Kanye vs Kanye
2nd March 2015 · 0 Comments
By Edmund cash advance hall rd W. Lewis
Editor
Right about now, a lot of grown Black folks are wondering who the real Kanye West is.
Is he the hungry, ambitious cat out Chi-Town who, after being injured in a Los Angeles traffic accident, delivered rhymes like his life depended on each syllable? Is he the street-savvy, signifying wordsmith whose clever rhymes and spoken-word performances gave grown folks a new reason to start believing in the power and potential of hip hop again? Is he the socially conscious brother who felt compelled to say something about the Bush administration in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and inadvertently raised White America’s collective consciousness about racial injustice and inequity in the U.S.?” Or is he the seemingly self-absorbed celebrity who has been known to throw temper tantrums when his friends don’t win music awards, gets into Twitter wars with female celebrities and, more recently, proudly announced that he does not read books?
I’m hoping and praying he’s not the latter.
The brash and flippant lyricist/producer/fashionista ruffled some feathers recently when he proclaimed that he doesn’t read books and apparently has no love or appreciation for books.
“I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life.”
He apparently couldn’t resist the urge to take a swing at writers who actually devote time and energy to honing the craft, saying “Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed.”
If anybody knows self-absorption it’s Kanye, the brother who once donned a crown of thorns in his music video for “Jesus Walks” and never seems to run out of wonderful things to say about himself.
Even though he turns his nose up at payday loans maui kahului books, West has the audacity to hope the throngs of fans and admirers who follow him on social media will buy his 52-page book, Thank You and You’re Welcome.
The interesting thing about the book is that some of its pages are reportedly blank and it has lots of what its author calls “Kanye-isms.” Among them are “Life is five percent what happens to you and 95 percent how you react,” “I hate the word hate” and “Get used to being used.”
There you have it: More proof that a mind can truly be a terrible thing to waste.
Even though few people doubt Kanye’s rhyming and production skills, a growing number of people are starting to perceive him as flighty and scatterbrained.
Was he serious?
Did he think he learned everything he ever learned without picking up a book? Could he have learned how to write insightful, masterful rhymes without first being introduced to the wonderful world of books at a young age?
It’s time for Kanye to put aside childish things and make the quantum leap from being a reckless, irresponsible young buck to becoming a self-aware, purpose-driven leader in his own right.
Reading the right books could certainly make that transition easier to accomplish.
Today’s young celebrities, entertainers and reality-TV stars live in a world where just about everything that happens gets recorded, uploaded, posted and tweeted to tens of millions of people around the world who have nothing better to do than rummage through other people’s ridiculousness. They also live in a world where people who never even thought about cracking open a book for the sheer enjoyment of the experience use social media to present themselves as thinkers, doers, activists, spokesmen and leaders.
During his acceptance speech at BET Honors recently he compared himself and others with millions payday loan apr comparison in their banking accounts to slaves, saying “Part of the reason why I’m not allowed to be empowered is because of race, because of people’s perception of reality because all they want to present to Black men is the idea that they can achieve the League or make it to become a rapper but not the idea of becoming an owner. And they would do anything they can to make ti seem like a truthful idea is a stupid idea or a crazy idea.
“Harriet Tubman said she could have freed so many more slaves if they only knew they weren’t free,” he continued. So don’t think that because we can afford this custom suit that we’re free ˜ and don’t think that because we can buy a $300,000 car that we’re free. Don’t think that because a gated community has three percent colored people in it that we’re free. It’s the mentality, the slave mentality, where we all eventually become slaves to that car, slaves to the perception, slaves to the idea of being cool.”
Perhaps he should have added that some of us who achieve a certain amount of material wealth and/or notoriety also become slaves to narcissism, self-absorption, shameless consumerism and media limelight.
Some of his remarks at BET Honors, like his comments about racism, came off as underdeveloped although obviously well-intentioned.
If only he had taken the time to read Albert Memmi’s The Colonizer and the Colonized, George G.M. James’ Stolen Legacy and Dr. Frances Cress Welsing’s The Isis Papers, he might have been able to talk with more clarity about the toll global white supremacy has taken on Black, brown, red and yellow people around the world.
What he didn’t talk about was the mental slavery, the arrested mental and psychological development that compels grown men and women to act like they unsecured loan for sme have no sense and no grasp of their history. Only slaves from Willie Lynch University would go around bragging about not reading books. Such a proclamation teeters on the brink of virtual insanity.
We need books like we need water, food, air and shelter. But we need to be vigilant about the books we choose because some books, like some bodies of water, are filled with toxins that are harmful to our minds, bodies and spirits.
We need books that challenge our mindsets and encourage us to think for ourselves rather than regurgitate whatever we read, hear or see on television talk shows.
In his defense, part of the reason he may feel the way he does is because he was born and raised by a mother, Dr. Donda West, with ties to the Freedom Movement and a background as a college educator. The late Malcolm X used to say all the time that the mother is the child’s first teacher and that the message the mother brings to the child he or she will bring to the world.
Kanye’s mother obviously poured her thirst for knowledge and grasp of history into Kanye but somewhere along the way he appears to have missed the fact that his mother was who she was in part because she read books and learned at the feet of others who read books.
Did he read his mother’s book, Raising Kanye? And if he did, did he read it because his mother wrote it or because it was about him?
There are things about the Black experience and the historical and cultural legacy of Africa and Africans that Kanye will likely never learn without an assist or two from a book.
He might find inspiration or a kindred spirit in the history of Kemet (ancient Egypt) or come installment loans payday lenders to understand how Africa went from being called the Light of the World to the Dark Continent. He might also learn that Africa itself is a named assigned to the Motherland by European explorer Leo Africanus. He might be moved by the story of Hannibal of Carthage, one of the greatest military strategists of all time and a bad ass in his own right, who once famously said, “We will either find a way or make one.”
As an international traveler, he might be moved by the history of the Moors in Spain or inspired by the fact that the “father of Russian literature,” Alexander Pushkin, was a Black man.
There’s no telling what kinds of nuggets of wisdom, clarity and historical truth he might unearth if he gave books a chance.
While lectures, panel discussions, documentaries and travel are all great ways to learn, none of these is a substitute for a well-written book. Books can supplement the knowledge he acquires as he moves through life and reinforce or dispel the information others present to him.
Surely he must recognize the folly of believing something because somebody said it or he saw it on television — the wise and prudent man and woman question everything they are taught so that they can stand firm on a solid foundation of knowledge and wisdom.
If he is willing to invest the time and energy it takes to do the reading and heavy lifting necessary to make a major impact on the world, Kanye could become so much more than a rapper and a descendant who could really make the ancestors who sacrificed everything to give him and others a chance to make their dreams come true a major reason to beam with pride.
Get it together, Kanye.
This article originally published in the March 2, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
