Kanye West: Visionary or Lunatic?

Kanye West has been a pop-culture and social media sensation for the better part of a decade, but some still question his vision.

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Kyle Whitely

Sequoit students enjoy Kanye West’s music every day. Since his musical style and range is so large, many people believe that there is a Kanye song for every occasion.

Kanye West has been no stranger to controversy over the course of the last decade; in the last ten years, the hip-hop artist has come out with his own line of clothing and shoes, interrupted Taylor swift on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009 and declared himself to be $53 million in debt.

Kanye has also made huge moves with his music, blowing up in the mid 2000s with his albums The College Dropout (2004) and Late Registration (2005). West continued to tone his sound and make more developed music. His aggressive rapping style and heartfelt lyrics have seen him rise up the charts and stay there. He collaborated with Jay-Z in 2011 on the the dual album, Watch The Throne.

“Kanye really hit a high point in his music from the late 2000s and early 2010s,” senior Dylan Rathbun said. “With Graduation (2007), My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010) and Watch The Throne (2011), he killed it. Those albums were very well produced and I find myself going back to them often.”

In 2013, West released Yeezus, which allowed him to cement himself as a superstar in the music industry. Considered by some to be a stray away from his usual lyrical content, the album focusing more on his image, rather than story telling about his home life and the trials of growing up in Chicago.

After Yeezus and the world tour following, West went on a musical hiatus. In late 2015, he announced his new project, which would eventually be titled The Life of Pablo (2016). This project would fall under more controversy as it endured public name changes to tracklistings and the album as a whole.

On Feb. 14, 2016, The Life of Pablo was released exclusively on Tidal, a streaming service owned by Jay-Z. This would not be the final version of the album as West would make many changes; in April, it was released digitally and the “final version” of the album was noticeably different from initial release.

“I listened to both versions and the final cut is so much better than the Tidal version,” junior Peter Gross said. “The mixing and production is just plain bad on the initial release. There were blatant errors and I really wish I had not spent the $20 subscription fee to listen.”

West has had a long history with controversy; between 2009’s Taylor Swift incident, to using the Confederate flag on his clothing and Twitter rants to his inclusion of Jesus in his Yeezus tour, he has been lambasted in the media and public eye for years. Kanye’s friend and self proclaimed ‘little brother’ Chance Bennet (known by his stage name, Chance the Rapper) has said that West does even weirder things in private.

I don’t think I ever wanted to be like Kanye in personality,” Bennett said to factmag.com. “I’m rationalizing everything that he does, but I can’t say that in the same position I would do the same things. Being around Kanye, [he] says crazier [things] in private than he does in public, which is hard to believe because he says the craziest things in public.”

No matter what the future holds for Kanye, who turns 40 years old in June, it will most likely be in the public eye. Whether he calms down or continues to live his abrasive, wildly popular life, he will be a staple of both the music and tabloid industries for years to come.