Who Is Kanye West?

"I've hurt, I've bled, I've learned. I only want to do good. I am passionate, I am human, I am real."

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I live-tweeted the MTV Video Music Awards last night. To do this, I had to watch them. A few random notes: Chelsea Handler was nigh unwatchable, none of the skits were funny, Deadmau5's popularity is fucking inexplicable, Robyn showing up to do twenty seconds of a dubstepped "Dancing On My Own" remix was fucking awesome and MTV shouldn't have cut to commercial, Justin Bieber should be slowed down 400% all the time, and seeing Linkin Park, N.E.R.D. and Ciera perform throughout the night-- but not at the VMAs-- was really, really weird.




Disguised as a vain awards show, the practical purpose of the VMAs is to act as a pop-culture cotillion. The whole thing can seem ridiculously of-the-moment, with buzz bands popping up, never to be seen from again, but take a look at the past Video of the Year winners and you'll see a list short on one-hit wonders and big on pop icons. It's a bigger barometer of the status of pop culture than many are willing to admit, but its usually pretty clear: if you're a big deal at the VMAs, you either are or will be a big deal outside of the VMAs.

And, you know, for not winning a single moonman over the past two years, Kanye West has been a pretty big deal, both at the VMAs and not.

I've already talked about "I'mma let you finish" on this blog, and it's goddamn ubiquitous now. You saw references to it pop up a lot if you watched the lead-up to the VMAs this year, and you saw a lot more references to it at the 2010 VMAs themselves. From Taylor Swift opening her brand new song-- rumored to be about the incident-- with clips from last year's awards, to Chelsea Handler and Aziz Ansari making jokes about it, from reminders of the President calling him a jackass, to commercials prodding audiences with "What will he do next?" type advertising, there were a lot of reasons to remember-- after let's say six months of quiet-- why the man had to cancel his tour with Lady Gaga, which would have assuredly been the greatest live spectacle ever, and worth whatever price you would've had to pay to see it.

So, what did West do?

This:

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"My music isn't just music, it's medicine."

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I'm not going to sugar coat my opinion: I think West is this generation's most important pop music figure, and maybe its most important pop culture figure. Like the Beatles of his time.

Comparing anyone to the Fab Four is always kind of ridiculous, of course, but there are some interesting parallels. This past year has been a rough one on West, but you have to think that it wasn't anywhere near the post-"Bigger than Jesus" backlash that Lennon and the Beatles went through. His records weren't burned and steamrolled in the streets, instead he dealt with more talk about his ego and an instant-hit Internet meme.

I bring that up because it's important to remember that not even the freaking Beatles got through their career without major controversy, without a major portion of the American public turning on them, without having to appear penitent in front of a mass audience. It's possible to be the biggest thing in pop culture at the moment and have everyone hate you.

And it's different, being the biggest thing in pop culture in 2010 as opposed to 1966. It was possible 44 years ago for one story to dominate people's lives, for one big band to be the big band that people listened to. It was possible to have a central focus on one thing. Pop culture in 2010 is fractured-- because its possible through current technology to limit yourself to your bubble and live your life ignoring everything outside of it-- and its constantly overturning, moving from one new thing to the next-- because in an age of 24 hour news networks and Twitter, focusing on any one thing for two long is a surefire way to be left culturally behind.

So, when I say that Kanye is the biggest pop culture figure, I'm not trying to say he'll have the same cultural impact as the Beatles. He can't. It's too easy to either forget him because of culture's constant overturn or ignore him because of culture's fractious nature. But he has an impact-- music, fashion, Web 2.0-- that is undeniable.

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"In America, they want you to accomplish these great feats, to pull off these David Copperfield-type stunts. You want me to be great, but you don't ever want me to say I'm great?"

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The other reason why West is important to current pop culture is because of what kind of public figure he is. He is loud and obnoxious, sure, but he's also completely honest and unabashed. Check his Twitter or his blog and you'll see a man who is not putting on any kind of a public face. He is completely accepting of himself, not only of all his successes, but also of all his failures.

That kind of honesty makes his music intriguing. Writing music is always about storytelling, and even if you're talking about other people in your songs, even if you're writing about inanimate objects, the public will see the main character in any song as you. Taking the rules of storytelling, people always prefer a flawed protagonist to a perfect one, and its part of the reason why West is so popular as a musician. But it's also why it's so easy to hate him.

One of the biggest gripes on West is his propensity to acknowledge the quality of his own work. To a certain extent, I get it. When he talked about spending a million dollars on his video at the MTV Europe VMAs, or when he bitched about losing the Best New Artist Grammy to Gretchen Wilson, or when he left the VMAs in 2007 when he didn't win a single moonman, those actions seemed a lot like sour grapes from a guy who thought too much of himself.

At the same time, I understand where West is coming from. Who do you hear from now, Wilson or West? What other single musician from the 00s can you think of whose every work has at least one song that has seeped its way into the nation's collective consciousness? Aziz Ansari has an entire ten minutes of Kanye West jokes. South Park ripped him a new one. Using a sped-up sample isn't West's alone, but damn if hearing one doesn't make you think of the man. And Solange Knowles might be dragging Beyonce and Jay-Z to Grizzly Bear shows, but Ye is actually recording songs with Bon Iver that are fucking awesome.

You can't deny that, as much chest-thumping and smoke-blowing as West does, he has the resume-- both complimentary and insulting-- to prove what should be hyperboles true.

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"I have sacrificed real life to be a celebrity and to give this art to people."

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Watching that VMA performance that I've posted above, it felt important.

It's hard to say exactly why. Watching the video independent of context, there's nothing particularly striking about it. There are no dramatics, there is no hugely impressive light show, there's very little aside from West, his MPC, and a trio of ballerinas.

But, of course, it's impossible to disassociate anything-- least of all something so interconnected with West's life and art. Thinking about Taylor Swift playing her song earlier in the night, remembering that this is where Kanye nearly killed his own career, hearing those layered samples and morose piano notes, there was a sense of everything coming together. Without Swift, without 2009's VMAs, without West's theatrics, or his mother's death, or his distressing breakup... you can hear and see all of it in that performance.

Comparing it to some other iconic television moments in musical pop culture-- Elvis on Ed Sullivan, the Beatles at the same place-- is only applicable in the sense of what it meant to the careers of those stars. It was a widely televised moment, on a high profile program, proceeded by light but exciting build-up, that clearly marked a before and an after. 

I wouldn't be surprised if, a decade from now, West's simple, affecting performance of "Runaway" will be used as the mark between the first phase of his career, the phase that died at 2009's VMAs, and the second, surely to begin just as spectacularly as his first. If the new West album is anything but the album of the year, I'll be surprised.

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"I'll say things that are serious and put them in a joke form so people can enjoy them. We laugh to keep from crying."

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Throughout this post, I've been placing quotes from Kanye West himself, and in them West is talking about himself. Some of them are ridiculous and overstated, and some of them are morose and self-sacrificing, but all of them are true.

Because if Kanye West is anything, he's true.