Kanye and Kim Kardashian, kourt kontroversy. It's what they do to stay famous. They don't understand the power of their words and the impact it has on their audience.
The rapper's return to social media after his breakdown in his mental health has been received in a range of ways. Yeezus is pitching himself as an actual Jesus, talking about free thinking and not being afraid. This isn't new, Socrates has been questioning everything for millennia. And critical thought has been around for eons.
His other trail of "free thought" is to support notorious racist and KKK spawn, Donald Trump. And to add insult to injury, he has said that slavery was a choice. I'd love to hear his opinions on the Holocaust!
Some make excuses for his odd, audience-alienating comments as some sort of elaborate performance art piece, see @Snowcone965's Twitter thread on this.
However, others have superbly called him out his comments.
You just have to listen to his Yeezus album to know he has a chip on his shoulder. Not about the subjugation of black people through centuries of slavery and its cultural hangover, but by his perception that a nice, middle-class boy from the 'burbs, such as he, was born into this marginalised group and his skin colour means he's forced to walk among them, forever.
Kanye is a rapper. That's a fact. A genre that's rooted in blues, which was created by slaves in the deep south. And to this day, dominated by black artists. A lot of his fans are black and they still champion him in the underground, while white people salivate over him in the mainstream. Spouting crap like this will turn them off.
Instead, people who actually, in all seriousness, without any doubt or irony, will hail him as the new hero and use his support to give their cause traction and justification.
I'm not sure this is what Kanye wants. And the more he loans his brand to this ideology, the more his loyal, bona fide fans will turn away. Perhaps finally realising that Kendrick Lamar is a much better rapper.
We shouldn't really take a man who married a low-brow, reality TV star based on her sex tape and comes out with lyrics like "I keep it 300, like the Romans, 300 bitches, where's the Trojans?*" seriously.
The lesson here is while freedom of speech is important. Vital, in fact. It's also important to be responsible for what you say. Just like with everything, your actions will be held to account by the people who matter, like your customers, fans and experts.
Simply, relaying platitudes, ill-researched, empty and bombastic statements is what's making up our political and social landscape. Just saying things without thinking about their effect. And saying things that don't mean anything, which people translate into whatever fits their agenda.
I don't think Kanye is embarking on an elaborate art piece designed to hold a mirror up to America's MAGA rhetoric. I think he has delusions of grandeur, genuinely believing his can change society with his faux-intellectual, pseudo-philosophy.
If he was a brand, there would be a crisis meeting, a war room and groveling TV appearances. Customers would boycott and revenue would be lost. But Kanye is an artist, who annoyingly, makes good music. So he'll probably walk away from this unscathed.
The people who hold him as the black poster boy of the Trump/Republican agenda and the people they victimize, however, will have to live with the repercussions - sometimes serious - for a long time.
Words (and opinions) are like arseholes. Everyone has one, not everyone should expose it.
*FYI, Kanye - the battle of 300 was the Greeks; Spartans to be precise. The Trojans were having a lovely time in Troy, as their mythological war (which they lost) wasn't due to happen for another 700 years. Try reading a book or watching a documentary every now and then.
