Authors note: I, as well as the rest of the Leonardtown Journalism Team, do not support any of the hateful comments being spread by Kanye West. The purpose of this article is to bring students an entertaining and informative article concerning Kanye and how he uses his platform. 

“LOOK! Kanye tweeted!”  Recently, this phrase has been repeated by thousands looking to entertain themselves and their friends.  He has caught the attention of people in a vast array of ways such as through public speaking, Instagram posts, and news outlets. Lastly, Twitter. It may be thought that this trend is new, but it has always been a facet of West. The only issue is that now with widespread social media, we have the opportunity to make our own opinion on his ideals and have many other people on our side with the amount of content being produced concerning him. In today’s age, you can’t go a week without hearing this man’s name and that’s why I’ll enlighten you on knowing that it is not just now he is doing this but, has always done this and what makes this time different than others.

In the year 2004 on November 14th we see Kanye nominated for best new artist, At the American music awards for his debut album, and we see that once he loses to country star Gretchen Wilson, he was outraged by this loss. He comes back with a comment that shook people because they would never expect an artist to give an opinion like this “ I felt like I was definitely robbed, and I refuse to give any politically correct Bulls— a— comment I was the best new artist this year” this comment to people for a loop, as it was something not usual to ever see people that are famous artist holding influence of people at their hands to publicly shame another artist because they lost an award. But Connie does come back and apologizes to Wilson, saying that “ I was way better than that. It was very ignorant.” mind you this happened back in 2004 and it’s no different than an outbreak he might have today.

But let’s take a further look into Mr. West’s passed of his outbursts which led us to 2005 is a year to remember for Kanye it was the first time he went out and spoke his opinion of someone of high standing and he has “No Regrets” about it. He stated, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” This shook the world with this statement and changed how people perceived him. In this first instance of Kanye, having this outbreak really helped us shape his personality more than what we knew from 2005. All we knew is some of his stories through his songs in his first two studio albums, and this little public outburst helped us understand how he really felt. he kind of felt like he was really talking to us as a real person instead of giving us what most celebrities will give us in their vague and broad opinions so that we cannot pinpoint where they stand. 

If we fast forward to the year 2009 on September 13, the MTV video music awards were being held, and this is where one of Mr. West’s most notorious public outbursts occurred. He stormed the stage during Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for the best female video. It makes a bold claim to the crowd that Beyoncé single ladies’ video deserves the award, and this outburst was met with much hate and discouragement to support Kanye anymore even the president at the time Barack Obama had an opinion on Mr. West’s outbursts went as far to call him a “jacks—“

If we go to 2016 In promoting his upcoming album The Life of Pablo, West shared a new single on New Year’s Eve 2015 called “Facts,” in which one of the lyrics asks: “Do anybody feel bad for Bill Cosby? / Did he forget the names just like Steve Harvey?” While the lyrics allude to skepticism about Cosby’s case, West would go on to tweet “BILL COSBY INNOCENT !!!!!!!!!!” without any context, angering fans who took it as West defending the comedian against a tidal wave of sexual assault accusations. 

Then we have the recent events that span from the beginning of September to November. This run of controversial claims made by Kanye has taken the world by storm, causing him to lose multiple deals with many franchises Such as partnerships with Gap, Adidas, etc. Some examples of the claims that he made are that he trashed and attacked all the executives of adidas due to the fact that started to steal some of his artistic designs from his shoes and clothing line too because Gap was recreating his hoodies and selling them at a lower price point. But this wasn’t the leading cause of why he got his endorsement deals taken away. This was caused by his Twitter rants and his anti-Semitic comments on other races.

After evaluating these situations and circumstances that Kanye had put himself in we can conclude that he has always acted like this and nothing has changed he usually issues a statement later claiming that he deeply regrets his actions and is truly sorry for his actions. All we can say is that in the end a lot of us still appreciate his musical genius and love his songs. Eventually, many people will forget what he said and go back to playing his music but there will be those who’ll never forget too and there will be the ones who don’t care what he does at all. What will you do?