Chapter 1: What led to Kanye West's ban from the UK?
Coachella Weekend is around the corner in Indio, California, but I want to talk to you about Wireless in the UK. It's another three-day music festival, but lately they've been doing the same headliner on each of the three nights. Last year it was Drake on night one, Drake on night two. and Drake on night three. Embarrassing.
This year, Wireless decided to take the same approach, but instead of Drake headlining all three nights, they booked the most controversial musician on the planet, a guy who used to go by the name of Kanye West. And everyone got mad. From sponsors like Pepsi and PayPal to eventually the UK's own Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
On Tuesday, Ye was banned from entering the UK and Wireless had to pull the plug on the entire festival. But the rapper has recently come out and apologized for all the terrible things he's said and done. So, yay or nay on Today Explained. Explained. Yay. The rapper formerly known as Kanye West has for a very long time believed he's God's gift to Earth. And that might even be an understatement.
Either found him insufferable or felt like you could excuse his outsized personality because his music made you feel like you could fly. But then Ye spent years doing everything in his power to alienate his audience. We asked Chris Murphy from Vanity Fair to come help us understand that era in light of the rapper's recent efforts to apologize for all of it.
He was always provocative, and some would say that he was provocative for good at the beginning. You know, he said, George Bush doesn't care about black people. In regards to Hurricane Katrina. I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they're looting. See a white family, it says they're looking for food.
He stormed the stage when Taylor Swift won a VMA over Beyonce and said, Go Taylor! I'm really happy for you. I'm going to let you finish. But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time. You know, he always was provocative.
But when things started to turn and get really scary and really bad was sort of in like the late teens, early 2020s is when he started to engage in legitimately anti-Semitic rhetoric and whatnot. And that's also around the time that he starts saying.
When you hear about slavery for 400 years, for 400 years, that sounds like a choice. And this is all while his music is inarguably decreasing in quality and relevance.
Yes, quality and relevance. And I think that's really important. He was kind of the defining artist of the teens, you would say. He was sort of the defining millennial artist. And as he starts to lose his grip and other people start rising, you've got Drake. You used to call me on my cell phone. You've got Kendrick. My left...
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Chapter 2: How has Kanye West's public persona evolved over the years?
And I'm like, tell me what's wrong. I'm just like, don't know what to do. When I divorced him, you have to know it came down to just one thing, his personality.
And then at some point crosses the line into actual outright anti-Semitism.
I think it's important to this conversation that we just establish how vile and hateful the things he was saying and doing were. So could you give us an idea?
Yeah, there's a lot. So I apologize if I forget anything, but there are a lot of things that he said and did that were really vile and unacceptable. And I think it sort of really began in 2022. He's at Paris Fashion Week and he wears a White Lives Matter shirt. The photos have gone viral with Kanye adding fuel to the fire, claiming the Black Lives Matter movement is a scam.
The answer to why I wrote White Lives Matter on a shirt is because they do. And then it gets outright anti-Semitic months later when he posts swastikas on social media. Ye is now suspended from Twitter. West's account suspended Thursday night after he posted a now-deleted image of a swastika inside a Star of David. He publishes texts with certain people that he says...
The media is controlled by Jewish people and spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. He also tweets that he would go death con three on Jewish people.
For the second time this year, rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, has been suspended from Twitter.
CEO Elon Musk announced the suspension, writing, quote, I tried my best.
Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement of violence. He then gives an interview wearing a Klan hood, a KKK hood. You know, the funny thing is I really wanted to wear it yesterday, but I thought they would, like, put me in a hospital for my outfit. So it's not only anti-Semitic, there's also anti-Blackness rolled into there as well.
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Chapter 3: What controversial statements did Kanye West make in recent years?
He just headlined one of the highest grossing nights in music history. So people are listening. But if you look at the people who are listening, you'll find that a lot of them run in the same circles as the Andrew Taits and the Nick Fuenteses and the Claviculars and are tied to the manosphere. And now that Kanye has positioned himself as this anti-establishment, kind of fuck you to culture guy,
There's always going to be a market for someone who is anti what everyone else is supposed to be doing or anti what the masses are doing. And he's found a home in this manosphere culture. So I think, yeah, we have to look at what his fan base looks like now to understand why he is so popular still.
Chris Murphy writes about culture for Vanity Fair. Can we ever forgive Kanye? When we're back on Today Explained.
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Chapter 4: How did Kanye West's actions affect his music career?
Kanye wants us to forgive him right now. Should we?
I mean, you know, it's not up to me personally. That's how I feel. Like, but... I think that if he is genuinely making steps toward making things right, then he's a very useful person to have because he's someone who has been this lightning rod for the far right and could lead some of his fans out of there. But we haven't heard enough of that chat happening to really like...
be gung-ho about the guy back in the public sphere, which is why there are all these differing outcomes for where he shows up places. He's leaving too much on the table.
Is the album reflective? Is he getting into whatever torturous moment he's in on the album?
It is extremely shaped by that, and it sounds like a storm is clearing, but he doesn't really want to get into it. When I thought I was reviewing the album, I described it as an Amazing Grace that doesn't want to get too much into the once-being-lost for excitement about being found. There's not specificity about what his vibes were, or even what they are now, so much as there is like,
Man, things were really weird back there last year, and now they no longer are, and I'm so glad. He'd be like, yeah, church ladies prayed for me.
I just want to say thank you, Lord.
Or what was the other line?
Now you wonder what an effie been, but I'm back to life like an effie pin.
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