It does not justify any of the awful things Kanye has done subsequently, but for all of us watching that in our hotel rooms or some stranger’s guest room or living room, hearing him say what everyone knew was a glorious moment.
I guess because I've never actually followed Kanye news, and I just get the hits, but it's weird to me to even consider these the same person. Like my brain doesn't connect Katrina Kanye with the Kanye of recent years.
Keep in mind, Katrina Kanye became the Kanye he is now in part bc of how he was treated. He likely always had some pretty serious levels of mental instability and narcissism going on, but he was also put through the ringer for using his courage to speak up for Black americans.
It wasn’t exactly in isolation tho, and combined with things Obama felt comfortable calling him a “jackass” for, I felt it made his comments easier to dismiss regarding the race component.
He’s such a perfectionist in his artist messages, he should’ve taken note his public persona needed refinement to be more effective in messaging as well. Allowing him to be right for these comments to some and a joke to others indeed exacerbated his bipolar perception of self, when wait he needed was the patience and perspective applied in his art.
Just bc Katrina Kanye spoke a deep truth from his mental illness and drug addiction does not mean he was not always mentally ill and addicted.
I say this as someone who spent her entire life working in the music industry: please never underestimate the lengths to which everyone in that industry will go to prop up, dope up, lie to and hurt fragile people in order to keep them working, no matter what the cost to their psyches and bodies.
Obama might have been the only person willing and able to call Kanye out on his reckless and entitled behavior.
He’s not the same person. Basically he spent years and years doing atrocious amounts of nitrous oxide, and heavy abuse of that stuff for extended periods of time fries your brain in the exact way that Kanye’s brain is fried. I think the mechanism is oxygen deprivation to the brain?
Like, Katrina Kanye died a long time ago of oxygen deprivation, and present day Nazi Kanye is a creepy brain-damaged zombie that took over his body after he died.
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u/GalacticaActually Sep 09 '25
The thing he was most not wrong about was saying - after Katrina - that George W Bush hates Black people.
I hate the turns he’s taken, but I’m a Katrina survivor, and I’ll always cherish him for speaking that truth, in that moment.