Greatest rapper alive? Kanye West has devolved into just another Internet troll

Maeve McDermott | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Kanye West says 400 years of slavery 'sounds like a choice' Before the last one had a chance to simmer down, Kanye West caused another stir, calling slavery a “choice” in an interview Tuesday.

If a Kanye West album drops without controversy, does it make a sound?

Since Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey welcomed West back to Twitter on April 13, all hell has broken loose on both the rapper’s virtual and real-life timelines. He tweeted his support for President Trump, and the president tweeted back his approval. He’s palled around with far-right commentators Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk, appearing on TMZ Live this week alongside Owens to allege that slavery was “a choice.” He debated basic tenets of American history on Twitter, sharing screenshots of texts from famous friends such as John Legend and Charlamagne tha God rightfully disputing his logic.

As tweets piled up and West’s statements became more radical — to the point his wife, Kim Kardashian, had to confirm that he's not having another mental breakdown — it became clear to fans that this was no album-rollout stunt, but rather the rapper’s new reality. From his Taylor Swift stage-crashing days, West has been the music industry’s most exciting villain, because through all his problematic news cycles, he’s delivered on his claims to be the greatest rapper alive. Yet, in the past, it was easier to contextualize West’s “BILL COSBY INNOCENT!” tweets and other incendiary dramas as the sometimes-misguided views of a gifted artist whose music delivered on his promises of greatness. Now, West seems to want to be defined first by his increasingly radical worldview, rather than by his artistic merits.

But without the art, West is just another Internet troll.

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It’s true that dramatic album rollouts have become West’s default release strategy, with the rapper prefacing his past three albums — My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Yeezus and The Life of Pablo — with random song drops, elaborately staged TV performances and, as always, inflammatory Twitter dialogue. From his G.O.O.D. Fridays song releases in 2009, featuring a murderers’ row of collaborators that built the buzz for MBDTF, to his massive Madison Square Garden listening party in 2016, which introduced the world to The Life of Pablo in one communal live-stream, West’s prealbum antics haven’t just provided career-defining moments for the rapper — they’ve also made it fun to be a fan.

Not this time.

For the remaining fans holding out hope that his new music would provide a lifeline to the old Kanye, West released two questionable songs that only showed him wading deeper into the firestorm of his own making. The first, Lift Yourself, is a less-than-artful work of trolling, with West teasing on Twitter that the lyrics would bring the closure fans were seeking, before greeting listeners with a verse of “whoop-di-scoop-di-poop.” At least Lift Yourself’s first half, a chopped-up soul sample of Amnesty’s Liberty, was more fun to listen to than the pedantic Ye vs. the People, his second new release, which is less a song than a dry debate between West and T.I. over the contents of West’s Twitter feed.

This will be the last straw for many listeners. West’s taste for courting controversy and his delusions of grandeur, often disconnected from reality, are part of his artistic genius, and have helped him make genre-defining music throughout his career. But in the past month, seeing him flirt with white supremacist views in the service of “free speech” and release songs with little musical value beyond supporting his new persona, it’s hard not to feel manipulated. Turn your back on Kanye West now, he seems to say, and you’re a member of the “thought police,” working against the principles of free thought and free love he claims to represent.

Right before his Twitter timeline blew up, West announced two new albums, one with Kid Cudi and one solo release, planned for June. Even if West releases a career-best album, its legacy will be complicated by the months leading up to it, which have been less an album rollout than a complete recontextualizing of the artist himself. And if the music isn’t good, what does West have left?

