Though Kanye West’s antics date back to the ages of flip phones and MySpace, his latest shenanigans have been his best yet, in my opinion. From running for president to dropping a rather controversial album, Yeezus has provided enough material to keep late night television hosts in business and enough negative feedback to keep his PR team on its toes.
First, there was his speech at the 2015 VMAs where he announced his run for the 2020 presidency while accepting the Video Vanguard Award. He gave quite a convincing argument, explaining that we need to “listen to the kids!” (Could this be his potential platform?)
After his speech and his televised reunion with Taylor Swift on the same stage where he cut off her acceptance speech to claim, “Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time” just 6 years prior, the people thought Kanye had changed. Maybe he was growing up? Maybe he was finally showing some humility?
Wrong. After a brief period of Kanye-free tabloids, West announced on Twitter that his new album would be named Waves, which sparked some anger from fellow rapper, Wiz Khalifa, who posted a series of tweets claiming that Max B (who’s also currently incarcerated) is the “wavy one” and asked Kanye to not “take the wave.”
Yes, this was all entertaining, but things started to escalate from banter between rappers to an all-out Kanye-dominated war when Khalifa posted a tweet reading: “Hit this kk and become yourself.” Kanye believed “kk” stood for Kim Kardashian, leading him to fly into tweet-rampage-mode, until Wiz explained that “KK” is a nickname for weed.
In true Kanye fashion, he didn’t let the innocent truth deter him from continuing on in his novel-length string of tweets where he complemented Wiz on his pants, then proceeded to write 17 points dissing Wiz and calling himself “the greatest rapper of all time.”
After all of this Twitter drama blew over and became yesterday’s news, Kanye decided to rename his album “The Life of Pablo” which is speculated to be a reference to Kanye’s comparison of himself and the historical artist.
“My goal, if I was going to do art, fine art, would have been to become Picasso or greater… That always sounds so funny to people, comparing yourself to someone who has done so much, and that’s a mentality that suppresses humanity.” -Kanye West
Then came the feud that started it all. Kanye decided to create some new drama between himself and “America’s Sweetheart,” Taylor Swift, with his song “Famous” that debuted with the rest of his new album at his Yeezy Season 3 fashion show. The lyrics that sparked the T-Swizzle/Yeezus feud were: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex, I made that bitch famous.” Kanye took to Twitter to insist that Taylor knew about the song before the release, then claimed this:
“I’m not even gone take credit for the idea… it’s actually something Taylor came up with.. She was having dinner with one of our friends who’s name I will keep out of this and she told him I can’t be mad at Kanye because he made me famous! #FACTS [sic]” -@KanyeWest
Taylor Swift’s reps denied her approval of the song, saying she warned Kanye about the “strong misogynistic message.” Swift then seized the opportunity to have a mic-drop-moment when she won Album of the Year at the 2016 Grammy Awards.
“As the first woman to win Album of the Year at the Grammys twice, I want to say to all the young women out there: there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame.” -Taylor Swift
In a rather bizarre turn of events, the day before the Grammy Awards, Kanye tweeted a public plea asking “Mark Zuckerberg to invest 1 billion dollars into Kanye West ideas.” After being met with silence from the Facebook founder, Kanye then turned to Larry Page, saying the co-founder of Google would “rather open up one school in Africa like [he] really helped the country” and asking him to invest in Kanye West.
Kanye then went on a rant backstage at Saturday Night Live when his stage was changed last minute. Not only did he call Swift out yet again, but he also compared himself to Apostle Paul and Stanley Kubrick, claiming he would still be influential whether he was dead or alive.
So thank you Kanye, for filling our otherwise boring lives with laughter and a quite a bit of confusion.
Same, tbh.