thesis statement on kanye west

The Cultural Impact of Kanye West

• © 2014
• Julius Bailey

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Table of contents (14 chapters)

Front matter, revisiting the pharmakon: artistic gifts / human complexities, now i ain’t saying he’s a crate digger: kanye west, “community theaters” and the soul archive.

• Mark Anthony Neal

Kanye West: Asterisk Genius?

• Akil Houston

Afrofuturism: The Digital Turn and the Visual Art of Kanye West

• Reynaldo Anderson, John Jennings

You Got Kanyed: Seen but Not Heard

• David J. Leonard

An Examination of Kanye West’s Higher Education Trilogy

• Heidi R. Lewis

Unpacking Hetero-normativity and Complicating Race and Gender

“by any means necessary”: kanye west and the hypermasculine construct.

• Sha’Dawn Battle

Kanye West’s Sonic [Hip-hop] Cosmopolitanism

• Regina N. Bradley

“Hard to Get Straight”: Kanye West, Masculine Anxiety, Dis-identification

You can’t stand the nigger i see: kanye west’s analysis of anti-black death.

• Tommy Curry

Theorizing the Aesthetic, the Political, and the Existential

When apollo and dionysus clash: a nietzschean perspective on the work of kanye west, god of the new slaves or slave to the ideas of religion and god.

• Monica R. Miller

Trimalchio from Chicago: Flashing Lights and The Great Kanye in West Egg

• A. D. Carson

Confidently (Non)cognizant of Neoliberalism: Kanye West and the Interruption of Taylor Swift

• Nicholas D. Krebs

Kanye Omari West: Visions of Modernity

Back matter.

• Friedrich Nietzsche

About this book

"Provocateur, egotist, sage, and artist, no figure in the past decade of popular culture has reflected and defined the zeitgeist better than Kanye West. This collection lays bare the tangle of complexities and contradictions that have made the artist and the art indispensable to our era and proves that if game recognizes game, wisdom does too." - Jelani Cobb, author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress

"If Julius Bailey was a song, he would be that surprise banger DJ Red Alert drops around one in the morning as the party is at its peak. He is humbly one part scholar and two parts philosopher, yet all hip-hop. Respected for his integrity as a cultural critic and archivist, it's no surprise that, like a master beat maker finding the perfect sample, he was ahead of the curve when he proposed to explore the cultural impact of Kanye West . . . but right on time." - Toni Blackman, US Hip Hop Ambassador

"The Cultural Impact of Kanye West is a much-needed addition in today's diluted hip-hop cultural criticism. By deeming West, his chameleon persona, and iconic brand worthy of scholarly examination, this book takes us on a philosophical odyssey like no other in the modern academy." Rahiel Tesfamariam, founder and Editor-in-Chief, Urban Cusp

About the authors

Bibliographic information.

Book Title : The Cultural Impact of Kanye West

Editors : Julius Bailey

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137395825

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan New York

eBook Packages : Palgrave Media & Culture Collection , Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

Copyright Information : Julius Bailey 2014

Hardcover ISBN : 978-1-137-39581-8 Published: 06 March 2014

Softcover ISBN : 978-1-137-57425-1 Published: 16 September 2015

eBook ISBN : 978-1-137-39582-5 Published: 06 March 2014

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XXX, 261

Topics : American Culture , Music , Media Studies , Cultural Studies

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Home > CMC > CMC_STUDENT > CMC_THESES > 192

CMC Senior Theses

Soldier of culture: a literary analysis of the works of kanye west.

William P. Dudding , Claremont McKenna College Follow

Graduation Year

Date of submission, document type.

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Rights Information

© 2011 William Dudding

In my thesis, I explored the work of the artist Kanye West as a rejected voice of Generation Y. Why was he rejected? Could he, in fact, be the voice? By examining readings of several of his songs and music videos over the span of his career as well as his public interactions, I attempt to properly place West in American culture. As a result of my research, I found West to be an extremely influential artist and an intriguing representation of the 2000s.

Recommended Citation

Dudding, William P., "Soldier of Culture: A Literary Analysis of the Works of Kanye West" (2011). CMC Senior Theses . 192. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/192

This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

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Home > All theses > 99

Theses - ALL

Yeezus meets watch the throne: how kanye west and jay z construct identities and build relationships in rap music and interviews.

Danielle Hodge , Syracuse University

Date of Award

Degree type, degree name.

Master of Arts (MA)

Communication and Rhetorical Studies

Cynthia Gordon

Discourse Analysis, Identity, Intertextuality, Kanye West, Rap Music, Sociolinguistics

Subject Categories

Communication

My thesis gives insight into the linguistic structure of rap songs, examines identity and relationship construction in the context of rap artists' discourse, and demonstrates the utility of applying linguistic concepts--especially intertextuality, overlapping frames, story round, and boasting--to the context of rap music. Drawing on Gordon's (2009) concept of "overlapping frames"--i.e., layers of meaning that rely on what Becker (1995) calls "prior text"--and intertextuality, the first analysis chapter explores the use of sampling, the process of reusing music from a prior context, in Kanye West's "Blood on the Leaves" and "Through the Wire." In the second analysis chapter I examine how identities and relationships are created in rap collaborations. Analyzing "Otis" and "N***** in Paris," two songs from Jay Z and West's collaborative album, Watch the Throne, I particularly explore how they exchange stories of their lifestyle that highlight their shared background and experiences with wealth as African American men and rap artists. The final analysis chapter examines how the linguistic strategies from West's rap music, are employed in his style of interviewing. Analyzing three interviews with radio show hosts, Zane Lowe, Sway Calloway, and Charlamagne tha God, DJ Envy, and Angela Yee (The Breakfast Club), I explore how West works to project himself within the hip-hop culture through his personal accounts and depicted prior interactions with individuals in the industry. Applying discourse analytic methods to rap music, I explore how this genre transcends stereotypical and dismissive assumptions by demonstrating how the artists use particular linguistic strategies to not only create various aspects of identity and build relationships with one another, but also highlight significant events that illustrate their journey to where they are in the current context.

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Hodge, Danielle, "Yeezus meets Watch the Throne: How Kanye West and Jay Z Construct Identities and Build Relationships in Rap Music and Interviews" (2015). Theses - ALL . 99. https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/99

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Lund university libraries, the life of kanye : a qualitative content analysis of kanye west’s twitter practice.

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“I Still Don’t Understand Award Shows”: Kanye West and Hip Hop Celebrity in the Twenty-First Century

Independent Scholar

• Published: 10 September 2018
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This chapter examines the evolution of the rapper, producer, fashion designer, and reluctant reality television personality Kanye West. An artist whose subject matter addresses personal anxieties and self-doubt in ways seldom seen in mainstream rap, West engages fame and celebrity in conflicting and often incongruous ways. Through the amateur creation and distribution of memes, gifs, hashtags, and other “viral” cultural articles, the public plays an unprecedented role in the construction—and destruction—of celebrity. Exploitation of this process, in which West consciously engages, constitutes a unique enactment of celebrity work. West’s interaction with the notion of celebrity—as an antihero, an activist, and an icon—speaks both to the changing role of hip hop in mainstream American culture and to the ongoing racial microaggressions of “post-race” America toward influential black celebrity.

At the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards (VMA), the rapper/producer/polarizing public figure Kanye West accepted the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard award, the most prestigious award of the night and, as such, the climax of the evening’s events. 1 West’s acceptance of the award quite deliberately recalled the infamous moment at the 2009 award show in which West had interrupted the country-pop singer Taylor Swift’s “Best Female Video” acceptance speech to urge that the award should have gone to Beyoncé. Indeed, the Vanguard award was presented to West by Swift herself, an unashamed move on MTV’s part to boost viewership in anticipation of the salacious moment. “You know how many times MTV ran that footage again?” West noted in his speech, “’Cause it got them more ratings? You know how many times they announced Taylor was going to give me the award ’cause it got them more ratings?” West’s acceptance speech was true to his erratic and unpredictable public persona, perfectly punctuated with immediately reproducible and retweetable catch phrases (“Listen to the kids, bruh!”) and brimming with a nervous energy that showcased both West’s clumsy braggadocio (“I will die for the art!”) and his earnest desire to be forgiven, understood, and liked. Kanye famously concluded the speech by declaring his intention run for president in 2020, a date he has since pushed back to 2024 to accommodate two terms of President Trump.

Also evident in the decidedly nonlinear speech was West’s frustration with the concept of award shows—celebrations of popular culture that notoriously plague his public image. “I still don’t understand award shows,” he lamented after skirting around a direct apology to Swift. “I don’t understand how they get five people who worked their entire life . . . to come stand on the carpet and, for the first time in they life, be judged on the chopping block and have the opportunity to be considered a loser. I don’t understand it, bruh!” West’s conscious, ever-shifting engagement with the idea of celebrity testifies to the oft-overlooked influence of hip hop culture on mainstream American popular culture—perhaps especially when it comes to “celebrity work.” Through his experimental manipulation of his own public image, Kanye West now stands at the vanguard of twenty-first-century celebrity, just as his music and personal style have always represented his willingness to defy and push beyond incumbent notions about hip hop. In the process of constantly recreating himself, West has played a part in shifting currents of celebrity construction and consumption in a post–social media landscape. Far from being an autonomous creation, however, Kanye’s “remaking” of hip hop celebrity has grown very directly from hip hop itself—drawing on both established aesthetic traditions and newer trajectories within hip hop.

Equally concerned with performing celebrity and performing authenticity —usually seen as opposing forces—Kanye has helped to upend traditional notions of hip hop “realness” while still drawing on some of its familiar conventions. His marriage to the quintessential social media and reality television star Kim Kardashian has only underscored his investment in new modes of reality construction. Operating in a post-Napster music economy that has weathered everything from MP3s to free music streaming, where “impressions” have steadily overtaken physical sales as a measurement of success, Kanye has led the way in recognizing that “likes” (or impressions of any kind) can be more important than being liked. In the social media famescape of the twenty-first century, as David P. Marshall describes it, “the number of followers on Twitter, the number of views for a particular YouTube video or image on Tumblr, the tracking of Twitter hashtags’ virality, and the number of friends on Facebook are defining the new metrics of fame and, by implication, value and reputation” (2014, xxxiv).

West’s impassioned proclamation, “I just wanted people to like me more!” (followed immediately by “But fuck that, bro . . . I will die for the art!”) can thus be understood not as a simple appeal to the sympathies or forgiveness of his audience, but rather as an insight into the creative celebrity work behind his characteristically bizarre outbursts and antics. With a focus on his seventh studio album, The Life of Pablo (2016), and his erratic public behavior surrounding its release, this chapter argues that West is engaged in emerging forms of celebrity work with implications for hip hop and beyond. I argue that West’s mobilization of social media represents a performance of “sincerity” in contrast to traditional narratives of “realness.” Further, through his highly publicized relationship with Kim Kardashian (including increasingly frequent appearances on reality TV) and his deviation from hypermasculine codes of hip hop behavior, West’s relationship to celebrity also entails an engagement with a distinctly feminized iconicity in a way unparalleled in mainstream male rap.

Fame and celebrity have long been cast as distinct and implicitly gendered entities, whereby the feminized realm of “celebrity” is unfavorably contrasted with the masculine achievement of fame. 2 As Brenda R. Weber argues in her study of women and literary celebrity in the nineteenth century, “since the machinery of fame is often the elite masculinist theatre of politics, war, and heroism, whereas the workings of celebrity often engage with the feminized domains of rumor and innuendo, the divide between fame and celebrity clearly conveys both classed and gendered distinctions” (2013, 18). It is unsurprising, then, that this gendered distinction is also at work in hip hop’s reluctance to surrender the hypermasculine narrative. As a growing number of hip hop artists rose to celebrity status it coincided with an emphasis on “gangsta” narratives of hustle and survival over grassroots political engagement. With hustling acting as a form of street neoliberalism, the archetypically arrogant, powerful, and potentially dangerous gangsta rapper is often fixated too on more traditionally “feminine” concerns such as image and reputation, squabbles with rivals, and fashion-conscious “bling.” An evolution of the Stagger Lee/badman character in black American folklore, gangsta rappers tapped into a “rich new coordinate in the black vernacular badman repertoire,” in the words of Eithne Quinn , “requisitioned and rewired as commercial culture” (2005, 114).

Despite, or perhaps because of, the feminine gendering of their celebrity work, gangsta rappers tend to (over)compensate by performing a certain hypermasculinity, about which much has been written and which has become synonymous with mainstream hip hop (particularly among its critics). Existing analysis of the mainstream rapper (as well as more underground hardcore rap) has tended to focus on the ways in which male rappers mobilize tropes of black masculinity and American capitalist success. Christopher Holmes Smith , for example, focuses on the mogul figure as a particularly popular manifestation of the hip hop celebrity. Smith characterizes the hip hop mogul as a pop cultural hero of neoliberal America, “symptomatic of an age wherein, despite a prevailing wish to the contrary, the crowd’s volatile possibility for social change has become exhausted as a model of political mobilization, even as it has become a highly marketable simulacrum of exactly that sort of transgressive human potential” (2010, 682). 3

This figure still holds considerable currency in twenty-first century hip hop: West’s mentor and collaborator JAY-Z, for example, is increasingly regarded as an entrepreneur and businessman rather than a performing artist. The hip hop mogul is not just a rapper-turned-businessman, however. As Smith explains, an essential part of the allure of the (male) hip hop mogul is his Teflon-like ability to remain unaffected by the seemingly ubiquitous “haters” that go along with fame and fortune. “For the mogul, jealousy, envy, and hatred from the crowd are merely rites of passage; to be the object of such ‘hatred’ merely serves to crystallize his essential charisma and mark him as one of God’s chosen few” (2010, 680). Kanye West, while increasingly involved in extracurricular business pursuits such as his fashion line and “Yeezy” shoe collaboration with Adidas, departs from the hip hop mogul rubric not only for the less “meteoric” trajectory of his life as the middle-class son of a college professor (the humbler the beginnings, the more compelling the capitalist narrative of ascension), but also for his palpable distress over his public image. This anxiety over public image was present through the early stages of his career, a tendency that has only grown more severe and stylized as he communicates increasingly through social media. In the article “Kanye West and Donald Trump’s Celebrity Kinship,” published shortly after their first infamous meeting, Spencer Kornhaber suggests, “Trump’s rhetoric and actions suggest a worldview in line with West’s, one in which talent is supposed to work like a magic talisman, removing all obstacles to exerting control,” where both “envision a world governed by neither principles nor professionals, only famous people” ( Kornhaber 2016 ).

Discussion of rap and the hip hop celebrity has also been dominated by the vexed question of authenticity, a question that has preoccupied artists and fans—and hip hop scholarship—for decades. The onus of “realness” placed on many a hip hop artist means they are inevitably compelled to defend their claim to authenticity through lyrics and autobiographical narratives among other means. The generic framework of perseverance and success in spite of hardship is an essential part of this authentication process. As Mickey Hess argues, “although the types of struggles may vary, each of these stories plays on an archetypal American story of perseverance in achieving one’s goals” (2010, 636). It is significant, then, that West’s participation in this process—something he has struggled with since his first album, The College Dropout , which immediately “outed” his struggle as that of a middle-class and well-supported artist—has recently waned in favor of a less self-conscious mode of self representation. Though he has endeavored to present his narrative within the standard framework, by emphasizing his struggle to be taken seriously as a non-gangsta figure, and dwelling on his failure to live up to his academic promise, West has never quite reconciled his unease in the hypermasculine hip hop space with his confident belief in his own genius.

Indeed, much has been made of West’s various performances of contradiction. When he declared on his first album, “we all self conscious / I’m just the first to admit it,” he shared his personal weakness with the world and seemed to apologize, in advance, for the contradictions that would follow—the most glaring of which has been his love of luxury fashions while alternately critiquing how brands and consumer comforts can enslave us. 4 His VMA acceptance speech betrayed this consistent contradiction, as he asserted, “we’re not gonna control our kids with brands” and only days later released a song, “Facts” (West 2016a) celebrating his successful collaboration with sports clothing giant Adidas. Noting this tendency toward contradiction, Chris Richardson argues, “West’s reflective struggle with commodity fetishism and other ills within hip hop culture provides a model for thinking critically about these issues while being situated within them rather than simply presenting dogmatic prescriptions” (2011, 109). Likewise, George Ciccariello-Maher acknowledges the important space for critique of the “authentic” self that West’s ambivalence opens up, suggesting, “there is something arguably postmodern about his embracing of the undecidable, his recognition of the contradiction of his own life and willing participation in that contradiction” (2009, 388). To critique and rethink the “authentic” hip hop artist’s vexed relationship to celebrity in these terms is, I argue, a conscious departure from the hypermasculinity through which hip hop fame has come to reconcile itself. That West could legitimately claim that in interrupting Swift in 2009 he had “just wanted people to like [him] more” suggests that his seemingly contradictory behavior is also an inheritance of what Sharon Marcus describes as the “impudent” celebrities of the nineteenth century. Like Oscar Wilde, one of the focuses of Marcus’s study, West exemplifies “the paradox embedded in the celebrity of impudence, which is not content simply to challenge social mores but gambles on being rewarded by society for doing so” (2011, 1011). West’s statement makes sense if we interpret “like” in its millennial, social media connotation. What West may have wanted, and what he achieved either way, was to inspire interest, to compel the world to watch. His willingness to be publically emotional and eschew the standard stoicism of the hypermasculine rapper (Beyoncé’s husband JAY-Z was notably silent during the West/Swift stage invasion) reflects, if not quite the “feminized celebrity personality” that Marcus attributes to Wilde, at least a disregard for the gendered politics of hip hop notoriety (2011, 1016).

West’s significance within the broader disciplines of hip hop and celebrity studies is evident in the increasing scholarly interest in his work. In the preface to his 2015 edited collection, The Cultural Impact of Kanye West , Julius Bailey writes, “West’s unyielding quest for a particular kind of brand identity suggests that he seeks a kind of public figure status like music icons Prince, Madonna, and the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. Such a position has arguably eluded most hip hop artists” (2015, x). 5 Published before the much-hyped release of The Life of Pablo , West’s bizarre social media behavior surrounding the release, and the reigniting of his feud with Swift, the book can only gesture toward what would become all the more evident about West’s manipulation of celebrity. Reynaldo Anderson and John Jennings , for example, note that West “explores the various layers of identity in the public and uses himself as a ‘guinea pig’” (2015, 43). Their analysis of West’s celebrity work as an exercise in trial-and-error is particularly insightful in its assertion that “the software that Kanye West has been slowly reprogramming and hacking into is the representation of himself in the public eye,” given the specifically digital means through which West has begun to further complicate his public persona (2015, 43).

Their understanding of West as a shape-shifting celebrity entity echoes Steven Shaviro’s compelling work on what he calls “post-cinematic affect.” In his inquiry into the “bewildering new world space of late or multinational capital” and interlocking practices within digital media and neoliberal economics, Shaviro writes that pop stars “are slippery, exhibiting singular qualities while, at the same time, withdrawing to a distance beyond these qualities, and thus escaping any final definition. This makes them ideal commodities: they always offer us more than they deliver, enticing us with a ‘promise of happiness’ that is never fulfilled, and therefore never exhausted or disappointed” (2010, 10). Eschewing the notion of authenticity in celebrity altogether, Shaviro proposes the model of “sincerity,” which, he argues, “has a much wider range of application [than authenticity]; it does not presuppose the existence of any ‘true inner self’ to which one must remain faithful at all costs. A fiction, fabrication, or construction may well be sincere, even though it is evidently not authentic” (2010, 176). It is sincerity , rather than authenticity, that propels West’s own distinct enactment of “realness,” a positionality that makes room for contradiction and equivocation while still professing to an underlying earnestness of intention. These apparent contradictions are, in Shaviro’s terms, “iterations” of his celebrity self, rather than evidence of his inauthenticity or inconsistency. “There is no original, or Platonic ideal,” Shaviro argues, “of a celebrity: all instances are generated through the same processes of composition and modulation, and therefore any instance is as valid (or ‘authentic’) as any other” (2010, 18). West’s recent hyperactive and bizarre Twitter activity coinciding with the release of The Life of Pablo , to which I turn shortly, evidences his investment in sincerity over a more streamlined or detached approach to public relations.

West’s keen investment in “going viral” attests to both his understanding of the nature of twenty-first-century celebrity culture and his desire to have his iconicity permeate as far and wide as possible. His music may be increasingly avant-garde and uninterested in pandering to mainstream trends or radio play, but his engagement with social media indicates his ongoing desire to achieve icon status. West’s proliferation of Twitter activity around the time of the Pablo release included introspection (“a wise man should be humble enough to admit when he is wrong and change his mind based on new information”), political commentary (“the system is designed for colored people to fail and one of our only voices is music. One of our only ways out is music”), self-promotion (“Pitchfork, the album is a 30 out of 10”), and confession, perhaps most notably the admission that he is “53 million dollars in personal debt.” To a certain degree, his use of Twitter has been consistent with the phenomenon of “black Twitter,” an online subculture that has emerged organically and unofficially from the tweeting and sharing practices of Twitter users of color. A term commonly attributed to comedian Baratunde Thurston, “black Twitter” manifests the centrality of race to a sense of belonging, even online, where identities can be forged or hidden. In this sense, it is a social media iteration of the centuries-old practice of black American Signifyin(g), a concept defined by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his study of the “signifying monkey”: “he who dwells at the margins of discourse, ever punning, ever troping, ever embodying the ambiguities of language” (1983, 686). Long a productive cultural framework through which hip hop studies have interpreted the role of the rapper/emcee in hip hop, the practice of Signifyin(g) can also help to explain the other ways in which West performs his persona for the public.

Significant in black Twitter practice is the momentary visibility or celebrity of the “tweeter.” As Gates argues, “Signifyin(g) turns on the play and chain of signifiers, and not on some supposedly transcendent signified” (1983, 688)—the focus is on the act or art of signifying, rather than on the ephemeral meme, hashtag, or tweet. Sarah Florini , further, writes, “even at its most lighthearted, Signifyin(g) is a powerful resource for signaling racial identity, allowing Black Twitter users to perform their racial identities 140 characters at a time” (2014, 224). Florini goes on to explicitly link black Twitter and its Signifyin(g) practices to hip hop. “On Black Twitter,” she writes, “Signifyin(g) often functions as a marker of Black racial identity by indexing Black popular culture. One example is the popular hashtag game in ‘Hip hop’ circles Signifyin(g) on the R&B singer and rapper Drake” (2014, 227). She cites popular hashtags such as “#FakeDrakeLyrics” to illustrate how hip hop fluency “combine[s] with the communicative tradition of Signifyin(g) to stand in as a signifier of Black racial identity” (2014, 227). West’s Twitter activity, if not directly representative of the kinds of tweeting identified by Florini and others, is nonetheless aware of, and in conversation with, the many millions of his followers and other Twitter users who do belong to this culture. When West tweets self-deprecating memes or gifs, or continues to oscillate wildly between emotions, subject matters, and points of contention, he is participating in the joke—the Kanye joke that arises out of social media roasting and meme-sharing. In doing so, he is mobilizing new media forms of visibility at the same time as he connects to long-held black American cultural practices.

Indeed, new innovations of Signifyin(g) in social media use are significant not only to black American cultures in the broad sense but also specifically to hip hop culture, as demonstrated by the popularity of hip hop memes. The definition of “meme” as it relates to social media is not altogether fixed in these still relatively early stages of critical interest in emerging digital cultures. With that said, Limor Shifman offers a useful working description of a meme as “(a) a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance, which (b) were created with awareness of each other, and (c) were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users” (2014, 41). The circulation of humorous memes, a popular activity across social media platforms of all kinds, has become particularly rampant among hip hop fans and even artists. As Ben Beaumont-Thomas notes in a 2016 article for The Guardian that the rap meme “in recent years has become an integral part of hip hop culture” and that “rap fans are among the keenest memers, sharing Photoshopped disses at the slightest notice of beef; the website HipHop DX has a weekly round-up called All Eyez on Memes.” Hip hop culture is, in fact, ideally suited to meme culture: chopping and screwing, remixing, and biting are all elements of hip hop production that have remained essential to the culture since its humble beginnings some four decades ago. Sharing memes is about recognizing the value of an image or punch line, reworking it endlessly to intensify its inherent cultural resonance and multiply its potential uses and significations. It is also an inexpensive and (access to Internet bandwidth notwithstanding) democratic means through which to be creative and to impact on a wider culture, wherein the crucial tools are fluency in the currently trending memes and a sense of humor. Given the collage-like landscape of memetic social media humor, the polyphonic effect of which echoes Kanye West’s rich and diverse production style, it is perhaps unsurprising that West has become increasingly interested in meme culture.

The Life of Pablo is especially aware of the significance of social media and meme culture to celebrity in the twenty-first century. The album opens, in fact, with the audio from a viral Instagram post by user Natalie is Great, an account set up and managed by four-year-old Natalie Green’s mother, Samoria Green. The video shows Natalie in a state of ecstatic prayer, emulating the great black American preaching tradition as she cries, “we don’t want no devils in this house” and “praise the Lord, hallelujah.” Natalie is one of countless “viral” celebrities to have been plucked from obscurity and made momentarily famous for a social media post that sparked unprecedented interest. By opening his album in this way, West is immediately invoking the shared knowledge of his audience of fellow social media users and establishing Pablo ’s keen interest in social media and celebrity. In a later track titled “I Love Kanye” (West 2016e) , West directly addresses Twitter trolls, memes, and the seemingly infinite reproduction of his image and persona since the now-infamous moment in which he interrupted Taylor Swift’s VMA speech. “See, I invented Kanye / It wasn’t any Kanye / And now I look and look around and it’s so many Kanyes!” The proliferation of Kanyes through the meme-sphere echoes another controversial hip hop artist’s confrontation of the multiplicity of the public self: Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady” likewise grapples with the flattery of imitation and concomitant threat to knowledge of self that such image reproduction effectively poses. As G. Christopher Williams argues, Eminem’s song “embraces the subjectivity of the age, blurring the line between authentic self and simulation” (2004, 79). Williams continues, “Eminem seems to admit that a media constructed identity of Marshall Mathers is as legitimate a claim about who and what he is as what he himself has to say about himself” (2004, 82). In West’s case, the multiplicity of Kanyes is perhaps more vexed still by the fact that he uses his real name, rather than a stage name such as Eminem (he has, however, in recent years referred to himself regularly as “Yeezus”). He even laughs along with his trolls as he lampoons “Kanye” the public persona: “What if Kanye made a song about Kanye? / Called ‘I miss the Old Kanye?’ / Man that’d be so Kanye.” The song ends with an actual gag that has circled the Internet for some years without clear origin (as with so much viral social media content): “I love you like Kanye loves Kanye.” 6

The album’s cover art is also distinctly evocative of meme culture: a crudely cut and pasted collage of two seemingly unrelated images, one of West’s parents and guests at their wedding, and the other of a voluptuous and scantily clad woman (Instagram model @ShenizH) with her back(side) to the camera. Two phrases, “The Life of Pablo” and “which/one,” are reproduced line after line in the background—raising the question of who exactly the album is titled after. 7 In the lead-up to the album’s release, West shared various memes on his Twitter feed mocking the album art and its delayed release: one which read “blame chance,” a reference to Chance The Rapper’s decision to continue working on one of the album’s tracks, and then another that read “thank you chance” when the song was declared finished. In creating and sharing these memes, West participated in an already-active meme culture: social media users were already creating their own album covers in the style of The Life of Pablo using a handful of websites created for the purpose. It would appear likely, in fact, that West predicted the sharable and meme-worthy quality of his cover art and deliberately invited his followers—be they idol-worshippers or the proverbial “haters”—to mess with his work. In its crude juxtaposition of West’s beloved mother with the faceless image of a near-nude Instagram model, the album art also represents a stark, if unexplained, acknowledgment of the contradictory ways in which West engages with femininity—an aspect of his work that is more complex, and more explicatory of the centrality of female iconicity and sexuality to his understanding of celebrity, than the virgin/whore dichotomy that these images might initially suggest.

West’s relatively recent investment in social media coincides, perhaps unsurprisingly, with his relationship with Kardashian, whose calculated use of social media to promote products, cement her brand, and seduce followers (often literally) into “liking” her and thus furthering her sphere of influence is arguably unparalleled. West and Kardashian are, as Vanessa Díaz points out, the only interracial celebrity couple to have been bestowed a portmanteau—Kimye—by the mainstream celebrity media, a renaming that marks the process by which said media “formally remake [two individuals] into a new, marketable, celebrity entity” (2015, 278). In this way West’s public image is explicitly embroiled in the iconicity of his wife, a fact that he not only embraces but also articulates in a way that implicates social media. In “Wolves,” a song that seeks to defend his wife against the common criticisms of her past exploits (a sex tape, various high-profile relationships, and a controversial divorce) West references his brief Twitter feud with his former fiancée Amber Rose’s ex-husband, the rapper Wiz Khalifa. West acknowledges and empathizes with his wife’s attempts at diplomacy, enacted, as is ever the case with Kardashian, over social media—she posted a “selfie” with Amber Rose later that week, suggesting that there was no bad blood between the families—telling her “I know it’s corny bitches you wish you could unfollow.” Likewise, West appears to register a moment, albeit fleeting, of defiance in “FML” (West 2016d) , as he laments the temptations that surround him and the constant public scrutiny of “haters” and Twitter trolls waiting with unabashed Schadenfreude for him to fail. Once again, West’s introspection culminates in his rumination on Kardashian and the notoriety of their celebrity coupling, as he acknowledges, “they don’t wanna see me love you.” The song’s chorus, sung by The Weeknd, alludes to the struggle that West undergoes in order to brush off the constant barrage of hatred and trolling that comes with high social media visibility and celebrity. “They wish I would go ahead and fuck my life up / Can’t let them get to me / And even though I always fuck my life up /Only I can mention me.” The word “mention” is significant, too, as a reference to Twitter: to include a Twitter user’s handle in a tweet (@KanyeWest, for example) is, in Twitter parlance, to “mention” them. The song thus gestures toward a moment of resistance, a certain fatigue with the “iterations” of “Kanye” that leaves so little room for the private life of Kanye West.

The role of Kardashian in West’s approach to social media, as well as his long-held fascination with her as a celebrity figure, attest to the influence of iconic female celebrity on West’s own idealization of fame. Such admiration does not preclude his participation in the wider culture of misogyny in much male-dominated mainstream hip hop. West’s music contains gratuitous and misogynistic elements; in particular, his penchant for crude descriptions of sex acts (“Have you ever had sex with a Pharaoh? Put the pussy in a sarcophagus /Now she’s claiming that I bruised her esophagus”) is consistent with the hypermasculine bravado common to “hardcore” hip hop whether “mainstream” or “underground.” 8   Sha’Dawn Battle interprets West’s particular manifestation of hypermasculine misogyny as a defensive stance against the historic and ongoing feminization of black men in the white American imagination, whereby “Black males have used the adoption of a hypermasculine disposition as one particular strategy to resist the feminizing and the dehumanizing characterization of the black male body” (2015, 82). West’s need to underscore his masculinity is additionally heightened by the softening aspects of his background and personality that distinguish him from more hardcore and gangsta rappers: his middle-class upbringing, love of high fashion, and generally less cool demeanor than, for example, JAY-Z. The problematic treatment of women in some of West’s work, as well as the (attempted) sexual degradation of his former lover, Amber Rose, in recent Twitter wars and radio interviews, typify what Battle identifies as the “bruised black male ego” at work in so much mainstream male rap (2015, 90). These instances of sexism are complicated, however, by his concurrent fascination with iconic female celebrity, and also by past releases that daringly challenged gender and musical norms, the massively influential 808s and Heartbreaks in particular ( Greene 2015 ).

“Famous,” (West 2016b) the single from The Life of Pablo that became instantly notorious for quasi-requesting sex from Taylor Swift for “[making] that bitch famous,” demonstrates West’s multileveled engagement with celebrity and iconicity, as well as his fascination with famous women. In the hook, an interpellation of Nina Simone’s “Do What You Gotta Do,” Rihanna’s vocals act as a personification of celebrity itself: “Man, I can understand how it might be / Kinda hard to love a girl like me / I don’t blame you much for wanting to be free.” Doubling down on iconic soul divas, the song samples legendary dancehall artist Sister Nancy’s iconic “Bam Bam,” which, in addition, recalls the much-mythologized female rapper Lauryn Hill’s own use of “Bam Bam” in her song “Lost Ones.” In this way, West’s “Famous” is already saturated with a distinctly female celebrity and iconicity. The song goes on to explore the happy accident of fame through the sexual interactions of men and women, a skewed vantage point that embraces the female achievement of fame through romantic (sexual) association with a prominent male (Kanye). The aforementioned reference to Swift is replaced in the second verse with a shout-out to the women for whom this strategy did not, in fact, succeed: “For all the girls that got dick from Kanye West / If you see ’em in the street give ’em Kanye’s best / Why? They mad they ain’t famous / They mad they still nameless.” The song recalls his earlier (2005) hit “Gold Digger” (West 2014) in that it seems to celebrate—even congratulate—the sexual and romantic hustle of women in the pursuit of financial security and, perhaps, fame. The repeated line “get down, girl, go ‘head, get down” both alludes to oral sex and shrugs off the male complaint that women are interested only in their money, suggesting that their plight is valid. Toward the end this is made even more explicit: “Now I ain’t sayin’ you a gold digger / You got needs.” The Life of Pablo contains several other references to iconic female celebrity. In “Feedback” (West 2016c) , West poses as “the ghetto Oprah,” and chants “ you get a fur! You get a fur! You get a jet! You get a jet! Big booty Benz for you!” Again, this homage reflects West’s fluency in social media meme culture in which the Oprah “giveaway” performance, part of her annual “Oprah’s Favourite Things” Christmas show, features regularly. Aside from the Rihanna-meets-Nina Simone feature “Famous,” there are a handful of other appearances by black female icons, including “Ultralight Beam” (West 2016h) , which features R&B/Soul artist Mary J. Blige. 9

Of course, nowhere is West’s obsession with female iconicity more prominent than in his open admiration for—and promotion of—his wife. Kardashian is a vexed public figure herself, due in large part to the distinctly feminized realm of her popularity as well as cultural resistance to the new social media/reality TV mode of celebrity. The original source of her fame, a homemade sex tape featuring Kardashian and her then-boyfriend Ray J, is routinely cited to disparage the Kardashian family and their attainment of celebrity. West, however, regularly refers to the tape, Kim Kardashian: Superstar , as a means of invoking his wife’s sexual attractiveness, entrepreneurship, and apparent celebrity “x factor” (the video has made a rumored $50 million to date, and launched Kardashian’s reality television career and subsequent cultural empire). In “30 Hours” he notes casually that “me and wifey make a movie.” In “Clique,” a song released prior to his marriage to Kardashian, he brags about her unconventional attainment of celebrity status and the notoriety that they achieve as a couple: “My girl a superstar all from a home movie / Bow on our arrival / The un-American idols.” In “Highlights” West inserts himself more directly into the sex tape scenario: “Sometimes I’m wishin’ that my dick had / Go Pro / So I could play that shit back / In slow mo’ / I just shot an amateur video / I think I Should go pro.” He goes on to explicitly connect the Kardashian empire to the tape as he celebrates their mutual achievements: “Twenty-one Grammies, Superstar family / We the new Jacksons / I’m all about that action.” West’s pride in his wife’s empire extends beyond her physical attributes and sex tape to her successful business ventures. In “Facts,” he gives a shout-out to Kardashian’s emoji app—“Plus Kimoji just shut down the app store”—and in “No More Parties in LA,” he notes that the “whole family gettin’ money / Thank god for E!,” the broadcast home of Keeping Up with the Kardashians .

The Kardashian family’s long-running reality show is another realm where West pushes his own comfort level, insinuating himself into the feminine space of the Kardashian world. In the words of Anita Brady , “no other family seems to so readily embody the deliberate curating of self for the lenses of the world’s media” (2016, 115). Reality television has become a popular, indeed saturated, vehicle for two new innovations of celebrity: the “famous for being famous” reality TV star (Kim Kardashian, the Real Housewives , Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson) and the reality career reboot (Christina Milian, Toni Braxton, La Toya Jackson). West’s initial reluctance to appear as a regular “character” on his wife’s long-running series likely stemmed from the “career reboot” implications of taking the role. Alice Leppert , whose analysis of the Kardashian brand emphasizes its balance of tight image management and personal transparency, notes that although “West seemed to revel in Kim’s reality TV stardom,” he “also made it apparent that he intended to use Kim as his Barbie Doll . . . as in one episode he advises her to get rid of all her clothes and replace them with a full wardrobe of his and his stylist’s choosing, a move that Khloé [Kim’s sister] immediately recognizes as controlling” (2015, 143). Leppert reads Kanye’s attachment to Kardashian as “most likely not the best choice for a man trying to break into European high fashion,” given “the low-value celebrity Kim represents” and citing the couple’s much-maligned American Vogue cover in 2014 as evidence of the considerable resistance to Kardashian and her particular kind of celebrity (2015, 144). It is precisely her perceived “low value,” however, that I argue is essential to West’s conceptualization of their combined power as provocative and antagonistic public figures. In the defiant spirit of hip hop, West parades his wife and her scantily clad body as deliberate provocations of white American standards of beauty and femininity, even as he seems to conversely play up Kardashian’s whiteness and the transgressive nature of their interracial relationship. In addition, West’s steadily increasing presence on the show since the tenth season represents a shift from the self-conscious management of his public image—in large part a hangover from the scathing public backlash following the Swift incident—to an acceptance of his vulnerability, part of the broader project of sincerity exemplified in his Twitter activity.

Recent convergences of hip hop culture and reality television—shows such as Love and Hip Hop, Sisterhood of Hip Hop, T.I. and Tiny: The Family Hustle, Run’s House , and Marrying the Game , to name but a few—may ostensibly mark a departure from hip hop’s post-gangsta framing of “realness” as a means of establishing a rapper’s autobiographical honesty and managing would-be corny attempts at coolness. As I have argued elsewhere, however, the relationship of hip hop realness to reality TV reality is more “organic” than it may appear. 10 Reality TV is routinely disparaged as “fake” in a way that indicates the gullibility of its audiences. What elitist critiques of reality TV undervalue is the subversive and liberating potential of self-mediation to allow the individual to eke out a version of selfhood that they can live with, a concept that holds particular appeal to minority subjects such as women, LGBT people, and people of color. Noting this conscious manipulation of selfhood, Misha Kavka writes, “reality TV participants do not act up for cameras so much as act out the self. In so doing, they draw attention to the way that performance and performativity are inextricable even—perhaps especially—in private settings configured by the social gaze, which . . . envelops those in front of the screen as well as those in front of the camera” (2008, 98). She designates “mediated selfhood” as the “collective name for all of the gestures/behaviors/acts that are held for our use by the objective camera, mobilized by the screen, and performed in turn as the ‘real’ stuff of the self” (2008, 102). This process, exemplified so quintessentially and successfully by the Kardashian sisters, not only through their reality TV personas but also in their social media use, personal apps, and public appearances, is taken up, too, by West as he learns from the celebrity work of his new family. The reality TV format is also, however, implicitly feminized and queered. Reading television as a “technology of intimacy,” Kavka traces the historical association of television with the domestic space and the particularities of reality TV that emphasize further this underlying feminization (2008, xi). The implications of hip hop’s—and perhaps especially Kanye West’s—increasing involvement in these socially coded spheres of self-mediation and refuge from heteronormativity, are crucial to any critical engagement with hip hop in the twenty-first century.

In late July of 2016, some five months after the initial release of The Life of Pablo , West added a new song, “Saint Pablo,” to the album. The song is, in many ways, a reflection on precisely the modes of self-presentation and celebrity work that this chapter has interrogated. “People tryna say I’m goin’ crazy on Twitter,” he raps, “my friends’ best advice was to stay low.” Far from staying low, of course, West continues to implement both social media and his music to provoke and challenge the way we—as scholars, hip hop fans, and the general public—conceive of celebrity in the twenty-first century. “The media said he’s way out of control,” he goes on. “I just feel like I’m the only one not pretending / I’m not out of control, I’m just not in they control.” Crucial to West’s project in both his rejection of hypermasculine configurations of hip hop fame and his erratic, contradictory, and provocative social media behavior, is this commitment to “not pretending”—a certain enactment of “sincerity” that aims to reconcile hip hop authenticity more comfortably with the increasingly self-mediated experience of celebrity. Rather than “acting up” for the sake of attention and notoriety, West is “acting out” in a bold reimagining of what it means to be a black, male, and opinionated celebrity, in the twenty-first century.

Anderson, R. , and J. Jennings . 2015 . “Afrofuturism: The Digital Turn and Visual Art of Kanye West.” In The Cultural Impact of Kanye West, edited by Julius Bailey , 27–44. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

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The award was previously known as the Lifetime Achievement Award and was renamed the year of Michael Jackson’s death (2009).

See Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (1986); Graeme Turner, Ordinary People and the Media: The Demotic Turn (2010).

For a thorough elaboration of the relationship of the hip hop gangsta mogul figure to neoliberalism and politics, see Lester Spence, Stare into the Darkness: The Limits of Hip Hop and Black Politics (2011).

Kanye West, “All Falls Down” (2004a) .

It is worth noting that the iconic artists cited by Bailey—Prince, Madonna, Michael Jackson—are also explicitly interested in questions of gender in performance. Prince and Michael Jackson are notably feminized figures in the discourse surrounding their celebrity—it would be fruitful to consider to what extent such feminization (and concurrent speculation as to their respective sexual orientations) is influenced by their particular relationships to celebrity , as opposed to fame.

The Australian artist Scott Marsh recently took this joke to new heights, quite literally, painting a 6-meter-tall mural of West locked in passionate embrace with himself. The mural was inspired by an existing meme in which a photograph of Kanye and Kim kissing at the 2016 Grammy Awards was photoshopped so that Kanye was, in fact, kissing another Kanye.

In “No More Parties in L.A.”   West raps, “I feel like Pablo when I’m working on my shoes / I feel like Pablo when I see me on the news / I feel like Pablo when I’m working on my house” (2016f). Theories on to whom the album’s “Pablo” refers, many of which draw on these lyrics, range from St Paul the Apostle, to Pablo Picasso, to Pablo Escobar. West has made reference to all three of these figures in the weeks surrounding the album’s release.

Kanye West, featuring Nicki Minaj, JAY-Z, Rick Ross, “Monster” (2010) .

West also makes multiple references to his former fiancée, Amber Rose. On The Life of Pablo he references her at least once indirectly (“Wolves”; West 2016i ) and twice more directly in “30 hours” (West 2016g) and “No More Parties in LA” ( West 2016f ). In the latter he appears to present the romantic hustle of his ex with, if not quite admiration, then at least a shrug of understanding: “I remember Amber told my boy no matter what happens / She ain’t going back to Philly / Back to our regularly scheduled programming / Of weak content and slow jamming.”

For my discussion of reality television and the female hip hop artist Iggy Azalea, see Morrissey, “The New Real: Iggy Azalea and the Reality Performance” (2014).

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"The Innocent and the Runaway: Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Racial Melodrama, and the Epistemology of Ignorance"

During the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, Kanye West famously interrupted Taylor Swift's acceptance speech for "Best Female Video." A year later both performers returned to the VMAs with songs that responded directly to the original incident. In the meantime, the U.S. media and record-buying public had come to interpret the original incident using the stock scripts and characters of what Linda Williams has called “U.S. racial melodrama,” the fact of which both performers seemed aware. In this way, the Swift-West “incident” had come to reflect and mimic larger racial tensions, especially between black men and white women, as they had specifically come to be understood and portrayed during the Obama presidency, which many commentators have hastily and incorrectly identified as a symptom of “post-racialism.” This essay discusses how Kanye West and Taylor Swift reflect on and revise the tropes of racial melodrama, in the latter case to reinforce what Charles Mills calls "the epistemology of ignorance" when it comes to racism in America, and in the former case to challenge it.

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Runaway: a movie that provides insight into kanye west in 2019.

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NEW YORK - OCTOBER 21: Rapper, writer and director Kanye West attends the "Runaway" New York ... [+] premiere at Landmark's Sunshine Cinema on October 21, 2010 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)

Tiny, black silhouettes of Kanye West and the Phoenix rest in the frame. Rolling clouds, engulfed in a striking red hue, rapidly roar overhead, almost like the storm of the century is coming.

Yet, this is a quiet, somber moment— the moment, in fact, where Kanye West stops saying sorry, stops playing by the world’s rules, and becomes the Kanye West we know today.

“All of the statues that we see, where do you think they came from?” the Phoenix asks.

West replies, “I think that artists carved them years and years ago—”

“No," the Phoenix interrupts. "They are phoenix turned to stone. Do you know what I hate most about your world? Anything that is different, you try to change. You try to tear it down. You rip the wings off the phoenix and they turn to stone. And if I don’t burn, I will turn to stone. If I don’t burn, I can’t go back to my world.”

Kanye kisses the Phoenix as the camera pans to the sky, the clouds still red, still rolling. "Lost in the World", the final song on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy , plays overhead. Many view the Runaway film as a promotional video for that historic album—but really, the movie was cathartic for Kanye to make. It not only continued, but expanded upon the themes of the album. He took the power and artistry and tragedy of that final track and birthed a visual representation of how lost in this world he felt in 2010. 

Running through the forest, he chases after the Phoenix as she catapults into the sky, consumed by flames, drifting out of this world into space.

And all Kanye can do is watch.

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In that moment, I like to think about what Kanye’s character is actually thinking about. I know it’s a movie—but it’s a movie Kanye West made. And Kanye is in the movie. So when Kanye put this scene together and acted out this part, I can’t help but wonder what relation it has to the album, to his public image, to his mission as an artist.

So let’s take a step outside ourselves for one second and step into Kanye’s shoes. How can we frame this ending, this entire film in the eyes of Kanye. What was he feeling at the time of its release, and how was he conveying everything he felt through this film? And how can this help us understand Kanye West in 2019, when he's more controversial than he's ever been?

This isn't an attempt to excuse any of his behavior over the past couple years. Instead, I simply want to evaluate a man who once had a major falling out with the public, what that low point did to his psyche, and how that explains his behavior in 2018 and 2019.

A Polarizing Figure

Over the years, Kanye West’s public image has had its ups and downs. From his rant about George Bush not caring about black people, to donning the Confederate Flag on his jacket during the Yeezus rollout, to embracing Donald Trump in the Oval Office, Kanye has always stayed true to himself.

It’s what drives many people to dislike him, but it's also what many of his fans love about him: it’s not about whether he’s wrong or right—it’s that he’s unabashedly devoted to being the maximum version of himself, which encourages others to not shy away from what we’ve been told are the “ugly” parts of ourselves. “The most beautiful thoughts are always besides the darkest,” as Kanye said on his song I Thought About Killing You .

This motivation he gives people is worded perfectly from Kanye himself during an interview with BBC’s Zane Lowe :

"Go listen to all my music. It's the code to self-esteem. If you're a Kanye West fan, you're not a fan of me. You're a fan of yourself. You will believe in yourself. I'm just the espresso. I'm just the shot in the morning to get you going to make you believe you can overcome that situation that you're dealing with all the time."

But in 2009...things were different. Because in 2009, Kanye stormed the MTV Video Music Award stage and took away Taylor Swift's moment to accept her hard-earned award.

"Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’ll let you finish, but Beyoncé has one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!”

And the reaction from everybody was no longer, “Oh, that’s Kanye for you…” Kanye was shunned, abandoned— cancelled , as they say these days. Fans and haters alike were turning their backs on him. Even though Kanye’s ego had made him a controversial figure for years, this is the first time it truly felt like Kanye was about to lose everything.

Of course, I can’t tell you exactly how Kanye was feeling at the time. I can’t read his mind. But as somebody who hosts a Kanye West podcast and studies his entire life quote by quote, line by line, I think it’s safe to say Kanye wasn’t concerned about people thinking he was a jerk—he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to reach people with his music anymore.

During an interview with the New York Times , Jon Caramanica asked Kanye if he regretted running up on stage during Taylor Swift’s moment. Kanye said he didn’t—in fact, it seems all he regretted doing was apologizing at the time.

" Dark Fantasy was my long, backhanded apology, Kanye said in response to Caramanica. You know how people give a backhanded compliment? It was a backhanded apology. It was like, all these raps, all these sonic acrobatics. I was like: 'Let me show you guys what I can do, and please accept me back. You want to have me on your shelves.'”

That quote always blows my mind. I mean, we’re talking about My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy —what many consider to be the greatest hip hop album ever made. And Kanye claims that was just him “giving into peer pressure.” He even later called “Power” his least-progressive first single. It almost feels like Kanye acknowledging that he only made one of the most beautiful pieces of art ever created...because that’s what the people wanted. It doesn’t even seem like he did it for himself.

Which...is not very Kanye. He encourages people to fully be themselves, to embrace who they are. In that same interview with the New York Times , which took place three years after My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy , you can finally feel Kanye moving past that guilt he felt about caving to peer pressure. He’s no longer apologizing—he’s embracing who he is and how that speaks to his fans.

So when Caramanica asks Kanye if he thinks his instincts have led him astray, Kanye doesn’t respond in the way the 2010 version Kanye would have, because the 2010 version of Kanye apologized. Instead the 2013 version of Kanye responded in the way we know the 2019 version of Kanye would respond:

"It’s only led me to complete awesomeness at all times. It’s only led me to awesome truth and awesomeness. Beauty, truth, awesomeness. That’s all it is."

The Runaway film is the visual depiction of that birth into a new life. With My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy , Kanye was trepidatious, remorseful, shyly tip-toeing around the fact that he didn’t regret running up on stage at all. But he felt he couldn’t come out and say that at the time.

Luckily, that’s why art exists, so artists can express themselves in visual, sonic manners; so they can tell stories flooded with themes and motifs imbued with intention and meaning. Sometimes we best understand artists by simply looking at their art. So, in the spirit of my new film podcast , I'm going to take a look at what the ending of Runaway signaled about Kanye West in 2010, and why that experience shaped his behavior in 2019.

Judgement Day

Runaway opens with a shot of Kanye running through the forest. But this isn’t really the beginning—it’s the end. We actually start with the moment where the Phoenix is burning through the stratosphere and into space, with Kanye chasing after her. This is a very important framing device, as we’re shown the man Kanye will become as opposed to the man he is when he first meets the Phoenix.

But here’s the thing: at the beginning of this movie, we don’t even know about the Phoenix. We think that Kanye is running away from something, as opposed to running towards something.

But...can't he be doing both? Running away from one lifestyle into another?

Before we even hear "Dark Fantasy", the first song of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy , Mozart’s Lacrimosa dies illa , which translates to “Full of tears will be that day,” plays in the background.

This song refers to the end of Mozart’s Dies irae section of his famous requiem, with "dies irae" meaning day of wrath. Lacrimosa is the last song in this section, ending with a request of eternal life: “Merciful Lord Jesus, Grant them eternal rest. Amen.” The speaker is pleading for redemption. 

I believe Kanye uses this song to reference his life leading up to the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy era—trapped (by his own doing) in the spotlight, crucified and criticized by news outlets, late night talk show hosts, and celebrities who felt the need to speak out. In his own way, Kanye was experiencing his own judgement day after the Taylor Swift incident.

Sound familiar? This is exactly what Kanye West is experiencing today.

So, if we’re using both Mozart and our knowledge of Kanye at the time as our frame of reference, we think this judgement day is what he’s running away from.

But by the end, we’ll understand what he’s running towards. And that's where we'll note the difference between 2010 Kanye and 2019 Kanye.

The Phoenix Crashes

Then the movie’s real story actually starts, as Nicki Minaj comes in to say:

"You might think you've peeped the scene—you haven't. The real one is far to mean. The watered down, the one you know, was made up centuries ago. They it sound all wack and corny, yes its awful blasted boring. Twisted fiction, sick addiction—well gather round children. Zip it, listen!"

This opening quote from Nicki Minaj gets at the naïveté many people have when it comes to fame. It’s seen as something to covet, but that’s only the sparkly image of fame. The journey to actually achieving fame is long and arduous and can break a man in two. 

But this goes far beyond fame. This quote is actually a play on Roald Dahl’s Cinderella , in which he writes:

"I guess you think you know this story. You don’t. The real one’s much more gory. The phony one, the one you know, Was cooked up years and years ago, And made to sound all soft and sappy Just to keep the children happy."

“Fame” is just the framing device because that’s what’s consumed Kanye from the very beginning. But I think it extends to what each person pours their heart and soul into. And Kanye’s true passion is for music, for art, for creating something that will inspire people.

This quote has its own context on the album, but in this visual setup, it’s constructing the idea and lore of the Phoenix. In an absolutely breathtaking shot, Kanye zooms in on the Phoenix falling towards earth. Then as the camera pulls back, outer space and all the stars remain still, but the clouds are moving and whirling about at a rapid pace. It creates this ethereal, disorienting effect that something otherworldly is disrupting time and space on earth—and Kanye happens to be driving through the forest in that moment.

So much is being conveyed with that environment. You have the stars set in place, you have something fantastical happening in the sky, you have nature exposed and innocent—and then you have Kanye, housed in his Murcielago. As the camera pans down, we see all of these factors in play, ending with just Kanye’s car bathed in darkness.

For the rest of the movie, you’ll see Earth shrouded by the red sky, almost like this Phoenix’s crash into earth has disrupted everything. Kanye exists in this weird middle space, almost like a purgatory, where he’s caught between the promise of celebrity and the real world.

The Phoenix Questions

When Kanye scoops the Phoenix after her crash, their strange relationship begins. She is naive, and Kanye wants to show her the beauty of his world—but after she discovers how ugly this world can be, she must retreat back into the sky.

And because Kanye doesn’t feel how the Phoenix feels about society—because he feels the pressure to apologize for his actions—he must remain tethered to earth. That tension ends up being there for the entire movie.

The Murcielago Kanye drives almost feels like a coat of armor, an outfit you throw on to give off this impression that you’re well off and successful. But we know Kanye made this album as a response to the world after the Taylor Swift incident. Kanye was perceived as anything but a leader and a caretaker back in 2010—he was the villain, the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz ( Wicked is one of Kanye's favorite musicals, by the way). He was somebody who thought fame would treat him one way, and then discovered how abusive and empty it can be. 

So when you think about the Phoenix's crash into earth this way, it really strips all the heroism and maturity Kanye seemingly shows during their conversations. Visually, the environment becomes something Kanye has no control over. He tries to purport his elitism and knowledge—but really has no idea how to bring this Phoenix into his life because the abuse he takes in this life makes no sense to the Phoenix. 

That’s why the first shot of the movie is also the last, because it depicts those two versions of Kanye. In the beginning, when he’s in his Murcielago, it’s nothing but a false front, something he needs to feel empowered—the final shot reveals an exposed, vulnerable, broken man who actually needed rescuing more than the Phoenix did.

This gets into what the Phoenix symbolically represents. I do see her as her own character, but moreso as a representation of Kanye—both his naïveté about celebrity and his true knowledge of the pains of celebrity. The naive side buys into the lies, but by the end, the logical version of Kanye is able to remove himself from everything and see how troubling his life is.

And the real-life Kanye is sort of stuck in the middle of it all, trying to figure everything out.

That idea of Kanye as this naive, vulnerable person is visually represented when his Murcielago blows up. Sure it looks bad-ass as he walks away from his car carrying the injured phoenix that just crashed into earth—but remember, his car was also his false front. His armor has been removed.

We’ll continue to see this explosion throughout the movie—including at the end of the movie. Another brilliant framing device, Kanye warps what that explosion symbolically represents over and over. At first Kanye positions himself as a wizened mentor, somebody who can guide the Phoenix and teach her the ways of his world.

This gets at the irony of Kanye’s situation. He thinks he’s saying something really meaningful to the Phoenix, so it’s met with this explosion to capture the energy. But that explosion happened when Kanye lost his Murcielago. And if the Phoenix is a representation of Kanye, then this is less of a revelatory moment for the naive version of Kanye and more of a revealing moment that exposes that Kanye has lost his shield.

This highlights the tension between the phoenix and Kanye. Kanye is seemingly someone who has it figured out, but the Phoenix will later expose that he’s doomed in this world—if he doesn’t burn like she does, he’ll turn to stone.

The Phoenix Burns

With this framing, the middle portion of the movie makes sense. Kanye wants to integrate the Phoenix into his world, so he plays her his song "Power"; takes her to a Michael Jackson parade and plays "All of the Lights"; and hires a troupe of ballet dancers to dance alongside his live performance of "Runaway". 

But the Phoenix, who really represents Kanye’s inner conscious, sees that Kanye is selling himself short by becoming part of the groupthink. His art can’t fully exist when he’s not truly being himself—which is where we get into Kanye in 2019.

Back in 2010, his music was a reaction to something, as opposed to dictating the zeitgeist. In the film, he dressed in white and matches the elite guests at his dinner. But those people looked down on Kanye for bringing his Phoenix friend—who really represents Kanye's inner conscious who knows Kanye isn't being his true self—to the dinner. They don’t jump up and dance to his art like the Phoenix does when he plays "Power", but instead politely clap when he plays "Runaway".

Kanye has put himself in a box, acting in the way everybody wants him to act—the opposite of what Kanye set out to do early in his career. And if the Phoenix is a representation of that childlike innocence, then she recognizes that Kanye has entirely abandoned what had inspired so many people for so many years.

And this gets into the final quote of the film that feels like it was written by Kanye in 2019:

"Do you know what I hate most about your world? Anything that is different, you try to change. You try to tear it down. You rip the wings off the phoenix and they turn to stone. And if I don’t burn, I will turn to stone. If I don’t burn, I can’t go back to my world.”

I’d like to think that Kanye, as an artist, sees the creation when he looks at the statue. He thinks about the craftsmanship of the artist and their intention with their art.

But he’s also consumed by what those artists represent now, as opposed to what they represented when they were alive. When living, those artists were committed to their art and what it meant to people. No matter what kind of flack or criticisms they received, no matter how wrong they were about something, they remained true to themselves. To Kanye, it's not about being wrong or right—it's about empowering people to not shy away from their true selves.

Far in the future, great artists will become statues. They’ll be loved and adored and discussed and written about. The motivation they give people in the present will continue to provide motivation for centuries to come. In this way, statues becomes representation of how we revere our artists once they’re long dead and gone, as opposed to appreciating them and understanding them while they’re still on Earth.

This is how the world feels about Kanye—and Kanye allowed that to warp his mindset in 2010. He allowed himself to cave to peer pressure and produce an album that made people adore him again.

But what he wasn't thinking about was what was best for his legacy—and what’s best for your legacy is staying true to yourself, creating art that is the most honest representation of yourself.

The inner part of Kanye—the Phoenix—understood all of this. That side of Kanye knew is was OK to be wrong, to learn from your mistakes, to fully put yourself out there even when you're told not to.

But the Kanye we saw in 2010 wasn’t ready to accept that.

And that’s really what we’re seeing in that final scene of the film. Kanye is running away from his judgement day, and running towards the Phoenix. He doesn’t want to be crucified by the public, but he also isn’t ready to burn. He existed in a purgatory where he created My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy , but would soon graduate into the next phase—soon, he would burn.

But in 2010, he was simply lost in this world.

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Guest Essay

Blacks and Jews, Again

By Michael Eric Dyson

Mr. Dyson ( @MichaelEDyson ) is a professor at Vanderbilt University and the author of “Entertaining Race: Performing Blackness in America.”

“What effective measures will the collective Negro community take against the vicious antisemitism?” Rabbi Everett Gendler shared this question with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a meeting of the Rabbinical Assembly in 1968, 10 days before King was murdered.

Nearly 55 years later, the actions of two iconic Black figures demand that we ask a version of this question again. Ye, the hip-hop artist and fashion designer formerly known as Kanye West, has unleashed a rash of antisemitic tirades, and the Brooklyn Nets basketball superstar Kyrie Irving posted on social media a link to a documentary laden with antisemitic views.

The actions of Ye and Irving bring spent tropes of Jewish control to the surface. Their provocations also compel us to grapple with sometimes conflicting Jewish and Black views of race and privilege and how the suffering of the communities shapes their identities and fuels their fight against bigotry. It is painful and a bit embarrassing to admit that African Americans and Jews have, for one reason or another, competed, quarreled and jostled with each other to gain attention and empathy for our struggles and the injustices we confront.

None of that can blunt an abiding truth: We are, after all, old friends and lovers, sometimes rivals, with all the affection and bitterness such a relationship evokes. Black antisemitism is real; so is Jewish racism, from the horrendous bigotry of white Jews against Black Jews to the profoundly anti-Black statements of David Horowitz, who called Barack Obama “an evil man” and “an anti-American radical.”

But here we are, together, in the same boat, as fierce waves of hate threaten to sink our vessels in the ocean of American opportunity. To shift metaphors: We should remember the ways that our communities have historically passed the baton to each other in the long relay for justice. Until we see antisemitism as a toxic species of the white supremacy that threatens Black security and democracy’s future, none of us are truly safe.

Ye’s vitriol spilled onto social media when he posted a screenshot of texts exchanged with the rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, accusing Diddy of being controlled by Jews. Ye threatened to use Combs “as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me.” Ye then also posted that when he awakened, he was “going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.”

Ye’s statements may seem to have come out of nowhere, but they draw from a deeper vein of private belief and barely suppressed sentiment. Ye’s fame and enormous platform connect his newly surfaced prejudice to nameless figures who bow daily at the altar of hatred of the other.

Other antisemites see in Ye’s expression a cynical validation of their hateful conspiracies. A few days after one of Ye’s inglorious outbursts, a hate group hung a banner over a Los Angeles overpass that said , “Kanye is right about the Jews.” Ye’s despicable comments offered well-established bigots fresh currency as they poured old racism into his new rhetorical wineskins.

Although Irving didn’t directly utter antisemitic sentiments, he endorsed a film that did. The player shared without comment a link to “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” a film rife with antisemitic conspiracy theories, among them that many famous Jews were Satan worshipers and that the Holocaust was a hoax.

When he was confronted with the film’s ugly untruths, Irving claimed he was no bigot and that he sought “to learn from all walks of life and religions.” After he was challenged by a reporter, he said he wasn’t promoting the film, but he concluded, “I can post whatever I want.”

Irving’s stubborn refusal to apologize led to an indefinite suspension by the Brooklyn Nets, a belated apology and a meeting with Adam Silver, the commissioner of the N.B.A. After their conversation, Silver said that in over a decade of association with Irving, “I’ve never heard an antisemitic word from him or, frankly, hate directed at any group.” But Silver added, underscoring an essential point, “Whether or not he is antisemitic is not relevant to the damage caused by the posting of hateful content.” Part of the damage, which is not discussed enough, is that Ye and Irving have encouraged those who harbor deep animosity toward Jews, glimpsed as Ye cheered Irving on in an Instagram post, “There’s some real ones still here.”

The film Irving posted about referred in part to a Black religious body called the Black Hebrew Israelites, a movement that traces back to the late 1800s and preaches that Black folk are descended from the ancient Israelites. When Irving in a news conference declared, “I cannot be antisemitic if I know where I come from,” suggesting that he agrees with Black people who view themselves as authentic Jews, he ignored how, just as Black people can be anti-Black, Jews can be antisemitic.

King said in response to Rabbi Gendler that Black antisemitism was largely a Northern ghetto experience, driven by the harsh contrast between Jews as the “most consistent and trusted ally in the struggle for justice” and Jews as “the owner of the store around the corner where he pays more for what he gets” and landlords who charge “a color tax.” Still, King condemned “the irrational statements” that grow from such encounters and concluded that “the only answer to this is for all people to condemn injustice wherever it exists.”

No one who has heard the Black Hebrew Israelites on big-city street corners with megaphones in hand can deny the racial trauma they cantankerously amplify or ignore the Black suffering, from slavery to the present day, from which they desperately seek relief. Nor can we overlook the hateful sentiments and relentless stream of antisemitic rhetoric that fall obscenely from their lips.

Sitting right alongside varieties of Black antisemitism is a redemptive variety of philosemitism that can only be called Jew envy. I have heard such envy in barbershops, pool halls, churches and clubs across the nation. Black folk often praise Jews — for their unity and, above all, for their ability as a people who account for less than 2.5 percent of the U.S. population to successfully make their way in the world with perceived entrepreneurial success and cerebral accomplishments that many Black folk admire and covet.

Jewish unity is likely more myth than fact; Jews, after all, have competing factions, just as African Americans do. Some are conservative, some liberal, some Orthodox, some traditional, some postmodern. Whatever wealth, privilege and influence Jews have built, there is also a history of persecution and the generational trauma carried by the families of Holocaust victims and survivors. And relentless antisemitic attacks have had an impact on all Jews, up to the present day. All Jews, regardless of wealth, are threatened by the vicious antisemitism that has been spread in dangerous networks of white supremacy.

The relation of African Americans to Jews cannot be divorced from the pervasive glow and allure and privilege of whiteness. The fact that most Jews are white-eligible and African Americans are white-excluded creates tensions between African Americans and many Jews that have less to do with the cultural conflicts between the groups than with the meaning of Blackness and whiteness in America.

Many Black folks claimed that Ye went unscathed when he made anti-Black statements — stating that slavery was a choice, sporting a “White lives matter” T-shirt — but the moment he let loose a flurry of antisemitic screeds, he got the hook and paid a huge economic price.

Those who make such clumsy comparisons are drawing faulty parallels. They are missing a rule of thumb that applies to Latinos, Asians, Indigenous people, Jews and most other groups: If you are inside the community, you can take far more liberties than outsiders can. Black folk can say the N-word; folk who are not Black cannot. Black folk can say things about each other, our culture, our habits and dispositions, our values and visions and our virtues and vices, but those outside our communities dare not say them.

Saying harsh things about another culture is a dicey undertaking. In fact, white folk and other non-Black people who might have weighed in on Ye’s noxious anti-Blackness may have been discouraged from doing so by the very Black folk who found Ye’s views offensive. There is a dictum we all operate under: I can talk bad about my mother or brother, but you had better not. By that standard, Ye’s anti-Blackness should have been vigorously challenged by Black folk. To be sure, few Black folk are in a position to hold him to account, other than through critical public commentary or the highly problematic channels of cancel culture.

When Ye flicked verbal jabs at Jews, though, he was using his considerable visibility to pummel another population that has also endured considerable oppression. He was guilty of the very influence peddling and abuse of power he claimed he had suffered at the hands of Jews.

Ye’s Blackness could not rescue him, especially when he made the specious claim that, after all, he was punching up at the all-powerful and controlling Jews who were attempting to make his life hell. Ye met his match on the battlefield of symbolic politics and racial dispute: The people he attacked had just as much cultural cachet as Black folk do, because they, too, survived trouble, terror and trauma. His Blackness offered no shield from the undoing he faced for recklessly assaulting another group of people whose suffering had inspired the sorrow songs of his own people more than a century earlier.

Ye, Irving and the rest of us would do well to remember that African Americans and Jews are passengers on the same ship facing the ferocious headwinds of bigotry and hatred. The author and psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon said he learned to be “responsible in my body and soul for the fate reserved for my brother,” understanding that “the antisemite is inevitably a Negrophobe.” That is a lesson we should all learn.

Michael Eric Dyson ( @MichaelEDyson ) is a professor at Vanderbilt University and the author of “Entertaining Race: Performing Blackness in America.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Kanye West sued on claims of sexual harassment and wrongful termination by former assistant 

Lauren Pisciotta is also suing Ye for claims of fraud, breach of contract, unpaid wages, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West , is being sued by his former assistant Lauren Pisciotta, who is accusing him of sexual harassment, breach of contract, and wrongful termination, according to court documents obtained by Entertainment Weekly.

In the complaint, Pisciotta details disturbing encounters with West, who allegedly masturbated in front of her in addition to sending multiple, explicit text messages. 

Pisciotta claims that after collaborating with West on his Yeezy women’s fashion line and three tracks on his Donda album , the rapper hired her as his “Executive Assistant/Personal Assistant” in 2021, and offered her an annual salary of $1 million on the condition that she be available to him “24-7.” Prior to accepting the position, Pisciotta claimed she was making $1 million annually from her work on OnlyFans and various other social media platforms. 

She said that while West initially had no objection to her OnlyFans account, he allegedly stated in 2022 that he wanted her to be “God like” and asked her to delete her account in exchange for $1 million. Pisciotta accepted but claims that West never paid her "as promised." She also alleges that after quitting OnlyFans, she received a barrage of explicit phone calls and text messages from West. 

Kevin Mazur/Getty

The complaint cites several of the messages, including one where West allegedly wrote, “See my problem is I be wanting to f--- but then after I f--- I want a girl to tell me how hard they been f----- while I’m f------ them,” before adding “Then I want her to cheat on me.”

Pisciotta also alleged the West was “fixated on the penis size” of her boyfriends and sent her videos of himself having sex with a model. In another message, West allegedly asked Pisciotta, “Is my dick racist?” and adds, “I’m going to stare at pictures of white woman with black asses and beat the shit out of my racist dick.”

Pisciotta also claimed that West would use work-related calls to masturbate while on the phone with her. The complaint also outlines an incident that allegedly took place during an overnight flight to Paris, where several other Yeezy employees were present. Pisciotta claimed that West asked to talk to her in his room, where he allegedly shut the door and masturbated in front of her.

Pisciotta is also suing West and his affiliated Yeezy companies for allegations of fraud, unpaid wages, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The complaint states that Pisciotta was promoted to Chief of Staff for his various companies in September 2022 and told that she would receive an additional $3 million for her promotion. She claims that she was instead fired the following month and allegedly offered a $3 million severance package, which she accepted but did not receive.

In an emailed statement, a legal representative for West called Pisciotta's allegations "baseless" and claims Pisciotta "pursued [West] sexually to coerce employment and other material benefits, then engaged in blackmail and extortion when her advances were rejected."

The legal rep also claims Pisciotta stole West's cell phone "in an attempt to destroy phone records that would contradict her claims, all of which have been preserved."

"She was terminated for being unqualified, demanding unreasonable sums of money (including a $4 million annual salary) and numerous documented incidents of her lascivious, unhinged conduct," the statement alleges, adding that Pisciotta is also accused of sending West unsolicited nudes and "twerking in the office during business hours."

As of late, West has frequently been embroiled in legal trouble. Earlier this year, a former employee of the rapper’s Donda Academy and Yeezy fashion brand filed a lawsuit accusing him of racism, homophobia, antisemitism, and harassment against both the school's students and employees. The plaintiff, Trevor Phillips, alleges that he was sexually harassed by West, repeatedly abused and humiliated in front of other employees and staff, and was never paid termination or severance after Donda Academy shut down. In 2023, a construction consultant who claims to have worked on remodeling West’s Malibu mansion sued the superstar over alleged dangerous working conditions and unpaid wages.

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Kanye west responds to sexual harassment allegations.

The rapper strongly denied accusations by his former personal assistant after she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him this week. Lauren Pisciotta, 35, also accused Kanye, 46, of wrongful termination of her employment, as well as breach of contract. "In response to these baseless allegations, Ye will be filing a lawsuit against Ms. Pisciotta, who actively pursued him sexually to coerce employment and other material benefits, then engaged in blackmail and extortion when her advances were rejected," a legal representative for the Runaway artist told TMZ in a statement.

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Kanye West Accuses Former Personal Assistant of 'Blackmail and Extortion' After She Files Complaint Against Him

In a new statement, a legal representative for the rapper responded to his ex-assistant claims of being subjected to explicit texts, photos, videos and phone calls

Rachpoot/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

• A legal representative for Kanye West has responded on behalf of the rapper after a lawsuit was filed against him
• The court complaint filed by the musician's ex-assistant alleges sexual harassment and a hostile work environment
• West's former personal assistant also claims she was subjected to explicit texts, pornographic photos, videos and phone calls before being fired in 2022

Kanye West is now accusing his ex-assistant of “blackmail and extortion” after a lawsuit was filed against him earlier this week alleging sexual harassment and a hostile work environment.

A complaint obtained by PEOPLE stated that West’s former personal assistant, Lauren Pisciotta — who says she also worked as an executive for the rapper’s various companies — is suing him after she was allegedly subjected to explicit texts, pornographic photos, videos and phone calls before being “wrongfully terminated.” She’s currently seeking compensation for her time of employment, along with breach of contract. 

In a new statement shared with PEOPLE, a representative for West claimed the rapper, 46, is filing his own lawsuit against his ex-employee for making “baseless allegations” against him and making “demands” of “$50 [million] in last week's frivolous filing.” Court records do not show that West has filed a lawsuit against Pisciotta at this time.

Arnold Jerocki/Getty

A statement from West’s legal representative claimed Pisciotta was “terminated for being unqualified” and “demanding unreasonable sums of money (including a $4 million annual salary).” The statement also alleged that prior to her termination, Pisciotta “stole [West’s] cell phone in an attempt to destroy phone records.”

Additionally, it alleged that Pisciotta “used sexual coercion in an attempt to demand not only money but material items, namely Hermes Birkin bags, a Lamborghini” and “plastic surgery.”

“Such behavior is entirely inconsistent with someone who claims to have been sexually harassed or experienced a hostile work environment,” West’s representative wrote in the statement. “It is evident that Ms. Pisciotta leveraged her association with Ye and his company, and her proximity to him, to seek material gains, clout and employment through inappropriate means.”

Pisciotta did not immediately return PEOPLE's request for comment, nor did Pisciotta's attorney.

Scott Dudelson/FilmMagic

In Pisciotta’s lawsuit, she claimed that West initially hired her in July 2021 to work on his Yeezy women’s fashion line and that he collaborated with her on three songs for his Donda album. She alleged that West then hired her as his personal assistant, after which they “agreed on a salary” of $1 million on the condition that she was available “24” hours a day and “seven” days a week, which she accepted. 

Per the complaint, Pisciotta — an Instagram model with over 1 million followers — said she also worked as an OnlyFans model during that time.

After a year of working as West’s assistant, she claimed that the “Vultures” rapper told her he wanted her to be "God like" and asked that she delete her OnlyFans account, allegedly promising to pay her an additional $1 million to make up for her loss in income if she did so. According to the lawsuit, she agreed.

However, soon after closing her account, Pisciotta claimed that West began sending her vulgar messages in which he explicitly described sexual acts that he wanted to engage in, along with pornographic photos and videos. 

She also alleged that West would masturbate while he had phone conversations with her, asked her questions about her boyfriends’ penis sizes, and in one instance, asked that she remove her cardigan in the office because it “was covering too much.” 

Dave Kotinsky/Getty

In another incident detailed in the filing, Pisciotta claimed that the Life of Pablo musician once trapped her in a private room on his plane and pleasured himself in front of her. 

After over a year of working for West, Pisciotta said she was eventually promoted to Chief of Staff of his various companies in September 2022, which came with a $4 million salary. However, she claimed the rapper fired her a month later. Pisciotta claimed she was offered $3 million in severance pay but allegedly never received it. 

In addition to wrongful termination, Pisciotta is also suing West and his Yeezy businesses for fraud, unpaid wages and intentional infliction of emotional distress, per the court complaint. 

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Embattled rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, whose Donda Academy was sued in April for workplace abuses, is facing a slew of disturbing new allegations. This time the lawsuit comes from a woman claiming she was his personal assistant.

Lauren Pisciotta, an Instagram and OnlyFans model, said she worked for the “Famous” rap star, 46, from July 2021 to October 2022. She alleges she was subjected to multiple forms of sexual harassment and fleeced out of a “promised” $4-million salary for her work on various Yeezy brands, according to legal documents reviewed by The Times.

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The lawsuit, filed Monday by Pisciotta’s attorney in Los Angeles County Superior Court, accuses his businesses of wrongful termination, gender discrimination, fraud and intentional infliction of emotional and physical stress, among other misconduct.

A legal representative for West told The Times in a statement that the rapper intends to filed a counterclaim against Pisciotta over her “baseless allegations.” The rep also accused Pisciotta of coercion, blackmail and extortion.

Pisciotta’s attorney did not respond immediately to The Times’ request for comment.

The complaint describes Pisciotta, 35, as a music industry veteran with more than 15 years of experience in management, A&R and marketing. Before accepting a $1-million annual salary to be Ye’s full-time personal assistant in July 2021, she worked with the rapper on his Yeezy clothing line and 2021 album “Donda.”

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Pisciotta’s lawsuit accuses Ye of “masturbating in front of Plaintiff” and “over-sharing intimate sexual details, photos and videos of sex acts,” some of which allegedly involved Instagram models and “current and former Yeezy, LLC employees and various men and women.” In November 2022, a Rolling Stone report detailed similar allegations that the Grammy winner had “played pornography to Yeezy staff in meetings.”

The 25-page complaint details multiple alleged instances of “nonconsenual, offensive, unwanted, unsolicited and unwelcomed unlawful acts” by Ye, including explicit text exchanges where he discusses sexual fantasies and requests that Pisciotta obtain and carry sexual-enhancement drugs for his convenience. In one alleged exchange, Ye messaged Pisciotta to ask whether his genitals were “racist.”

“This f— racist d— of mine ... needs to be beaten till it can’t be racist no more,” read a text from Ye, the lawsuit said. “This ain’t right bro after 400 years.”

Several pages of the lawsuit also detail the sexual memes, photos of naked models, videos of women performing oral sex on Ye and videos of his sexual encounters that the rapper allegedly sent to Pisciotta. The Instagram model also alleges Ye propositioned her for sex multiple times during her tenure (she denied his advances), “would masturbate” during phone conversations she thought were business calls and was “particularly fixated on the penis size” of her current and past romantic partners.

The suit says Pisciotta did not “welcome or encourage” Ye’s “offensive, demeaning, embarrassing and abuse behavior” and was focused on carrying out her duties as a personal assistant in a manner “as professional as possible.”

The later portion of Pisciotta’s lawsuit alleges that the employees of Ye’s Yeezy brands — listed as co-defendants — “engaged in a systematic, severe and persuasive and offensive campaign of unlawful harassment based on [Pisciotta’s] sex, including sexual harassment.”

More than a year after starting as West’s personal assistant, in September 2022, Pisciotta was offered a promotion to Yeezy’s chief of staff, the lawsuit says. With that change in title also came the promise of a $3-million raise — bringing Pisciotta’s total annual salary to $4 million. After accepting the offer, Pisciotta was told in October 2022 that she would receive the $3-million raise in a lump sum, but “defendant, however, did not pay ... as promised” after multiple attempts to collect, she alleges. In late October, West and his businesses fired Pisciotta — a reason was not disclosed in the lawsuit — and she was offered $3 million in severance. Then they allegedly “reneged on their commitment to pay the severance.”

After she parted ways with the Yeezy brands, Pisciotta said West’s “obsession” with her persisted, and she alleged he moved into the building where she lived. Shortly after her termination, Pisciotta returned to West and his businesses to provide “additional services,” again with the prospect of getting paid, but allegedly never received payment.

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“As a result of defendant’s breach of agreements, plaintiff has been damaged in the sum of at least $4,000,000,” the lawsuit said.

Pisciotta alleges that because of West and his business’ retaliation, she “suffered and continues to suffer damages” in the form of lost wages and employment benefits and emotional and physical distress. The lawsuit said Pisciotta filed a complaint last week with California’s Civil Rights Department accusing Yeezy brands of “discrimination, harassment, retaliation” and other employment violations. She is seeking an unspecified amount of damages, legal fees and “such other and further relief the court may deem proper.”

The statement from West’s legal representative also accused Pisciotta of stealing the rapper’s phone to “destroy phone records” in order to benefit her claims and said she was terminated for “being unqualified, demanding unreasonable sums of money (including a $4 million annual salary) and numerous documented incidents of her lascivious, unhinged conduct.”

The rapper also accused Pisciotta of sending Ye “unsolicited nude images” as sexual coercion to demand material items including a luxury bag and a Lamborghini.

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“Such behavior is entirely inconsistent with someone who claims to be have been sexually harassed or experienced a hostile work environment,” the statement continued. “It is evident that Ms. Pisciotta leveraged her association with Ye and his company, and her proximity to him, to seek material gains, clout, and employment through inappropriate means.”

The statement added, “Her initial attempt at a lawsuit for unlawful termination gained no media traction, leading her to fabricate headlines following threats of blackmail and extortion.”

The latest of Ye’s legal troubles comes after he quickly fell out of public favor in late 2022 for his antisemitic rants . Amid his controversial tirades, several businesses including agency CAA, Gap and Adidas cut ties with the rapper.

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Alexandra Del Rosario is an entertainment reporter on the Los Angeles Times Fast Break Desk. Before The Times, she was a television reporter at Deadline Hollywood, where she first served as an associate editor. She has written about a wide range of topics including TV ratings, casting and development, video games and AAPI representation. Del Rosario is a UCLA graduate and also worked at the Hollywood Reporter and TheWrap.

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Ye Hit With Sexual Harassment Lawsuit From Former Assistant

The lawsuit includes pages of graphic texts Ye allegedly sent to Lauren Pisciotta, who says she faced a "systematic" onslaught of sexual harassment from the rapper.

By Bill Donahue

Bill Donahue

Ye (formerly Kanye West ) is facing a lawsuit from his former assistant over allegations of sexual harassment and wrongful termination, including claims that he masturbated in front of her.

Cassie Ventura's Friend Tiffany Red Says 'Everybody Around' Diddy 'Was Afraid of Him': Watch

Pisciotta says Ye frequently sent her sexually explicit texts, including photos and videos of him having sex with other women, and that he repeatedly propositioned her for sex.

“Defendant would often tell plaintiff that he always wanted to have sex with her, and that he held these feelings for a very long time,” Pisciotta’s lawyers write. “Defendant also falsely boasted that he had sex with plaintiff or would insinuate to his friends, business partners and music and fashion collaborators that he was having sex with plaintiff.”

In one particularly graphic allegation, Pisciotta claims that Ye locked her in a room during a private jet flight and laid down in a bed in front of her: “Plaintiff sat in a chair across from defendant; he masturbated under the covers until he fell asleep. Plaintiff was unable to leave as the door had locked and jammed behind her.”

In a response statement to Billboard on Tuesday, a legal rep for Ye denied the lawsuit’s allegations and said the star would be bringing his own case against Pisciotta: “In response to these baseless allegations, Ye will be filing a lawsuit against Ms. Pisciotta, who actively pursued him sexually to coerce employment and other material benefits, then engaged in blackmail and extortion when her advances were rejected.”

According to the lawsuit, Ye hired Pisciotta in July 2021 after they met while she was working in connection with his fashion line. She says she agreed to work for him as a “full time employee” in return for a $1 million salary.

At the time she was hired, Pisciotta says she maintained a successful page on OnlyFans – a social media site in which subscribers can pay to access sexually explicit content from individual creators. Pisciotta says the page was generating more than $1 million per year, and Ye “did not have any issue or objection to it” when she was hired.

But a year later, she says Yes told her that he wanted her to be “God like” and asked her to delete the page in return for a promise of a $1 million payment. Though she agreed to do so, her lawyers claim she didn’t see any of that money: “Ye never paid plaintiff as promised.”

Pisciotta’s lawsuit came with pages of texts allegedly sent by Ye, many of them sexually graphic. In one, he allegedly sent a video of him having sex and then asked “What u think of this vid.” In another, he referenced an earlier outing at a bowling alley: “I just thinking back to the bowling alley thinking of what the headline could have been,” the rapper wrote in one of the alleged texts. “Ye arrested for fucking the shit out of his assistant on the bowling alley floor.”

In another incident, the lawsuit says Ye told a male guest that he could have sex with Pisciotta in exchange for allowing Ye to have sex with another woman.

In October 2022, Pisciotta says she was terminated, shortly after she had been promoted to chief of staff and offered a huge raise. Though she was allegedly offered a $3 million severance payment, she claims Ye and his companies later “reneged on their commitment to pay the severance.”

In technical terms, the lawsuit includes claims of breach of contract, wrongful termination, sexual harassment, retaliation, gender discrimination, fraud and various other employment law violations.

In Tuesday’s response statement, Ye’s legal rep said that Pisciotta had been terminated “for being unqualified, demanding unreasonable sums of money” and for “numerous documented incidents of her lascivious, unhinged conduct” during her employment: “It is evident that Ms. Pisciotta leveraged her association with Ye and his company, and her proximity to him, to seek material gains, clout, and employment through inappropriate means.”

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Kanye West says he will counter-sue former assistant claiming she ‘pursued him sexually’ for blackmail

Kanye West has issued a lengthy response to the lawsuit from his former assistant who is suing him for sexual harassment and wrongful termination .

The disgraced rapper and fashion mogul, 46, is being sued by Lauren Pisciotta, 35, who says she was hired as West’s “Executive Assistant/Personal Assistant” in 2021 with an annual salary of $1m (£781,450).

She says West, who legally changed his name to Ye in 2021, bombarded her with explicit messages and, in one incident, masturbated in front of her after offering her $1m to delete her OnlyFans account in 2022.

In a statement to The Independent , Ye’s legal representative says they are preparing a countersuit.

“In response to these baseless allegations, Ye will be filing a lawsuit against Ms. Pisciotta, who actively pursued him sexually to coerce employment and other material benefits, then engaged in blackmail and extortion when her advances were rejected,” the statement read.

West’s team said she was terminated for being unqualified for the position and demanding unreasonable sums of money, allegedly asking for a $4 million annual salary. They also accused her of “lascivious, unhinged conduct.”

The rapper’s team also said she had “demanded money and material items, namely Hermes Birkin bags, a Lamborghini and an endless quest for plastic surgery.”

Pisciotta said in her lawsuit that she had worked in the music industry for 15 years prior to being hired by West, and had collaborated with him on season one of his Yeezy women’s fashion line. She alleges she also contributed toward three songs on his album Donda , which was released in 2021.

In the lawsuit, Pisciotta said she was making an additional $1m from OnlyFans , the subscriber platform that hosts predominantly adult content, before West asked her to delete it.

Pisciotta has claimed that West would call her under the guise of discussing work-related matters only then to masturbate while on the phone with her.

Another incident allegedly saw West lock Pisciotta in a room with him during a flight to Paris, claiming that he needed to talk to her, before lying down on his bed and masturbating under the covers until he fell asleep while she sat in a chair across from him.

Pisciotta said in the lawsuit that she was promoted to Chief of Staff for West’s various companies around September 2022 and that she was told that she would receive an additional $3m (£2.3m). However, the following month, she claimed that she was fired and offered a $3m severance package, which she did not receive.

She is suing West for sexual harassment, breach of contract and wrongful termination, and is also suing West and his affiliated Yeezy companies for fraud, unpaid wages, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

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Kanye West Denies ‘Baseless’ Sexual Harassment Allegations Made by Former Assistant

Kanye West vehemently denied the sexual harassment allegations made by his former assistant, Lauren Pisciotta .

According to a statement made via West’s lawyers to Page Six on Tuesday, June 4, the rapper, 46, claimed that Pisciotta attempted to pursue “him sexually to coerce employment and other material benefits” and then allegedly blackmailed him when “her advances were rejected.”

“In response to these baseless allegations, Ye will be filing a lawsuit against Ms. Pisciotta,” the statement read. “Prior to her termination as an assistant, Ms. Pisciotta stole his cell phone in an attempt to destroy phone records that would contradict her claims, all of which have been preserved.”

West claimed that Pisciotta was “terminated for being unqualified” and for “demanding unreasonable sums of money” which was allegedly a salary of $4 million, in addition to “lascivious, unhinged conduct.”

Related: Hollywood's Sexual Misconduct Scandals

“Pisciotta offered Ye sex on his birthday to which he declined, sent Ye unsolicited nude images, sexual narratives and was seen twerking in the office during business hours,” West’s lawyers alleged.

West also alleged that Pisciotta tried to sexually coerce him to pay for some Hermès Birkin bags, a Lamborghini and plastic surgery. His legal team claimed that Pisciotta’s behavior is “entirely inconsistent with someone who claims to have been sexually harassed or experienced a hostile work environment” and that she is seeking out “material gains, clout and employment through inappropriate means.”

Us Weekly confirmed on Monday, June 3, that Pisciotta filed a lawsuit against West for breach of contract, sexual harassment, wrongful termination and a hostile work environment.

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Related: Every Accusation Made Against Kanye West’s Donda Academy

In the filing, Pisciotta said that she was hired by West to work on his Yeezy fashion line. She was previously an OnlyFans model and she claimed she left the platform after West asked her to do so and promised to match her compensation, which was allegedly $1 million per year. Pisciotta alleged that West started to sexually harass her via text messages and phone calls after she left OnlyFans.

“See my problem is I be wanting to f–k but then after I f–k I want a girl to tell me how hard they been f–ked while I’m f–king them,” one of West’s alleged messages read per the filing. “Then I want her to cheat on me.”

She was later promoted to West’s Chief of Staff and was reportedly earning a $4 million salary. Pisciotta was fired in October 2022 and was offered $3 million in severance but has not received it, despite accepting the package.

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