Ye, also known as Kanye West, is the most highly paid musician in the world, valued by a Forbes feature at 1.8 billion dollars. Ye is considered by many to be a musical genius, a self-made man, an expert in both controversy and celebrity. However, one question remains – how much of his success is a result of institutional misogyny of the music industry?
Recently, Ye has been a constant presence in the media. Following a public and messy divorce from Kim Kardashian, he has taken to Instagram to post (and subsequently delete) personal jabs at his ex, exposing private conversations and creating comical memes pitting himself against Kardashian’s new beau, Pete Davidson. In a public dispute with his ex-wife, he criticized her parenting; arguing Kim has allowed their daughter North to be on TikTok against Ye’s will, issuing a plea with his followers and with God to “bring our family back together”.
Only a month ago, he turned his influence and misogyny against Billie Eilish, demanding that she apologize for stopping her concert to help a fan. Eilish’s behavior, which many would laud as a positive interaction between fan and artist, was condemned by Ye who claimed that the action was offensive toward rapper Travis Scott. Scott failed to stop his concert at the Astroworld Festival in Nov. 2021, as a dangerous crowd rush resulted in at least 10 fatalities and several more injuries.
This isn’t the first time Ye has targeted a young woman in the music industry – His “Imma let you finish” speech at the 2009 VMAs saw him interrupt Taylor Swift while she accepted her Best Female Video award, dragging her into a public feud. This was reignited again in 2016 when Ye referred to Swift in his hit “Famous”, writing “I feel like me and Taylor still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous”, featuring a naked doppelganger of her in his music video. His recent attack on Billie is only further proof of the sexism that he so casually and successfully uses in the industry.
Female artists already face inherent struggles in the industry – for example, Taylor Swift’s ‘serial dater’ image was perpetuated by the media for years because she wrote about her personal relationships, while Ye is praised as a musical genius for writing about the very same topics. His recent Instagram posts about Kardashian are hailed by his supporters as the work of a man desperately trying to piece his family back together, one who needs mental health support and should be given a platform. What if the roles were reversed? If Kim was ranting about Ye’s new partner, publishing private messages, refusing to cooperate with divorce proceedings, instead turning them into a public spectacle and media circus? Likely, she would be painted a ‘crazy ex-girlfriend’ – a bullet he dodged, a threat he should avoid.
There is no doubt Ye is financially and commercially successful – he is named by Black Enterprise as One of only fifteen black billionaires in the world, an acclaimed artist and talented designer.Yet, as his misogyny and sexism goes unchecked by the the music industry, we have to ask if he were female, where would he be?
References