Part of what I fear is that Kanye’s issues, as they are being rendered to the public, are distracting from a very powerful genius. I don’t believe that’s accidental. We’re all talking about him, right? “Kanye” is on the mouth of so many Americans, and worldwide folks are wondering, “What is the next thing he’s going to say?”

Is Kanye like Trump in some way?

I think Kanye is like Trump insofar as iconography feeds ego. However, I think that to call a black musical genius icon “like” an anti-black, racist president is to do a disservice. Even if—even if—Kanye likes the way Trump thinks, or loved Trump as another pop culture figure. One of the things we really miss here is that Kanye has a deep attraction towards other pop culture figures. The reason that I am actually attracted to the Kanye-Donald Trump conversation is that it reminds us that Kanye, like all of us, does not see this president as a president, but as a pop culture figure.

So for me, the ability for him to adore Trump, and adore his kind of egomania, and to adore the assertion of power that this president institutes, is really a way of saying that he adores “The Apprentice” president. It’s not a matter of Kanye saying, “I like Trump’s policies,” or, “I like Candace Owens’ ideology.” It’s that he is attracted to the ways they move within the world, and part of those moves is against what is understood as the popular norm. And I think Kanye needs a much more nuanced analysis. He needs to have someone provide for him a much deeper context for his comments.

Kanye once said , “I am a proud non-reader of books.”

Well, actually, he then said he much prefers what I call the ethnographic approach, which is engaging people in their lives and their living, and that is a really important distinction to make.

He said, “I’m a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life.”

In real life, right. And he also said that “I am not a fan of books,” which is very different than saying, “I don’t read books.”

He did say, “I’m a proud non-reader of books.” Which to me is a pretty shocking thing to say.

I also think we’ve got to be careful, because all pop cultural figures are subject to make salacious statements. This was 2009. Before he had children, right? I imagine he’s got to like reading books now!

Part of me is understanding him in terms of his own development in the public eye. We’re watching this figure go back and forth between being Kanye the musical genius and being Kanye the fugitive.

Did you say “the fugitive”?

Yeah. I think his fugitivity shows in all kinds of ways. His creative fugitivity, as well as his insistence upon the deprogramming of American society. Kanye is always about undoing whatever he thinks is the status quo. I don’t think of that as just contrarian. I think of that as actually trying to disrupt the institutions that we have come to know as trusted institutions.

Isn’t it significant which institutions he’s trying to disrupt, though?

I think we can say Kanye offers, on one level, a really intellectual set of ideas for public fodder, while simultaneously he is offering some really problematic ideas for public fodder. Both of those advance his visibility within the public. But it’s all to represent the flux that has always been Kanye West. Once you think you have him pinned down, he goes somewhere else. This is absolutely what makes for headlines, but it’s also what makes people like working with him. Every artist that’s ever talked about working with him says that he stretches them to their greatest heights.