Kanye West on the Cover of VIBE’s Feb. ’09 Issue

Poor [little rich boy] Kanye West. It should have been obvious that he was having an identity crisis but doesn’t know how to learn to do much of anything other than what he already does when he made those inappropriate future intern announcements.

Putting major designers on the spot publicly when he should have been having private discussions, which would have led to him needing to keep his mouth shut for the most part because that is what is expected of interns, was not a good look.

Actually, I thought it was kind of like when you go to one of those movies where some skinny kid starts training and becomes a world class athlete despite all the obstacles and, on the way out, you tell your friends you’re going to get back into shape and then you go and do a bunch of pushups that night.  And it all disappears the next day as you ruefully chuckle, shake your head at your own silliness and break open that candy bar.

But Kanye ain’t chuckling.

In fact, if he doesn’t have a therapist of some sort, I would urge him to get one, or get a better one, and here’s why:

"I made a decision. I wanna make popular music, but I want less fans…I want the freedom of having less fans. It’s like the freedom of having less money. If you have less money, you have less responsibility. It’s like Björk. If she wanted to pose naked, you’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s Björk.’ But if I wanted to pose naked, people would draw all type of things into it."

"I definitely feel like, in the next however many years, if I work out for two months, that I’ll pose naked. I break every rule and mentality of hip-hop, of black culture, of American culture."

Let’s try a bit of microanalysis:

"If you have less money, you have less responsibility."

This is another fantasy statement, the kind of thing somebody who’s never been down to the change in their pockets would say.  It’s a clear statement that, like John McCain, Kanye doesn’t have a clue about poverty.

He also doesn’t know sh*t about Bjork.  She isn’t able to do what she does because she theoretically has less fans and money than Kanye, she’s been doing this since day one and is now a world class artist who’s actually toned down her radicality.  I don’t know if she was empowered with family money from the get go or what but getting fans and money has facilitated a creative path on which she embarked before she was well known.

And she was much more radical in the early days as her Wikipedia page reveals.  For example, in the early 80s, before The Sugarcubes (that’s the band that established her career in the States):

"After writing songs and rehearsing for two weeks, the new band, KUKL ("sorcery" in Icelandic), developed a sound described as Gothic rock. Björk began to show indications of her trademark singing style, which was punctuated by howls and shrieks."

"KUKL toured Iceland with anarchist UK punk band Crass, and later visited the UK in a series of performances with Flux of Pink Indians. They produced two albums as a result of these collaborations: The Eye in 1984, and Holidays in Europe in 1986, both on Crass Records."

That means she was a radical artist from the beginning.  So Kanye should just shut the f*ck up about Bjork and tend to his own concerns.

Apparently he also wants the "freedom" of indie artists:

"Kanye clarified that by ‘less fans’ he meant having a core of 20,000 devotees who understand him, rather than a swell of 100,000 ‘fly-by-night’ followers who just favor him because he’s the hot thing out."

Given that he’s rick as f*ck, this claim that he’s held back by the fans, who he’ll lose as soon as he makes a truly radical move, is so pathetic.

The bottom line is, if Kanye doesn’t like his current situation, he has the money to pursue a wide variety of options with the understanding that none of us are free to do whatever we want.

Want to pose naked?

Get over yourself, shut up about training and take your damn clothes off.

Money holding you back?

Give it away.  There are people who could do something useful with it that doesn’t involve LV logos.

Fans holding you back?

Make a truly radical record and give up this concern with being popular.

But don’t blame other people when you’re such a big success and have the resources to do just about whatever you want, at least, compared to people with less money.  It makes you look like a punk and a baby.

Wait a minute!  I get it!  You’re going to keep complaining until you’ve whittled down your fanbase so far that you get your wish.

You wily weirdo!

Oh, by the way, I’ve got a friend who recently lost his house and is currently unemployed with no insurance, multiple kids and a pregnant wife who just barely got over a life-threatening illness.

That’s why I make fun of you when you say things like:
"If you have less money, you have less responsibility."

Because, at the end of the day, you don’t know what the f*ck you’re talking about and making fun of you helps me get over the fact that such statements make me want to take a brick, bash your head in and sell the bloody skull fragments on Ebay cause I want to check out what kind of problems I would have if I could pay my bills on time.