists against each other for the sake of publicity, something that’s particularly pertinent in the face of the Nicki-Miley “feud” currently blowing up everyone’s Twitter timelines. With this speech, Kanye single-handedly asserted that the music industry is more interested in ratings than music.
“Miley, what’s good?”
Oil on canvas
2015 pic.twitter.com/NDQBGrVIzQ
— bands on tumblr (@bandsontumblr) September 3, 2015
"You know how many times MTV ran that footage
Kanye is obsessed with himself, yet his music — especially his VMA speech — revealed him to be a man that struggles with deep insecurities. It’s no surprise. Ever since his “fight” with America’s sweetheart at the 2009 VMAs, Kanye has been caricatured as a villain in the eyes of the media. He states that he’s been booed by over 60,000 people at a baseball game, all because West is too often demonized for daring to
“I just wanted people to like me more... I will die for the art, for what I believe in. And the art ain't always gonna be
At this point, I don’t care if Kanye’s art is polite. I just want him to keep making more of it, because he’s almost always right.
Watch Kanye’s full VMA speech for yourself below:
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Reach the columnist at mvandobb@asu.edu or follow @maureenvd on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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