Kanye West, Fame and Mental Illness

Don’t get excited about the recent controversy you’ve been seeing around the internet; soon Ye will be dropped from all outlets – due to his mischievous behavior.

As groundbreaking as Kanye West has been in both music and fashion, I can’t imagine any rapper alive today, no matter how relevant, being able to pull off the law of Freedom of Speech.

Usually, Ye goes on a month-long outrage and rants. The South Side native, who legally changed his name to Ye, went as far as calling his self “Hitler”. His X account has suspended repeatedly as he uses it as a digital dairy. It has been a big deal that Ye has been selling swastika clothing on Spotify who has now canceled his account.

His support for Hitler betrays the Black American culture and its progress, but that’s for him to understand. The biggest consequence has been the loss of his wealth. West said he lost $2 billion after brands like Adidas, Gap, and Balenciaga cut ties, and retailers dropped his Yeezy products. However, he’s still worth about $400 million, according to Forbes.

Some people try to separate Ye’s antisemitism from mental illness, but I find it hard to believe that someone in their right mind would intentionally damage their billion-dollar fortune.

West is known to have bipolar disorder, a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings, affecting sleep, judgment, behavior, and clear thinking.

It’s possible that Ye had these harmful views before becoming famous, but can anyone really say for sure that his mental illness had no role in the collapse of his personal brand or his relationships?

Remember his months-long antisemitism campaign, starting with his controversial “White Lives Matter” T-shirt at Paris Fashion Week. It seemed more like an exaggerated performance filled with a hidden agenda.

The surprising friendship with President Donald Trump. But when the rapper, wearing a MAGA hat, gave Trump praise in the Oval Office, it became clear that Ye was attached to the other side.

In many important ways, Trump and Ye are similar. Both launched their political careers after public insults from former President. Both enjoy boasting about their wealth, being seen with arrogance, and expressing their emotions with controversy.

The homegrown golden child of Chicago, we’re still amazed as we watch his deeply personal 2005 Grammy acceptance speech for Best Rap Album.

These days, Ye no longer surprises us. We watch from a distance and hope for the best. We listen, but don’t judge. Many find it hard to believe he’s a true genius, but in life, it’s important to let others have their own opinions.

West is now the black sheep only discussed in hushed tones in public settings. Bring up Kanye in any barbershop, hair salon or family dinner and you’ll instantly get an eye roll and an exasperated sigh and long mournful laments about his inexplicable tumble to infamy.

Is he chasing clout or is he subconsciously crying out for help? Among local fans, there’s a prevailing thought that West may have lost his way after the 2007 death of his mother, Donda, a former faculty member at Chicago State University.

I wasn’t surprised when I found few folks, particularly Black folks, in the worlds of entertainment, media or activism willing to discuss West’s comments on the record for an article I wrote in October, when his barrage of hate speech began.

It’s like a comedy bit that Dave Chappelle performed about actor Jussie Smollett — many of us would rather shrink back in the background and watch events unfold silently rather than publicly denounce a revered Black figure.

West’s literal embrace of Trump didn’t stop hundreds of young hip folks from crowding into Northerly Island for one of his public “Sunday Service” performances in 2019. If any local activists had problems with his shifting political stance, it was nowhere to be seen in June 2020 when West briefly joined a protest march with hundreds of young people trailing him in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. Wearing a face mask and black hoodie, West said nothing and kept his head down during the march, but later pledged to donate $2 million to support the families of Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, according to news reports.

A harsh reality is that we as fans can find ourselves falling deaf to allegations against celebrities we adore. Many of us are guilty of this.

Once home to a splendid, dazzling nightlife and some of the brightest stars in the Black world, Chicago’s South Side is now starved for role models as the exodus of Black residents continues. Shamefully, many of the city’s recent success stories, like R. Kelly, rapper King Von and Jennifer Hudson are tinged with tragedy.

Turning a blind eye is a familiar problem here in Chicago, where for decades fans ignored singer Kelly’s dalliances with young girls because of his often-praised “musical genius” and the way his music made us feel. The result has been a string of emotionally shattered young women who unmasked themselves publicly to call for retribution for his crimes.

I’ve heard people dismissively say West’s rants were just “Kanye being Kanye,” or in other words, the understood eccentricity that comes with mining the brain of such a gifted artist.

West may be an artist of undeniable talent, but fans, young and old, should take a hard pass on lavishing excessive praise on young performing artists, permanently warping their reality and sense of self — particularly when that star subjects others to his rants but flees whenever his questioner pushes back in the slightest, as West has done.

It’s not only West. It’s Aaron Carter. It’s Ezra Miller. It’s Britney Spears. It’s Will Smith. It’s the asphyxiating pressure of the public spotlight and the inability to adjust in the social media age. Not everyone can comfortably adjust to being a household name who is secretly watched and recorded by strangers whenever leaving home.

In a perfect world, we could calmly tell our favorite stars that we love their art and how it’s affected our lives without subjecting them to the unwanted creeping voyeurism that accompanies modern celebrity.

West should leave the public eye as he did briefly earlier this year following bullying accusations against Pete Davidson. But for real this time. Travel the world without an entourage or trappings of your wealth and success and truly consider the effect your words have. It goes without saying that working to better your mental health and lower stress is a top priority.

For now, I choose to remember West during his shining moment on that Grammy stage as vulnerable and humble as we would ever see him. As fans, we’ll never truly know the enormous pressure stars and their mental health face until we put them on a shaky pedestal and put a microphone in their hand.