November 21, 2016

Kanye West's rant takes political discourse south

editor:	Gurmeet Singh

I like Kanye West. I think his music is some of the most interesting and adventurous commercial hip-hop and rap available, anywhere. Yeezus alone is enough to cement his position in pop-culture’s (very fluid) canon; Not just for its innovative sound (which Lou Reed praised), but also because of the complex meshing of sincere black-American-history with the current image of black-American-rapper-debauchery.

The fact that West often acts like a complete moron, therefore, is a source of some disappointment to me. I admit it may not be important that I feel this disappointment (after all, in the context of pop culture, what is one consumer’s disappointment? And what, indeed, have I got to be disappointed by?), however, it probably is indicative of a desire for public figures to be recognized as being ‘good’ – liking or admiring a foolish person would mean that one is also foolish, after all.

West walked out on a gig on Saturday, following a 15 minute rant that rambled about music, radio, Beyonce, Frank Ocean and a lot else besides. It follows another rant in a gig last week where he demanded America stopped focussing on racism, and stated that he would have voted for Donald Trump.

The greater issue is however how this ranting, raving celebrity nonsense relates to the wider context of ranting, raving political nonsense. It might be a useful way to characterise Trump’s ascendency and political agenda as one long rant against human rights, climate change and civil decency: Stop with your liberal wavering and prevaricating, stop with all that rounded answer nonsense, listen to what I have to say. Furthermore, it might also be interesting to think about what we expect from our popular culture, which seems more and more to be full of demands that our attention be taken to the subject speaking, for no other reason than they are speaking. Finally, it might be worthwhile to ask, seriously, what is going wrong in our society when when a ranter has been elected to the most powerful office in the world, and where our failure lies in communicating the value of rights and justice, not merely in instances of aggression, trespass or violence, to people who basically just get annoyed that these things are topics of discussion in the first place, and therefore become things to rant about, without understanding their inherent value.

The rant against human rights is real. It has force. It is powerful. So are the challenges thrown down to climate change (curiously, ranted that it does not exist). The points I am making are twofold: We have to seriously reconsider what we mean when we discuss rights, so that we are able to understand collectively what a human right is, and its value in a historical sense; And that to fight for the things we believe in – to save civil rights and to fight climate change, we have to see, really, what we are up against: Irrational anger. While there may be strong seams of rational thought propping up the challenges to civil rights, equality and so on, the energy behind this global tide of nativism if certainly without reason and rhyme. A little like Kanye West was at his gig.