With even the most cursory understanding of performance art, one can effectively argue that Yeezy’s triumphant moment as a “performance artist” was his classic upstaging of Nazi Barbie during the 2009 MTV Award Charade to say, “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you and I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time!”

Behold, praxis! A spontaneous, succinct statement of support from one artist to another defying both pomp and circumstance and The All Knowing Judges In The Music Industry.

As there was no Kansas City hipster DJ fanboy readily available to explain away Yeezy’s actions, the presumption was he was thwacked out of his skull on something, an asshole, or some combination thereof.

A recent phenomenon that posits Kanye’s recent actions are an on-going performance art piece replete with magical oogum-boogum because Kanye is an ostensible genius merits dissection.

Ostensible, as the term “genius” is over-used. Marjorie Garber wrote in the December 2002 issue of The Atlantic:

“Genius” has become too easy a word for us to say. The parallel here may in fact be addiction rather than religion: as a culture, we have become increasingly addicted to the idea of genius, so we are dependent on it for a certain kind of emulative high, an intoxication with the superlative. Nowadays it takes more and more genius, or more and more geniuses, to satisfy our craving. It may be time to go cold turkey for a while, to swear off the genius model to represent our highest aspirations for intellectual or artistic innovation. If we remind ourselves that what is really at stake is creativity and invention; if we can learn to separate the power of ideas from that of personality; then perhaps we will be less dazzled by the light of celebrity and less distracted by attempts to lionize the genius as a high-culture hero — as essence rather than force.

The only empirical metric of the Yeezy “genius” is the number of records sold. Yeezy has sold 32.7 million, a mere 16.4 million less than Eminem, clearly the former’s advantage lies in his celebrity, and it has worn thin, as Jayson Greene notes in the May 3, 2018 issue of Pitchfork:

“To believe in genius is to believe in saviors. It is to lie in wait for cult leaders to arise. Elevating geniuses automatically subjugates the rest of us. At what point do we cease recognizing genius and start diagnosing it? There will be no Kanye album good enough to wash out the taste of the last two weeks. The circumstances are too ugly, the human stakes too high. When you have worn a MAGA hat and suggested 400 years of slavery represents “a choice,” no matter your intentions, there are no clear paths back to grace. As someone who loves Kanye’s music and loathes what he is making of himself, I would love to see the fever of genius lift. He has chased the myth of his own genius to its logical end — exile. Geniuses tend to die alone and unhappy. So let’s kill genius, please. We stand to lose nothing. We can have still have all of Kanye West’s albums without his “genius.” We can have the sun ray that is “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1,” the cascading coda of “Lost in the World,” and the celestial trumpets of “We Major.” We can have the terrifying digital squeals of “I Am A God,” the taiko drums of “Love Lockdown.” We can keep all of it. Killing genius doesn’t rid the world of beautiful ideas; it clears the air for inspiration to take its place. To inspire is, quite simply, to draw breath. It taps into abundantly available resources without draining them. Inspiration doesn’t require unwavering belief, in one’s self or in anyone else. Inspiration, like grace, simply visits us. It is communal and cannot be weaponized. If Kanye’s albums were simply products of inspiration, rather than of “genius,” then perhaps we could all pull out of this spiral. “Genius” might just be a permission slip you write yourself to knock things down at will, and likely “genius” has done as much to raze our cultural landscape to the ground as it has to build it. Creativity can flourish without genius. You can leave your mark upon this earth without scorching it.”

The theory’s proponent, (“Snowcone,” an “alternative music” radio DJ and self described “pretentious prick about music”) believes Kanye is “one of the greatest artists of our time” because he “has a hand in music, fashion, real estate, etc.” This qualification is as ridiculous as it is intractable.

As counter-example consider this breathlessly stupid essay that posits Nasim Najafi Aghdam, the YouTube shooter, is one of the most relevant contemporary artists of our time:

“What else was Nasim Aghdam? For one, a quite fashionable and arguably beautiful woman with myriad costumes (many of which she appears to have made herself,) countless wigs and hairstyles to adorn her lavish green-screen videos, many of them featuring her dancing or moving sensually to music. She seemed a strange cultural fugitive, and an example of a soul tragically incompatible with the modern world (with critiques of both east and west.) Either she or a collaborator was clearly of above-average competence with computer graphics and video compositing; the production quality, while still modest, is firmly in the category of “good.” Many of her photos and videos also feature a beloved pet rabbit, whose death she documented late last year. Today, the laziest and most predictable story is that she was just insane. Even with plenty of evidence of mentally ill behavior, to go no further than this and to simply label her as a case of another “crazy” would be more than dishonest, it would be a cultural tragedy. The depth of Aghdam’s story is impossible to ignore if you’re looking at it with any degree of curiosity or intellectual rigor. (A lack of which we’ve come to regularly expect.) She, like many other “shooters,” is most certainly a casualty of a technology and electronic media tsunami. But we have never before seen a personality like this.”

Isn’t that intellectually refreshing? Of all the other tens, if not hundreds of thousands of YouTube vloggers affected by the age restrictions and likely made videos about the same subjects Aghdam made, (veganism advocacy, body building and anal sex, among others), the one who guns down people in cold blood is the “relevant contemporary artist” because of “the depth of her story” and “we have never before seen a personality like this.”

Given the exceptionally tenuous manner by which “genius” and “great artist” can be ascribed, by comparison and a closer scrutiny of the metric, (“a hand in music, fashion, architecture, etc,”) Lady Gaga is arguably a “genius” and “great artist” as well.

The internationally acclaimed architect Zaha Hadid was pronounced “the Lady Gaga of architecture,” years before Kanye decided to have a “hand” in it. Further, Gaga’s “etc” can be quantified as having acted in movies and studied with Marina Abramovic as opposed to name checking her in an interview.

(Towards that end, one must wonder if Yeezy is familiar with Abramovic’s saying, “An artist should not make himself into an idol.”)

This “theory” is the sort of sententious bullshit MFA pseudo-intellectual hipster types spin profusely to keep their teaching positions and coffers lined. It gives them the semblance of being “culturally well-read” as they “engage in the conversation.”

This bullshit has been accepted prima facie as authoritative and correct by the press without question for so long, that its being replete with soft-headed thinking often goes without mention.

Of note: the Yeezy as Performance Artist theory was spread by largely copying Snowcone’s Twitter feed however garnished with feeble-minded pap.

It is, in essence, credentialism by committee, merely nod, agree and regurgitate whatever theoretical clap trap that has captured one’s contemporaries’ fancies, et voilà, “relevance,” “genius,” or whatever handy and exceedingly inappropriate superlative can be yours.

Monkey see what committee does, monkey does what committee says, monkey gets committee job and banana! It’s been this way for hundreds of years. It will be this way for hundreds more.

The final thorny matter of the “greatest artist of our time,” is which “our” the proponent is referencing. At 40, Kanye is smack in the midst of the Generation X demographic, however the vast majority of his purchasers in 2011 were 16–33 with the largest distributes aged 21. In light of this, for purposes of discussion, let’s presume “our time” references “Millennials,” and this will become markedly key.

As Kanye himself admitted to not reading books, this recent foray into performance art being engineered by someone else isn’t surprising. The actual “artist” Snowcone cites is Tremaine D. Emory or Denim Tears, per his bio, a “creative consultant for both large corporations, hotels and fashion companies as well as smaller independent brands and labels.”

Of note: “creative consultants” have degrees in advertising not art.

Now consider Snowcone’s words carefully:

“So my theory is this: Kanye (most likely with help from Tremaine and/or others) is in the middle of a performance art piece. What is the overall goal of it? Idk. Maybe holding a mirror up to the world and forcing us to talk about some things. Maybe the album will explain.”

The first statement, “Maybe holding up a mirror to the world and forcing us to talk about some things,” is an incredibly horrific mis-reading of Shakespeare’s Hamlet Scene 2, Act 3 wherein Hamlet says to the Players:

“Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion

be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the

word to the action; with this special o’erstep not

the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is

from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the

first and now, was and is, to hold, as ‘twere, the

mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,

scorn her own image, and the very age and body of

the time his form and pressure.”

In context, the idea that “maybe we” should be “forced to talk about some things” vis-à-vis the Our Divine Leader Yeezy Fan Cult and that “we” have to wait for the album to “explain” is a damnable fascist insult to the intelligence as well as lays open the whole fradulent scheme.

Consider the sourced evidence, the Joseph Beuys performance piece, “I Like America And America Likes Me,”

“In May 1974, the visionary German artist Joseph Beuys flew into New York City’s John F Kennedy International Airport and was immediately taken by ambulance to a room in West Broadway’s René Block Gallery. But he was not ill, or even in pain. Carried by stretcher, which was covered in his signature layer of felt, Beuys shared this solitary space with a coyote — a wild beast, often considered to represent America’s untamed spirit — for three days. It was a performance, entitled I Like America and America likes Me, taut with caution (the animal at first was erratic, and tore apart a blanket in the room), but one that was ultimately a success: the coyote grew tolerant, accepting, simply through Beuys’ desire to heal.”

However an “artistic accomplishment,” it is also anthropomorphized malarkey. Coyotes in general do not attack people and can become accustomed to them, therefore the symbol of them as “America’s untamed spirit” has no basis in reality.

To contextualize this malarkey per Snowcone:

“I believe Kanye is doing a modern take on Beuys piece with the coyote. He’s embraced what might be considered the coyote of today. Gotten close to it. Trump, Candace Owens, Alt Right. Maybe he sees this as a better chance to ‘tame’ the coyote than more traditional methods.”

Comparing coyotes to Trump, Candace Owens and the alt-right egregiously insults coyotes. Again, with emphasis, coyotes in general do not attack people and can become accustomed to them, more than can be said for the aforementioned individuals.

The “theory” is nothing more than an atrociously ill-conceived and poorly-disguised smokescreen of a pin-headed hipster fanboy to explain away the exceptionally poor decision making skills of his idol and gin up hype for the latest shitty album and overpriced pair of sneakers.

What makes it insidious is its continual implication that somehow, someway the very people whose very existences are threatened by Cult 45 and his mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging hordes must now take the first step to make peace with because one narcissistic rapper has crappy decision-making skills and the mouth-breathers have taken him as their exemplar.

One could hardly fault the more conspiratorially-minded for noticing an all too efficient series of concomitants: mere days after his idol crosses an unimaginable Rubicon, a “fan” “discovers” “social media evidence” that points to another “artist” with an educational background in advertising helping said “idol” with a “performance art piece.”

Why would anyone believe this miraculous unearthing wasn’t rigged?

That the intended target of this campaign is “Millennials” dooms it to wholesale failure. Certainly the Yeezy Fan Cult will befoul social media with their hosannas, but mathematically speaking, “Millenials” are largely anti-Trump and read more books than Yeezy on average, by the time the album actually arrives, if it arrives, the backlash will be insurmountable.

As precedent, the Australian launch of Yeezy’s collaboration with the sportswear brand 2XU ($550 neoprene leggings, $500 bike shorts) scheduled to occur mere days after his tweets of infamy — was canceled because no one showed up. Per Pitchfork, “The CEO of Adidas referred ominously to ‘conversations’ he was intending to have with his brand ambassador.”

As an afterthought, were one to posit an explanation for Yeezy’s behavior of late, in astronomy, stars implode all the time. Consider this from Jayson Green’s piece:

“The irony is that none of his recent behavior necessarily breaks new ground for Kanye. Remember when he asked us to imagine how Chris Brown felt, with Rihanna’s horribly beaten face fresh in the public imagination? Or when a mere two years ago he tweeted that Bill Cosby was innocent? Fans rolled their eyes and rubbed their temples and. waited for him to shut up. But we didn’t have a madman in the White House then, and it all seemed bearable as long as he eventually stopped.”

In the White House at the time was one Barack Obama, who also presided over the induction of Jay-Z, the first rapper into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame. At this point, Jay-Z, now 48, became the venerated elder statesman of hip-hop.

To a narcissist of Yeezy’s lack of stature, this was unacceptable. He too wanted Presidential acclaim and veneration– so why not start sucking up to Trump in a concert rant that was ignored by Yeezy’s new found right wing fans in 2016?

Trump became President and Yeezy, enabled by his “energy meetings” and sycophants (You’re a genius, Yeezy because the checks haven’t bounced yet.”), exercised the nuclear option much to the chagrin of his wife, and mother-in-law, lest the blow back ruin their brand.

Now there’s fallout, and fallout has a lengthy half-life. There is no argument that this is a terrible state of affairs, Yeezy has none but himself to blame. As Terrance Thomas wrote in Afropunk: