THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE

DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION ARTS & SCIENCES

“I THOUGHT ABOUT KILLING YOU”: CONSIDERING THE UTILITY OF RHETORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL CRITICAL APPROACHES TO KANYE WEST’S YE

CORY N. STEINLE SPRING 2020

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for baccalaureate degrees in Communication Arts and Sciences and Labor and Employment Relations with honors in Communication Arts and Sciences

Reviewed and approved* by the following:

Bradford Vivian Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences Thesis Supervisor

Lori Bedell Associate Teaching Professor in Communication Arts & Sciences Honors Adviser

* Signatures are on file in the Schreyer Honors College. i

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the merits of intrinsic and extrinsic critical approaches to hip-hop artifacts. To do so, I provide both a neo-Aristotelian and biographical criticism of three songs from ye (2018) by Kanye West. Chapters 1 & 2 consider Roland Barthes’ The Death of the

Author and other landmark papers in rhetorical and literary theory to develop an intrinsic and extrinsic approach to criticizing ye (2018), evident in Tables 1 & 2. Chapter 3 provides the biographical antecedents of West’s life prior to the release of ye (2018). Chapters 4, 5, & 6 supply intrinsic (neo-Aristotelian) and extrinsic (biographical) critiques of the selected artifacts.

Each of these chapters aims to address the concerns of one of three guiding questions: which critical approaches prove most useful to the hip-hop consumer listening to this song? How can and should the listener construct meaning? Are there any improper ways to critique and interpret this song? Chapter 7 discusses the variance in each mode of critical analysis from

Chapters 4, 5, & 6. Finally, Chapter 8 synthesizes and suggests a preferred framework for criticizing and analyzing modern hip-hop music relative to ordinary listeners’ needs and interests. The paper concludes by discussing how the rapid technological enablement of consumers (“readers”) to access the realities in which authors’ artifacts are born out of suggests extrinsic critiques are becoming increasingly more useful than purely intrinsic critiques.

Additionally, I argue for a more careful reevaluation of critical cultural approaches in wake of technological advances in the mediums through which artists create and promote their art.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ...... iii

LIST OF TABLES ...... iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... v

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Chapter 2 METHODOLOGY ...... 6

QUESTION 1: THE USEFUL CRITICAL APPROACH ...... 6 QUESTION 2: CONSTRUCTING MEANING ...... 10 QUESTION 3: THE IMPROPER CRITICAL APPROACH ...... 19 DEVELOPING AN INTRINSIC CRITICAL APPROACH ...... 20 DEVELOPING AN EXTRINSIC APPROACH ...... 24

Chapter 3 THE STORY OF SAINT PABLO ...... 33

BIOGRAPHICAL ANTECEDENTS TO YE ...... 33 CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE...... 34 RISE TO FAME ...... 38 LIST OF MAJOR CONTROVERSIES PRIOR TO FALL 2016 ...... 40 ANTECEDENT CONDITIONS TO YE ...... 46

Chapter 4 “I THOUGHT ABOUT KILLING YOU” ...... 64

INTRINSIC CRITICISM ...... 64 EXTRINSIC CRITICISM ...... 75

Chapter 5 “YIKES” ...... 84

INTRINSIC CRITICISM ...... 84 EXTRINSIC CRITICISM ...... 93

Chapter 6 “ALL MINE” ...... 101

INTRINSIC CRITICISM ...... 101 EXTRINSIC CRITICISM ...... 110

Chapter 7 DISCUSSION ...... 121

THE MORE USEFUL FORM OF CRITICISM ...... 122 HOW TO CONSTRUCT MEANING FROM THE MUSIC ...... 126 IMPROPER WAYS TO CONSIDER THE MUSIC ...... 129

Chapter 8 SUPPORTING FRAMEWORK AND CONCLUSION ...... 131

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 139 iii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. West Renames Himself 'Ye' on Twitter ...... 26

Figure 2. West Calls Out Taylor Swift on Twitter Over 'Famous' (2016) Drama ...... 44

Figure 3. Taylor Swift Responds to 'Famous' Drama on Instagram ...... 45

Figure 4. Twitter Founder @Jack Welcomes West Back to Twitter ...... 50

Figure 5. West Announces His New Book on Twitter, Break the Simulation ...... 50

Figure 6. West Announces Pusha T's Forthcoming Album Daytona ...... 51

Figure 7. West Announces Teyana Taylor's Forthcoming Album K.T.S.E...... 51

Figure 8. West Announces a Collaborative Album with Kid Cudi, Kids See Ghosts ...... 51

Figure 9. West Announces Nas's Forthcoming Album Nasir ...... 52

Figure 10. West Announces His Eighth Studio Album ye ...... 52

Figure 11. West Engages in a Tweeting Spree Prior to his Infamous TMZ Interview ...... 54

Figure 12. Donald Trump Thanks West for his Support ...... 57

Figure 13. Kim Kardashian West Asks Kanye to Clarify his Support of Trump ...... 57

Figure 14. John Legend Rebukes "Slavery was a Choice" Comments ...... 59

Figure 15. West Rebukes his Own Infamous Ego for the First Time Publicly ...... 79

Figure 16. West Comments on his Pride and Identity ...... 80

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Components of the Intrinsic Critical Approach Evaluating ye (2018) ...... 23

Table 2. Components of the Extrinsic Critical Approach Evaluating ye (2018) ...... 28

Table 3. Appropriate Criteria for Critical Cultural Examination of Hip-Hop Artifacts ...... 132

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Long nights and days spent writing this thesis epitomize the polarity and extremity of ye. When I began this project, I thought I understood what it meant to conduct rigorous, academic research. I was wrong. I quickly learned of the difficulty of conducting meaningful research in the humanities, but too its value - and I am thankful for the faculty, staff, and friends who supported me throughout this endeavor. This thesis would not be possibly without the incredible and unending support of my honors advisor and RCL 137H professor, Dr. Lori Bedell. Thank you for challenging me to pursue a topic of genuine interest, and guiding what started as a RCL 137H paper examining Kanye West and Male Emotionality to what became my penultimate academic endeavor. You have had the most tangible and impactful impact on my development as a scholar and professional, and I owe you so incredibly much for inspiring me to never sacrifice myself and my values in the pursuit of a better life. To Dr. Bradford Vivian, thank you for guiding the rhetorical theory justifying my ultimate conclusions in this paper. Your CAS 201H course inspired my interest in rhetorical and literary theory, and I owe you a great many thanks for sending so many readings and challenging me to write an academic thesis grounded in theory. Thank you for enabling me to express my ideas and cultivating my theoretical interests. I thank Dr. Jon Nussbaum for providing feedback on Chapters 1 & 2, and wish him a wonderful retirement from the academy. Thank you, Dr. Kristin Olson, for serving as an initial sounding board during the early stages of this project, and providing a valuable reading list in literary theory to begin my examination of intertextuality and authorial over-reliance in a new, non-literary context. To my parents and family – thank you for encouraging me in times of adversity, and for pushing me to become the first in our family to graduate from a four-year university. No matter how many times I insisted I did not belong, or that I did not wish to continue with my education, you encouraged me to persist. You all have made so many sacrifices to create a better life for me, and I thank you for the opportunity to make you proud. Finally, I thank Kanye West, for showing me what it means to vulnerable, wrong, beautiful, terrible, and everything in between. The principle object of my investigation – your album ye – inspired me at a critical juncture in my life to love myself and love others. But too, it inspired me to see you for who you are, and who you have been – a flawed human. And that we as people, and as cultural critics, should recognize those flaws where they exist, but forgive them and recognize how human they make us all. Our public discourse desperately needs a rhetoric of gratitude, and I am thankful to have learned this from your actions as a man and your achievements as an artist. 1

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Ye (2018) is the eighth studio album produced and written by American rapper Kanye

West. West has frequently been the source of controversy, most recently claiming in an exclusive

TMZ interview that “Slavery is a choice” (“Kanye Stirs Up TMZ Newsroom…”, 2018). During the Video Music Awards, West interrupted Taylor Swift’s speech to say that Beyoncé had the best music video of all-time (“TAYLOR…”, 2009). In a 2013 interview on Sway’s Universe,

West claimed “I am Warhol. I am the number one most impactful artist of our generation. I am

Shakespeare in the flesh. Walt Disney, Nike, Google; now who’s going to be the Medici family and stand up and let me create more.”

Understandably, this fueled the polarized public opinions of West. On one hand, West is tied with Jay Z for the most Grammys ever, having won 21 awards (“Most Grammy Awards”,

2018), and has been nominated 68 times; yet, he has not won a Grammy since 2013. Since then, he has released three solo studio albums: Yeezus (2013), The Life of Pablo (2016), and ye (2018).

Culture writer Kelly Dearmore calls West “the most polarizing artist in the world...his brazen arrogance breeds a charisma that draws as many millions of people towards him as it repels.”

Some hail him as the genius he purports to be - but most question the mythological nature of his

“genius.” In a Pitchfork think piece, Jayson Greene (2018) asserts:

A genius can only be misunderstood. A genius can never be wrong, and can only assimilate criticism as “opposition.” A genius is always male - not just a male, but a Great Man, as “genius” has always been more bellow of patriarchal conquest than any kind of descriptor...what is “genius,” after all, if not societally celebrated 2 madness?...Elevating geniuses automatically subjugates the rest of us. At what point do we cease recognizing genius and start diagnosing it?1 (para. 7-9)

This paper intends to shed light on these claims - to explore if the biographical conditions preceding ye reflect any sort of genius, or if the album itself simply falls short. In basic terms: do fans of ye prescribe the genius onto the album because of the authorial construct of West as a

“genius,” or is the album “genius” in light of the biographical conditions preceding its release? Is ye genius at all? Does it matter if we ignore West as an artist when listening to his music? What would it mean to kill the author and criticize the album accordingly? Chapters 7 & 8 answer these questions.

Roland Barthes (1967) writes extensively on the subject in his landmark paper The Death of the Author:

The absence of the Author is not only a historical fact or an act of writing: it utterly transforms the modern text (or -- what is the same thing -- the text is henceforth written and read so that in it, on every level, the Author absents himself)...once the Author is gone, the claim to “decipher” a text becomes quite useless...to give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing...this conception perfectly suits criticism, which can then take as its major task the discovery of the Author beneath the work; once the Author is discovered, the text is “explained”...the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author. (p. 6)

Barthes (1967) reasons the authorial construct serves only as a point of structure to make

“sense” of a text. Yet, he claims this construct is nonsensical itself; an attempt to monopolize and

1 Emerson (1841) speaks at length to this end in Self-Reliance. He explains: “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion” (para. 6). He asserts: “In every work on genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty” (para. 1). In Emerson’s view, genius requires conformity from an audience - they must come together to mutual agree upon the nature of the genius, and “bestow” the genius title on an individual. However, this baptism comes only through an individual’s overreliance on the genius to speak his mind for him. Emerson would agree with Greene’s assertion that a genius “can only be misunderstood…[and] can never be wrong,” adding that we willing elevate geniuses because we are too scared to elevate ourselves. 3 locate meaning prescriptively. Narrative, then, did not organically create the author. Barthes

(1967) argues “in primitive societies, narrative is never undertaken by a person, but by a mediator, shaman or speaker, whose ‘performance’ may be admired (that is, his mastery of the narrative code), but not his [own] ‘genius’’’ (p. 2). The common overreliance on the author exploits the biases of the critic; for example, one may consider the willingness of the 18th century poets such as Wordsworth to assert their own authorial identity. Hess (2005) writes in

The Authorial Self, “Wordsworth constructed his identity according to a professional model and in the process reconstructed the poet's relationship to his audience, to poetic property, and to the commercial marketplace.”

Yet, Barthes (1967) hesitates to completely retire the authorial construct, qualifying ‘the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the author” (p. 6). This final line serves merely to dissent from the traditional literary overreliance to retrace the author’s intentions, as if meaning can be reconstructed in biographical contexts. By no means does this paper suggest that one should always kill the author, but to ask the question Barthes suggests: does killing the author allow them to birth meaning out of the text, rather than being bound to the notion of authorial intent? Barthes’ argument suggests readers should no longer ask, “What did the author mean by this?” and more carefully consider “what does the text itself suggest this means?” But for the purposes of this paper, I will do as Barthes suggests: kill the author. My three carefully constructed intrinsic critiques in Chapters 4, 5, & 6 almost entirely ignore Kanye West’s biographical conditions.

Ironically, Barthes’ own life is steeped with controversy. He spent many weeks in a sanatorium, wrote at length about his own mother’s death, spent a long period of his life interested in self-portraiture, and wrote his own autobiography in fragments (Philip, as cited in 4 Olauluwa, 2007). As literary critic Andrew Gallix (2005) put it, “If Barthes presents biography with a problem, it is not because he is absent from his work, but on the contrary because he is inseparable from it...in the end, our biographical investigations must lead us back to the work itself” (para. 6). Barthes is not exempt from biographical critique, and it proves quite useful to consider this methodology when explaining his views on biographemes - the symbolic details, preferences, and inflections left behind by an author, destined to influence some future person

(Cappello, 2011).

Senayon Olauluwa (2007) argues in The Author Never Dies: Roland Barthes and the

Postcolonial Project, “for with the death of the author has also come the death of meaning”

(para. 3). Her motivations, similar to my own, are clear: by “deposing that there should be a severance of the author’s antecedent relationship to the text...writing becomes an end in itself”

(para. 3). Ironically, in Barthes’ (1977) autobiography R.B., he contradicts his suggestion to separate the author from the text. Olauluwa (2007) responds in her paper, commenting:

Despite the frantic effort in his autobiography to dissuade readers from establishing a filiation between himself and the text...R.B. betrays all the contradictions that his theorizing on the death of the author conjures up....if there is any pragmatism to the autobiography with respect to the essay, it is only in the area of denial of reality. (para. 6)

Clearly, the longstanding debate between intrinsic and extrinsic critical approaches remains unsettled. Barthes himself could not resist the temptation to add his biographical context onto his oeuvre, nor did he suggest that the author should be absolutely disregarded in The Death of the Author. The space in which Barthes hesitates drives much of this thesis - where should a critic draw their line? Which antecedent conditions to an artifact inform its critique? 5 The implications of Barthes’ (1967) text on analyzing ye is serious. Yet, this paper is limited in its scope. Written by an undergraduate,2 the paper does not settle the longstanding literary and rhetorical disagreements discussed in Chapters 1 & 2. Rather, it aims to take a pragmatic approach: which types of critical approaches prove most useful to the hip-hop consumer? How can and should the listener construct meaning? Are there any improper ways to interpret the music? In subsequent chapters, I frequently return to these questions. By orienting myself towards utility and not actuality,3 I hope to depart from theoretical emetics, moving towards an understanding of critique maximizing the enjoyment of hip-hop music for ordinary consumers.

2 This line is an implicit argument justifying the worth of this project. The author, I myself, makes mention of a real condition of the life being lived beyond the text. The comment contextualizes and supports the methodology of the paper. Most stereotypes and meaning extrapolated from this comment - including an affirmation that I am unequipped to consider the most menacing questions in critical literary theory - are endorsed by the author. Simply put, I use the biographical conditions this paper emerges from as a mechanism to express and impose meaning. When Barthes (1967) suggests that freeing oneself from the associations I impose will “free the reader,” I do not necessarily disagree. You are welcome to disagree with the implication that I am unqualified to write this paper. But yet, the author can never really die in this sense - as I write this, I am very much alive, and I very much do have an intent for what my words mean. Knowing this, the reader may elect to contextualize and consider both the textual and authorial impositions of my work. Barthes was not incorrectly skeptical of the literary establishment of the 1960’s; nor is the modern reader misinformed in considering biographical contexts to their liking. This is especially true for the typical consumer of hip-hop music, who consumes their meaning via an auditory and digital medium which provides additional modes of persuasion and influence (album art, sonic influences, lyricism, beats, etc.). 3 I use the term “actuality” to imply a sort of absolutism present among the literary theorists, many of whom openly admit to resolvability of their disagreements. Rather than attempting to resolve their disagreements, I seek to apply two of their most relevant methodologies to discover a new framework for criticizing music. 6

Chapter 2

METHODOLOGY

Forming a methodology to consider such abstract arguments usefully is considerably daunting. The paper is ambitious in that it attempts to explore what is most useful to the modern listener, but with an absolutist asterisk: are there any improper ways to consider the music?4 The complexity of my research questions require an individualized methodology. This methodology provides a reference point for comparison and yields a useful analysis of the applicability of intrinsic and extrinsic critiques. Foundational rhetorical and literary texts from Celeste Condit

(1989), Lloyd Bitzer (1968), Roland Barthes (1967), Aristotle, and others inform the eventual frameworks developed for intrinsic and extrinsic criticism, evident in Tables 1 & 2.

QUESTION 1: THE USEFUL CRITICAL APPROACH

The first question demands a quantifiable approach to human communication: which critical approaches prove most useful to the hip-hop consumer? The aforementioned “hip-hop consumer” certainly has preferences, beliefs, and opinions that may be different than a “country music consumer” (Frith, 1996, p. 111). These identities have been formed and reinforced by their

4 Literary theorists and casual consumers of music disagree to this end. The question does not function to suggest that the majority of hip-hop consumers come forth with a fortified literary methodology in which to criticize West’s music (though, as Greene’s 2018 article suggests, a simple YouTube search reveals that there are many Kanye “superfans” who very well to do this). Rather, the question aims to suggest that there are many surface-level or impractical criticisms - perhaps that of a purely intrinsic criticism? 7 respective genres, and/or perhaps the authors themselves. For example, fans of Kanye West have been accused of being too loyal to the artist. Hypothetically, this loyalty arises out of a consistent musical and cultural consumption of the author. Though, this hypothesis was recently challenged after West commented that slavery was a choice; millions of his twitter followers unfollowed him, and users started a hashtag entitled “#IfSlaveryWasAChoice” (Murray, 2018).

Quantitative variables would help characterize the ordinary hip-hop consumer, but little demographic research of these listeners exists. Some level of unfair stereotypes and labels could reveal more about the audience, but are obviously problematic. What becomes useful, then, is creating and justifying an inclusive and sensible construct of the “ordinary hip-hop consumer” using common understandings about hip-hop culture. Hip-hop and r&b recently became the most consumed genres of music in America (McIntrye, 2017), which allows for a broader consideration of the audience. For the purposes of this paper, it can be understood that the ordinary hip-hop consumer is:

 American

 Younger than 50 years old and older than 13 years old

 Civically and culturally informed

Nationality

West is a unique American artist. His music encompasses references to his residences in the United States, life in Los Angeles, homages to his hometown of Chicago, and his work on ye

(2018) in Wyoming. For the purposes of this paper (and for few other reasons), it is most useful to consider his audience as narrowly American. In constructing an identity, it would be too difficult to differentiate between the messages and the interpretations of West’s music inter- culturally; additionally, such an analysis would be spurious at best, and frivolous at worst in 8 answering the greater questions of this thesis: is this critical approach useful? How is meaning constructed? Is there an improper critique? Focusing on a stoic demographic enables this paper to answer those questions without complications and discrepancies between cultures and subcultures with different norms and expectations. Further inquiry into inter-cultural contexts could prove useful, but is unnecessary at this juncture.

Age

Most agree hip-hop music originated in the late 70’s and early 80’s (Tate & Light, 2018).

Since then, hip-hop has changed tremendously. For example, N.W.A. can be assumed to have a considerably different fan-base than Kanye West based on the messages they convey. West came to prominence from 2002-2004 with the release of “Through the Wire” (2002) and The College

Dropout (2004). So, it follows that if one assumes (rather safely) that West’s music and similar is more likely to resonate with an audience of people who were relatively younger when he began releasing music. For example, any individual younger than 40 years old would have been no older than 22-23 years old when West rose to prominence. Furthermore, my anecdotal experience indicates that younger demographics more readily utilize website like Genius.com to gather extrinsic critiques of hip-hop music. Thus, for the purposes of this thesis, and in the spirit of avoiding a sort of ageism, I cautiously assume West’s primary audience - and the audience to which the framework of this thesis applies - to be relatively younger and familiar with many of the mediums by which the new generation of consumers access their music.

Conversely, many consumers younger than 12 years old would have trouble accessing much of West’s work. His music is seldom played on public radio, as pop music becomes the predominant genre played. Many of those younger than 12 years old may also struggle to have a medium to listen to the music, since most of West’s work is now only available to stream or on 9 YouTube. There are additional limitations that validate this metric, which include: parental censorship of artists, cognitive inability to understand the messages conveyed in the music, and inaccessibility to social media/news about artists (key to the extrinsic critiques of ye).

Civically and Culturally Informed

This tenet is particularly meaningful when embarking on a journey of extrinsic critique.

My thesis assumes that the ordinary consumer of hip-hop music is civically and culturally informed to a reasonable degree. The reasonable degree burden is appropriate based on the assumed age of the target audience. This burden assumes, for example, that the ordinary hip-hop consumer will have heard Kanye West’s comments on slavery and race. Conversely, the burden assumes that the ordinary hip-hop consumer will have an opinion on the comments made, and that this opinion will inform their analysis and interpretation of the meaning of ye (2018). The assumption here, then, is that any reasonable actor will have a propensity to interpret the music in light of the cultural and civic events that have occurred and are occurring in American society.

What does it mean in “All Mine” (2018) when West says, “Russell Simmons wanna pray for me too? I’ma pray for him ‘cuz he got #MeToo’d!” Can it be assumed that an ordinary listener has heard of Russell Simmons and the #MeToo movement? This paper presumes so.

Kanye fans are uniquely situated in a critically informed subset of hip-hop because West has historically involved himself in social justice issues. For example, West rapped about social issues and societal inequities in several of his songs, including “New Slaves” (2013),5 “All Falls

5 Derived from the lyrics: “My momma was raised in the era when / clean water was only served to the fairer skin,” “but they wasn’t satisfied unless I picked the cotton myself,” and “meanwhile the DEA / teamed up with the CCA / they tryna lock n****s up / they tryna make new slaves.” 10 Down” (2004),6 and “Gorgeous” (2010).7 These fans form online communities where this is clearly evident. For example, the r/Kanye subreddit community on Reddit.com boasts over

251,000 subscribers, with some posts speculating as to the meaning of West’s music in light of biographical antecedents. Furthermore, podcasts like Watching the Throne boast over 14,500 followers on Twitter, releasing one to two hour episodes interpreting individual songs, partially in light of West’s biographical antecedents. Considering this evidence, and for the purposes of this thesis, I assumed Kanye West’s fans understand the biographical antecedents referenced in subsequent chapters.

QUESTION 2: CONSTRUCTING MEANING

At the outset, I admit that a multiplicity of methodologies can construct meaning. Yet, critics stretch themselves thin if they interpret a single Greek allusion to signify a modern reworking of Greek tragedy. Thus, context must inform the piece, and I must set rhetorical limitations on my intrinsic and extrinsic critical approaches. To do this, I turn to rhetorical critic

Celeste Condit, who details the rhetorical limits of polysemic interpretations of mass media artifacts in her landmark paper The Rhetorical Limits of Polysemy. Condit (1989) argues that

“audiences are not free to make meanings at will from mass mediated texts,” (p. 103), and that it is more useful to “employ a multidimensional rhetorical critique of a single [text] to suggest that the ability of audiences to shape their own readings, and hence their social life, is constrained by

6 Derived from the lyrics: “That major that she majored in don’t make no money / but she won’t drop out, her parents’ll look at her funny,” “we tryna buy back our 40 acres,” and “I say “Fuck the police, that’s how I treat ‘em / we can’t buy out way out of jail, but we can’t buy freedom / things we buy to cover up what’s inside.” 7 Derived from the lyrics: “This the real world, homie school finished / they done stole your dreams, you dunno who did it / I treat the cash the way the government treats AIDS / I won’t be satisfied until all my n****s get it, get it?” 11 a variety of factors in a given rhetorical situation” (p. 103). These factors include an audience members’ access to oppositional codes,8 the ratio between the work required and the pleasure produced in decoding a text, the repertoire of available texts, and the historical occasion, especially “with regard to the text’s positioning of the pleasures of dominant and marginalized audiences” (pp. 103-104).

Utilizing these four dimensions of polysemic decoding encourages a discourse community - whether in mass media, rhetoric, communication science, or another relevant field - to view the audience as a collection of autonomous individuals with preferences, actively decoding texts in ways they understand to be pleasurable and/or useful. The so-called socially conscious critic may then reimagine a message or rhetorical artifact in ways that are consistent with their political or social ideologies.9 Yet, such a critic cannot be lost in their own individual interpretations (or subordinate ideologies) - the weaker and more singular the interpretation, the less useful and powerful the interpretation becomes (pp. 108-110). There is then a biographical element not only to the critique itself, but the viability of said critique. Condit’s (1989) paper suggests for an instance of decoding to be significant, it must balance some sort of consensus

(agreement with the individual’s interpretation) with a more individually significant and personalized interpretation.

8 Stuart Hall defines the oppositional code as those signifying messages which are delocalized and negotiated into a new framework of reference (Hall, 1973). For example, one might interpret in a debate about minimum wage that every mention a Democrat makes of “minimum wage” really means “fair wage.” In our application to Kanye West, access to oppositional codes simply means one’s ability to re-interpret his messages within new frameworks. Doing so may require a certain understanding of his biographical context to renegotiate the “meaning” of his messages in a song. 9 Such a critical approach may prove more useful in analyzing the racial decoding of West’s musical artifacts in light of biographical conditions. Further analysis is both relevant and necessary in light of his recent comments on race, namely “Slavery was a choice.” 12 For an informed audience, these four dimensions serve as appropriate criteria in understanding the limits of their biographical critical approach. Accordingly, I convert the criteria to useful limitations of the scope of a biographical critique. Using Condit’s The

Rhetorical Limits of Polysemy, Lloyd Bitzer’s The Rhetorical Situation (1968), and Stuart Hall’s

Encoding/Decoding (1973) as a theoretical foundation, I define clear criteria for the scope and application of each dimension.

Oppositional Codes

An individual’s access to oppositional codes is significant in an interpretation of Kanye

West’s music. Many codes and constructions of meaning are available online. Genius, formerly branded as Rap Genius, boasts over 100 million site visitors per month (“About Genius,” 2018).

On the site, users can pose interpretations of a given song or album, which are subsequently up- voted by other users. Many dissenting interpretations are also available - those who disagree with the dominant interpretation present other interpretations. These varying decodings accompany any “googling” of a Kanye West song. In “Wouldn’t Leave” (2018), one user posits that the first verse of the song directly addresses West’s comments to Sway Calloway in 2013 and his comment that “slavery sounded like a choice” to TMZ (“Kanye West Stirs…”, 2018). This dominant interpretation received 160 up-votes from members of the community - clearly, many fans agreed with this decoding. Yet, another user decoding the lyric differently - rather than focusing on the content of the lyrics, they elected to interpret the two examples as parallels. To them, West first positions himself as the victim of an uninformed comment from Sway,10 then immediately juxtaposes himself as the perpetuator of an uninformed comment,

10 Visit the page directly to read the conflicting comments. 13 “Slavery...sounded like a choice” (“Kanye West Stirs…”, 2018). In this oppositional interpretation, West’s comments serve as a recognition of impropriety instead of a boast.

Accordingly, I assume the audience can reasonably access these oppositional codes, particularly when constructing a biographical critical approach. In doing so, I acknowledge many

Kanye fans - known to be “superfans,” or those fans extremely interested in the construction of meaning (Greene, 2018) - will, typically, actively seek out oppositional codes readily available to them. Or, in simpler terms - those who listen to music like to discuss and debate the meaning of said music. Condit’s (1989) suggestion that oppositional codes are only useful when they balance a consensus interest with rhetorical and biographical evidence becomes critical to defining criteria for how oppositional codes are defined in the critique of West’s music.

Ergo, there are a few reasonable criteria that can then be defined as to whether or not an oppositional code should be considered critically in a biographical or neo-Aristotelian critical approach of a song. For the purposes of this paper, these codes are self-defined and intuitive.

 The oppositional code is public, or readily available to the audience instantaneously

 The oppositional code is recognized, or posited/agreed upon by multiple individuals

These public and recognized codes can appear on Genius, YouTube, written magazines and journals, or any other media form. For the purposes of this paper, the theories and interpretations the author posits will be somehow negotiated or supported by pre-existing interpretations of the music. New and possible interpretations can and will be introduced, but they will be limited in scope and recognized as unavailable or not useful to the assumed audience. Such a concession grounds the paper in a rhetorical gravity - ergo, each oppositional or dominant interpretation presented must fit the criteria presented in this section.

14 The Work-Pleasure Ratio in Decoding a Text

The paper’s assumption that the collective audience of Kanye West’s music is civically and culturally informed proves useful when considering the work-pleasure ratio in decoding a text. To address Condit’s concern that individuals may lose interest in significantly decoding a text, the assumption reasonably implies that seeking out oppositional and dominant interpretations of ye is not tedious, time-consuming, or boring to the individual audience. Rather, such an “obsessed” group of “superfans” may enjoy seeking out meaning in the music (Greene,

2018), and assess a certain significance to the lyricism and musicality of the artifact. This simple fact justifies the serious academic inquiry into the possible interpretations of the music, and the usefulness of each type of critical approach.

Having acknowledged this, there are sensible limitations to the work necessarily required to reconstruct and analyze every available interpretation of the music. Though Bitzer (1968) is correct in claiming that rhetoric is situational and intentionally pragmatic (pp. 3-4), Kanye

West’s work is inherently rhetorical and has a codified message or meaning - like other music artifacts, West expresses meaning. Knowing that no individual is capable of understanding 100% of the biographical or historical context surrounding the birth of a message, the author aims to apply the reasonable person standard when considering whether a particular fact in a critique is: unknown to the audience, too tedious to seek out, and/or irrelevant to the critique.

Accordingly, each chapter and critique of ye will directly address these three questions.

Each chapter will contain a justification for why certain biographical elements can and/or should be assumed to be known to the audience, and whether or not the act of seeking these facts out is something an individual could be reasonably assumed to do.

15 The Repertoire of Available Texts

Condit (1989) hesitates to conclude all members of a rhetorical audience possess the proper tools and familiarity with certain issues to meaningfully decode messages. She claims:

In sum, the strongest evidence about the actualization of audiences’ abilities to decode messages to their own advantage comes from studies that select audiences or conditions in which we would expect the received to be relatively advantaged as opponents to the message producers…[media artifacts]11 disseminates and legitimates, in a pleasurable fashion, a political vocabulary that favors certain interests and groups over others, even if by no other means that consolidating the dominant audience by giving presence to their codes. (pp. 111-114)

This dominant presence creates a considerable influence of the narrative presented by the author of music. However, such a narrative may contain hidden responses and arguments to pre- existing music within a genre. For example - in “I Thought About Killing You” (2018), one may elect to interpret the song as a response to Jay Z’s first song in 4:44 (2017) titled “Kill Jay-Z,” as many fans suggested on twitter. West and Jay Z experienced considerable disagreements in the past both professionally and personally, with many of their quarrels occurring publicly.

These potentially “hidden messages” could be expressed other mediums that could be laced with meaning from Kanye West - tweets, Instagram photos, videos, interviews, public appearances, etc. The popularity of his social media accounts seems to suggest that the ordinary consumer of his music (and certainly any “superfan”) would be relatively familiar with the actions he takes in the public sphere. At the time I wrote this, over 28 million people followed his twitter account (“Kanye West,” 2018) - many of which are likely his fans. His Instagram,

11 The original text reads “television.” In this instance, and per her analysis, Condit (1989) asserts that rap music fits the “genre” of abortion and television that she analyzed. Therefore, the same principles and conclusions can apply. Just as abortion was widely televised, and those broadcasts presented a dominant encoding of the abortive situation, rap music has presented a dominant encoding of political and social messaging. Of particular interest to this paper, Kanye West’s recent biographical conditions severely contradict the dominant encoding of messages. Thus, I answer the question: how does an audience decode his music in light of this? 16 when activated - he frequently deactivates it - once boasted over 3.6 million followers.

Understanding such, this paper fails if interpreted as a string of loose-connections connected to form conspiracy theories about the music. Conversely, the paper succeeds if read as a serious consideration of whether the meanings and expressions made publicly by and about West can be legitimately separated from his musical and artistic expressions.

To viably consider this question, I must define the characteristics that would comprise intertextuality within the genre in which Kanye West releases his music. Or, to speak more simply: how can I define criteria to prevent conspiracy-grade interpretations? How can I truly know when Kanye West deliberately references another rapper? Kate Skow (2015) compares hip-hop consumptions between academics and fans, speaking in “The intertextuality of rap and hip hop”:

The hip hop and rap community today is a lot like a community of scholars who either argue about the validity of certain theories who either argue about the validity of certain theories or praise each other endlessly in a circle jerk of stuffy academia. Except that, you know, hip hop and rap is a lot more fun to listen to than the academics. (para. 4)

She continues to list examples of intertextual instances in hip-hop and rap. She discusses those instances in which rappers clearly reference, respond, and construct meaning from other works:

Artist’s build on each other’s work like scholars. 2Pac once sang “the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice” in his song ‘Keep Ya Head Up.’ Ludacris said it again in ‘Sugar.’ And now Kendrick Lamar has a song called ‘The Blacker The Berry.’ Kendrick himself is now famous for his song ‘Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe.’ Rae Sremmurd, in their 2015 song ‘This Could Be Us’, have the lyric: “Killin’ someone’s vibe should be a fuckin’ crime”...when a concept is lauded by the community, it is returned time and time again in subsequent works...with every release, there is a continuation of a dialogue; you can, of course, enter the discussion at any time you want, but to truly understand the contribution of one song, you need the framework that the community has built. (para. 5- 6)

17 Skow’s (2015) conclusions support the assumption that the richer critique emerges from a civically and culturally informed audience. I assume West’s fans’ follows these historical conditions, given West’s history for provocative remarks and public controversy - whether through his 2005 comments about George Bush, his 2013 release of “Blood on the Leaves,” or

2018 declaration that “Slavery….seems like a choice.” In many ways, West and controversy intersect at every angle, with fans left in the wake to make meaning of all it.

Accordingly, I must define what ‘counts’ as intertextuality when critiquing the music. For the purposes of this paper, intertextuality will be more concretely defined using the principles described in Julia Kristeva’s (1980) landmark novel Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. As Hannah Jacobmeyer (1998) argues in Ever After: A Study in

Intertextuality, “no written or spoken utterance can possibly be free from the influence of (all) other texts” (para. 3). In this way, the previous utterances and textual inscriptions within the hip- hop community must have some sort of influence on the decoding of the message, and this decoding surely varies between individual members of the audience based on their familiarity with other hip-hop messages and artifacts (such as songs, albums, interviews, etc.). Though,

Jacobmeyer (1998) notes that postmodern influences have created a more intentional band of writers and artists who more consciously choose to incorporate hypo-texts12 and intertextual occurrences than those writers of previous periods. In other words, modern artists are more likely to intentionally use intertextuality as a tool in their works (para. 5-11).

Where, then, lies the repertoire of the assumed consumer of ye (2018)? Any assumption will work in relative terms, but an assumption of one’s literacy must be made and consistently

12 Defined in this paper, a hypo-text is defined as an earlier text and/or artifact which is the inter-text in a subsequent piece of literature/art. 18 applied as a point of reference in order for a comparative analysis to yield any statistically significant results. Therefore, little justification for the selected assumptions made about the audience’s repertoire, and the criteria defined to identify whether or not a component of Kanye

West’s artifacts can be considered intertextual. The following devices will be considered instances of intertextuality in my critiques:

 Samplings of particular audio clips, songs, lyrics, etc.

 Reasonably understood allusions

 Lyrics directly used in another song, with a reasonably implied intent

 Deliberately referencing to another artist and/or artifact

Accordingly, I will provide a brief commentary on the viability of the assumptions made regarding the identified intertextual elements in a given critique at the conclusion of each chapter.

The Historical Occasion

The historical occasion of ye (2018) lies center to any biographical interpretation of the album. Condit (1989) rightfully notes that in historical studies, “scholars can never go back and get the kind of data that would meet the tests of quantitative-style knowledge claims” (p. 115).

However, having lived through the release of the album and closely followed the biographical conditions surrounding it, I aim to incorporate as much quantitative and evaluative information as possible. The ordinary listener, held to a reasonable standard, also has access to heaps of quantitative data: the amount of streams of a particular song, the ratings of said song, the amount of views of a specific article, the number of upvotes on a comment, etc. Such can be used to assess the popularity of certain artifacts and the likelihood that an ordinary consumer of hip-hop would be familiar with the ideologies presented within them. 19 The bottom line is simple: critiques and decodings that ignore and/or directly contradict the historical occasion of the artifact must be rejected by a reasonable audience. Doing so may implicitly elevate the utility of an extrinsic critical approach when compared to an intrinsic critical approach, in that the intrinsic critique may prove useless because it sparsely considers a biographical context. To address possible contradictions within popular interpretations arising from each critical approach, each chapter will include a “Viability/Truth” analysis assessing whether or not there are clear biographical conditions that affect the credibility of a particular interpretation.

QUESTION 3: THE IMPROPER CRITICAL APPROACH

Implying that there is one improper way for a hip-hop consumer to criticize music is biased. Other rich critical approaches exist - feminist critical approaches, marxist critical approaches, genre critical approaches, etc. Barthes’ (1967) paper hints at this end, suggesting that biographical critique may qualify as a truly improper mechanism of critical approach. Yet, this may not be the conclusion of this paper. This paper aims to identify methodologies so grossly and illogically applied to hip-hop consumption that it would simply not make sense to pursue.

To justify the assertion that a comparative framework only utilizing intrinsic and extrinsic critical approaches most adequately considers the interests of a hip-audience, criteria must be developed for evaluating the validity of each critical approach. I employ an intrinsic and extrinsic critical approach in this paper: neo-Aristotelian criticism and biographical criticism. In

Charles Redding’s (1957) landmark paper “Extrinsic and Intrinsic Criticism,” Redding examines 20 and compares tenants of both biographical and neo-Aristotelian critical approaches. The discourse communities in rhetorical and literary studies certainly changed since Redding’s publication in Western Speech in 1957; what he refers to as intrinsic criticism is very much understood by a modern audience to mean rhetorical criticism. What he calls extrinsic criticism has taken on a number of titles and specificities - historical criticism, biographical criticism, etc.

The scope of each lens is a frequent subject of disagreement, so for the purposes of this paper, I will define the rhetorical criticism using a neo-Aristotelian lens and the biographical criticism using a polysemic and conflict-driven lens.

DEVELOPING AN INTRINSIC CRITICAL APPROACH

Aristotle’s surviving thoughts from his theory of literature, are presented in Poetics (circa

330 B.C.). To truly appreciate and understand Aristotle’s intentions and theory of literature, one must review the source directly. However, due to historical limitations in recovering a full- version of the Poetics, one must also examine the critical reception of the Poetics and how its fundamental ideas have shaped intrinsic critical approaches.

Beyond Poetics, Aristotle speaks at length about his mechanisms of rhetorical criticism in

Rhetoric. To Aristotle, the proper rhetorical criticism begins with an evaluation of the context of the rhetorical artifact (most often a speech). To do this, there are three contexts that should be evaluated: the rhetor, the occasion, and the audience. Aristotle refers to them in Part 3 as

“speaker, subject, and person addressed.” The rhetor is the creator of the artifact being evaluated.

Aristotle warns against an overreliance on the biography or character of individual rhetor - what is more significant to him is the reason an artifact is created, the motivations involved, and the 21 preferences and characteristics of the audience being motivated. Aristotle also spoke of the three means of “effecting persuasion” in Part 2 of Rhetoric, which says:

The man who is to be in command of them [the three means of effecting persuasion] must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically [logos], (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand that emotions-that is, to name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited. To this end, valuable and essential means of criteria in the Aristotelian critical approach include: the rhetor, the occasion (limited in scope), the audience, ethos, logos, and pathos.

The next principles of neo-Aristotelian critical approach include the rhetorical canons, as proposed by Cicero: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. These well-regarded canons seek to explore how an artifact was created and whether or not it was presented to an audience effectively. Table 1 effectively situates these elements into the hip-hop context.

Though most neo-Aristotelian critical approaches tend to be inherently rhetorical,

Aristotle’s Poetics also advances relevant criteria for consideration and critique of rap music.

Many consumers consider rap music lyrics poetry (Caplan, 2014), and Poetics emerged as one of the first comprehensive analyses of the nature of poetry. In section I, part I of Poetics, Aristotle speaks to the more critical components of poetry: imitation, music (through flute and lyre), plot, representation, rhythm, tune, and meter. Many of these components can be criticized in West’s work via the criteria set out in Rhetoric. For example: tune, rhythm, and meter can be considered as a form of delivery - especially considering the rap album is seldom actually performed “live,” but rather, through the earphones or speakers on a cell phone, computer, or radio. Or, one can consider the “plot,” in all of its nuances discussed in Part II of Poetics, as a particular arrangement of facts - as discussed in Rhetoric. Because the hip-hop genre cannot be cleanly assigned to the realm of poetry or rhetoric, it is necessary to merge the innumerable relevancies, 22 relations, and applications between Poetics and Rhetoric in order to create the most appropriate method of critique based on Aristotle’s theories of literature and persuasion.

Despite a close reading of Aristotle, few typical consumers of hip-hop music could likely recite the five rhetorical canons, or a single line from Aristotle’s Poetics. Perhaps they would shake their heads in confusion if I were to ask, “Do you know what the intrinsic proofs are,” stifled by the term ‘intrinsic.’ Accordingly, grounded in this paper’s aim to find the most useful critical approach for a modern hip-hop audience, these terms and mechanisms are typified and classified in more casual terms below. In each neo-Aristotelian critique, I will evaluate Kanye

West’s music using the following criteria outlined in Table 1.

23 Table 1. Components of the Intrinsic Critical Approach Evaluating ye (2018)

Aristotelian Concept Criteria Section Title

The Rhetor Who is the speaker in this Persona song?

The Occasion Why is the song written? Purpose

The Audience Whom is the song written for? Audience

Ethos Is the song consistent with the Consistency textual persona presented?

Logos What message does the song Content create?

Pathos Is the song emotionally Pathos arousing?

Invention How is the artifact built? Design What components are fundamental?

Arrangement Is the order and structure Plot effective? How does the plot appear?

Style Is the language and tone Style effective? Word choice?

Memory Not applicable13 Not applicable

Delivery What is the quality of the Production Value sound?

Each section title warrants its own analysis. The conversions from typical Aristotelian principles to section titles are designed to take the theoretical rationale for criticizing a rhetorical artifact and convert the concept to more adequately fit a critique of a hip-hop album, rather than

13 Because the delivery of hip-hop music differs from the delivery of a typical speech, memory becomes a useless variable. Ye (2018) is being criticized as a hip-hop album that is pre-recorded, rather than a live delivery of the music. It becomes insignificant to consider memory for this reason. 24 a speech. These criteria adequately evaluate ye (2018) in a way consistent with neo-Aristotelian critical approaches put forth by Baird & Thonssen (1948) in “The Development of Standards for

Rhetorical Appraisal,” and a this type of critical approach can answer the three guiding questions of this paper: which types of critical approaches prove most useful to the hip-hop consumer?

How can and should the listener construct meaning from Ye? Are there any improper ways in which to consider the music?

DEVELOPING AN EXTRINSIC APPROACH

Edwin Black’s (1970) The Second Persona diverges from the typical neo-Aristotelian critical approaches that occupied the rhetorical discourse community’s most prominent publications from the early 19th century until the 1970’s. Black addressed the hesitance to render moral judgement within the discourse community on rhetors and artifacts alike: “it is through moral judgements that we sort out our past...that we disclose the pre-cursive patterns that may in turn present themselves to us as potentialities, and thus extend our very freedom” (p. 109).

Aristotle, as Black saw it, “firmly placed rhetoric into the instrumental category” (p. 110), allowing rhetoricians and mass communication scholars to view the act of discourse as neutral, amoral, and tool-like. To Aristotle, the rhetoric itself was a means to an end - the end could be morally judged, but the means can and should not.

To address this particular problem, Black turns to biography. He asserts “discourses contain tokens of their authors. Discourses are, directly or in a transmuted form, the external signs of internal states” (p. 110-111). These phenomena occurred in rhetoric and mass communication just as literature divulged from a traditional overreliance on biographical critical 25 approaches, with Barthes publishing The Death of the Author in 1967. Wayne Booth (1961), another well-known rhetorician, had argued in The Rhetoric of Fiction that all narrative is a form of rhetoric, and suggested that there may actually be tangible differences between the persona the author puts forth and the author himself (Booth, as cited in Black, 1970: p. 111). This diverged from traditional biographical criticism, preoccupied with reading a literary artifact in light of the author’s real-life experience.

Some marriage between the second persona and a strictly biographical critical approach seems to be the most useful methodological approach to criticizing West’s music in light of his biographical conditions. Certainly, the rapper’s decision to legally change his name to ye three months after the album released (“Kanye West: Rapper changes…”, 2018) suggests that West may have not only presented a second persona, but adopted it.14 This metamorphosis complicates the demand for an appropriate critical approach to dichotomize the neo-Aristotelian methodology proposed for criticizing the artifact intrinsically. West announced his decision on twitter:

14 In relation, the streaming era enables West to consistently remaster and re-release music. For example - Emmanuel (2016) notes that West made several changes to The Life of Pablo (2016) after its February release date, through June 2016. 26 Figure 1. West Renames Himself 'Ye' on Twitter

West is no stranger to expressing himself artistically and politically via social media.

However, the intertextual nature of his recent commentary - whether through interviews clarifying his intentions with the album artwork of ye, or his book “Break the Simulation” that he is writing via separate tweets - suggests the album can be read in light of his biography, and West welcomes this sort of critique; perhaps even longs for it.

Thus, an appropriate biographical critical approach accomplishes three main tasks. First, the methodology will be applicable to the physical characteristics and differences between the literary artifact and the hip-hop artifact (often rhetorical). This is necessary to address West’s ostentatious use of media to encode messages to different audiences. Second, the critical approach will not only allow for explanations between literature and rhetoric, but too can be applied in the 21st century technocracy. The intersection between social media and the performance identity is a relatively new landscape for rhetorical scholars and has yet to find a home in its own discourse community or academic journal. Finally, an appropriate biographical methodology will provide a distinct and contradictory critical approach to the intrinsic approach.

This provides starkly different interpretations of the album that can be usefully compared. The aim of this paper is not necessarily to suggest that the totality of an intrinsic or extrinsic critical 27 approach is most useful to the audience - rather, a successful analysis will identify the variables and/or unique components of each critical approach most useful to the modern hip-hop audience.

In a genre characterized by a unique connection between youth and artist, it seems important to recognize that a unique author exists that created an artifact in the reality we inhabit.

Jackson Benson (1989) writes in Steinbeck--A Defense of Biographical Criticism:

It is our sense of a writer, a person, behind the text that gives the text its meaning. Even when the identity of the writer is unknown, we respond with the expectation that we can reach out to find some basis of commonality. One of the most important functions of literature is to provide evidence that in our thoughts and feelings we are not alone. A machine might say the words, but we would know that the machine lies. A real author behind the writing encourages a belief and trust, the kind of trust that is necessary if literature is going to challenge us to expand our sympathy and understanding in difficult ways. (p. 109)

Benson’s argument perfectly captures the charisma and charm of West’s most personal album, ye. At times poignant, raw, and personal, ye allows the audience to imagine and see some authorial persona - whether real or adopted - that attempts to respond and explain biographical conditions.

Most biographical critical approaches are not grounded in any methodological foundation or consistency. The underlying connection between most biographical critiques is that they all attempt to decode the artifact using biographical details. Accordingly, formulating a semi- consistent or useful framework of criteria for extrinsic critique remains difficult, especially when attempting to analyze each individual song and the totality of the album. The most useful methodology could be to examine each artifact in reference to a thematic intrapersonal conflict - whether topical, procedural, or relational (Hocker and Wilmont, 2018, pp. 76-86) - to address reoccurring themes of the work alongside deeper decodings. Common themes of ye (2018) include West’s mental health, relationships, identity, and politics. Based on West’s eclectic and 28 acclaimed oeuvre and biography, Table 2 summarizes the different thematic approaches used in each extrinsic critique to evaluate the possibility for interpretation of ye (2018).

Table 2. Components of the Extrinsic Critical Approach Evaluating ye (2018)

Approach/Theme: Content:

Mental Health Can meaning be extrapolated based on West’s recent diagnosis and rejection of bipolar mania? How does the artifact’s interpretation for the audience change in light of his commentary on mental health?

Relationships How do West’s relationships with friends, family, and other rappers define and/or dictate an interpretation of his music? Are any of the artifacts a response to relational concerns he may have?

Intertextuality How is the music a demonstration or performance of intertextuality? How can certain lines, samples, and sounds be decoded?

Identity How is West’s music a demonstration of persona? How is West’s identity performed through the artifacts?

Viability/Truth Is the narrative believable? Does the content of the artifact square with biographical conditions?

Oppositional Codes What sort of oppositional codes exist for the ordinary consumer of this music? Are the interpretations presented in a biographical critical approach accessible to the individual in the audience?

Work-Pleasure in Interpretation Does the work involved for the ordinary individual consumer outweigh the pleasure?

Politics How is the work a response to an individual’s political preferences? How can the work be decoded in light of the author’s political actions and motives?

29 The four themes of politics, identity, relationships, and mental health are partially motivated by Hocker and Wilmont’s (2011) proposed four types of goals in an argument: topical

(politics, mental health), relational (relationship), identity (identity), and process (not applicable).

These themes emerge out of a simple hypothesis: ye (2018) details an inner struggle and conflict of Kanye West from 2016 to 2018, and acts as a response to public criticism of his conduct. West attempts to tell a story about why he did what he did - the variables motivating his performance of identity. This hypothesis materializes from credible reports that West drastically changed the lyrical content of the album following his controversial slavery comments (Colemann II, 2018), and must manage his brand to continue to stay relevant and sell music. Despite his well- documented affinity for innovation, West remains bound to his audience and their perceptions of him. West, like other artists, should need to balance artistic intent with more practical considerations, like profitability – though West has been vocal in his opposition of this idea.

The critical approach will also address the three more significant limitations of individual decoding discussed by Condit (1989): viability, the work-pleasure balance, and oppositional codes. Additionally, the extrinsic critical approach will specifically address instances of intertextuality, and how they inform and strengthen critiques of each individual theme. An extrinsic critical approach to this effect can answer the three guiding questions of this paper: which types of critical approach prove most useful to the hip-hop consumer? How can and should the listener construct meaning from Ye? Are there any improper ways in which to consider the music? Intrinsic approaches may discover subtler, new decodings less apparent than an extrinsic approach provides, given its implicit focus on textual evidence. However, extrinsic approaches provide an equivalent value through new added context, which enable both the critic and consumer to reconsider the message of the music. As presently defined, the methodology of 30 the neo-aristotelian and biographical critical approaches vary sufficiently to produce a meaningful analysis of the most useful forms of intrinsic and extrinsic critique of the album ye

(2018).

Arguments Against Other Approaches

It is important to acknowledge the wide range of critical methodologies that have been published and discussed amongst rhetorical and literary scholars. I selected a biographical and neo-Aristotelian critical approach to specifically avoid the problems detailed in this section.

Critiques of this nature better evaluate ye relative to my broader concerns with authorship, biographical conditions, the limits of polysemy, and the utility of theory for the ordinary hip-hop consumer. The critical approaches include narrative, metaphoric, genre, pentadic, cluster, ideographic, feminist, generic, and generative approaches. Sonja K. Foss (2009) details the methodologies of many of these genres in Rhetorical Criticism, which provides an appropriate framework for evaluating when each approach should be applied.

Few of these frameworks were applicable to this paper. Narrative criticism is focused on the narrative elements of a piece; and though ye has narrative elements, the album is not by nature asking for its readers to make meaning out of daily human experiences. It’s also interesting to note that narrative critique (as defined in Rhetorical Criticism) and its evaluative elements are very literature-centric. The oral and musical mediums require a critical approach that is very flexible to delivery, audience, personality, sound, etc.; evaluative elements of the narrative critical approach include setting, characters, narrator, events, audience, and theme.

These elements are more conducive to an analysis of a longer piece of work; such a framework may be useful in analyzing the entirety of ye (2018), but not each song individually.

Additionally, though ye (2018) definitely contains narrative elements, the album itself contains 31 more of a biographical narrative than anything; accordingly, these elements will be analyzed through the methodology defined in Table 2, which is more specific and appropriate to the research at hand.

Genre approaches, also developed and proposed by Aristotle, aren’t as applicable to

West, as he often breaks the traditional conventions and notions associated within a genre.

Certainly, Bitzer’s rhetorical situation still applies. An invariable amount of contexts and characteristics shape the discourse in rap music; ye is no exception from these overwhelming forces. For example; all of the songs on ye feature a chorus, hook, and individual verses. This structure is a result of the rhetorical situation, which Bitzer defines as “the context of persons, events, objects, relations, and an exigence which strongly invites utterance; [the invited utterance] ... is in many instances necessary to the completion of situational activity” (p. 4-5).

Still, the biographical critical approach outlined in Table 2 certainly asks whether ye (2018) responds to the rhetorical situation of events surrounding Kanye West and the rap genre.15 But as an extrinsic methodology, a genre approach typifies and isolates in a way that limits the individuality of an artifact.

Mikhail Bakktin (1986) speaks at length about the unequal nature of genre approaches, claiming “not all genres are equally conducive to reflecting the individuality of the speaker in the language of the utterance, that is, to an individual style” (pp. 90-91). A genre approach to rhetorical criticism is unnecessary to my research, as the relevant elements of a genre approach - specific authorial intent, speech plan, and speech will - manifest themselves in an appropriate

15 I conclude that because of his desire to constantly change the hip-hop genre and recurring public controversies, West intentionally responds to his rhetorical situation. Accordingly, certain genre considerations exist (such as the inclusion of spoken word free-verse in “I Thought About Killing You,” disrupting the typical genre-d introduction of a rap album) and are accounted for, but are not primary considerations. 32 extrinsic criticism and subsequent analysis. Additionally, the genre approach is more commonly utilized in literary studies, where the more monotonous physical characteristics of a book (size, text font, length, words as the only communicative medium) differ greatly from the incredible variation and creativity emerging from a musical oeuvre where an individual can write, produce, and record a song with full creative freedom over its lyrics and sound.

Gendered and feminist critical approaches are unequivocally unrelated to the content of ye. In fact, some feminist scholars would likely rebut the ideologies and attitudes towards women that West espouses in “Violent Crimes” (2018). West most certainly expresses a minority narrative through his recent work - widely hailed as irregular and unjust - ridding the need for a purely ideological critique.16 A dramatistic pentad, as discussed by Burke (as cited in Foss,

2009), could possibly prove useful to the well-read scholar, but much lesser so to an ordinary rap music consumer. Syllabic variables often pale in comparison to other components of sound. The litany of other critical approaches is strictly irrelevant and unpopular with the ordinary hip-hop audience, so this paper moves forward with the methodologies posited in Tables 1 & 2.

16 Though West’s music certainly presents ideological controversy in light of his recent political outbursts, these controversies are better accounted-for through a biographical lens. An ideological criticism may fail to consider the biographical expressions of his ideology, focusing strictly on a lyrical interpretation of ideology. This fails for several reasons - but the most obvious of which occurs in “I Thought About Killing You” (2018). Without the context of West’s life and other intertextually-linked songs (Like “Kill Jay-Z”), West’s true ideology cannot be understood. This begets to the larger purpose of this paper - should the author be killed - but regardless, my biographical critical approach, accounts for ideology in a more significant way. 33

Chapter 3

THE STORY OF SAINT PABLO

BIOGRAPHICAL ANTECEDENTS TO YE

Ye is the eighth studio album of acclaimed American rapper Kanye West, who legally changed his name to ye shortly after the release of this eponymic project (“Kanye West: Rapper changes…”). West and his entourage wrote the entirety of the project in the month prior to its

June 1, 2018 release (Garvin, para. 1). In the words of Garvey (2018), “Kanye West’s stint in

Wyoming created an album born from chaos for chaos’ sake” (para. 1).

But how did we arrive at this piece? West’s public persona slowly degraded between the release of The Life of Pablo (2016) and the eventual release of ye (2018). West recorded multiple psychiatric visits to hospitals in Los Angeles for what he later described as manic-depressive episodes, abruptly canceling his Saint Pablo tour in November 2016 following “a stretch of erratic and angry behavior” (McDermott, 2017, para. 1). During an on-stage rant, West publicly declared he “would have voted for Donald Trump,” shocking some fans despite West having met with Trump to discuss his hometown of Chicago over lunch in Trump Tower on December 13.

2016 (Horton, 2016, para. 4-7).

Such distinct political allegiances were rare for such a highly prolific rapper. Most rappers espouse generally liberal political leanings through their music, and West was met with much backlash for expressing his conservative ideologies. West received almost universal criticism from his community for his political musing, though some - such as Chance the Rapper 34 - rushed to his support, claiming “Black people don’t have to be democrats” on twitter.17 Kim

Kardashian West added “He’s a free thinker, is that not allowed in America? Because some of his ideas differ from yours you have to throw in the mental health card? That’s just not fair. He’s actually out of the sunken place when he’s being himself with is very expressive.”18

In this chapter, I will explore the political, mental health, relational, and other dimensions in which West made waves leading up to the release of ye. Any proper biographical criticism will account for these biographical antecedents, so relevant events will be thoroughly documented in subsequent chapters. Because of the narrative arch of the album, I will explore the antecedents to this project in chronological order starting with West’s childhood and adolescence to provide readers the full context and climate of West’s devolution from the public sphere. In the words of Kanye West’s deceased mother in her book Raising Kanye (2007),

“Undoubtedly, who Kanye is today has a great deal to do with the way he was brought up, his exposure to the world, his relationship with his parents, the impact of his grandparents...family and friends, the hard work of his team, the drive within him, and most of all the goodness of

God” (p. 2).

CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE

Kanye West is an American producer, rapper, and fashion designer who played a critical role in the success of other recording artists in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s as a producer

(Kautz, 2018, para. 1). West is the son of a preeminent Black Panther Ray West and Chicago

State University Professor of English of Donda West, who taught creative writing and other

17 Accessible via this link. 18 Accessible via this link. 35 artistic curriculum (para. 2). He moved to New York City in the early 2000’s to begin producing music for Rock-A-Fella Records, for whom he would later release music. He worked on Jay-Z’s

Blueprint (2001), a critically acclaimed album.

West struggled to rise to prominence as a rapper - rather than producer - because of his largely middle-class background. He had few connections to his father, who divorced his mother in 1980, but did grow up in the Chicago suburbs (Castro, 2018, para. 6). Roc-A-Fella records expressed concern that West’s disconnection from the “hood” denied him credibility as a rapper.

At the time, hip-hop and rap music was largely isolated to predominantly lower socioeconomic status African-American youth and young adults. West’s competing identities partially influenced the style of rap he would pioneer in the genre, largely avoiding themes of violence and gang-life that characterized the genre.

Critics generally points to several pivotal moments in West’s childhood that influenced his personality and eventual impact on the hip-hop genre. Though this is no historical project, it is important to understand these childhood antecedents because hip-hop superfans are largely aware of these events. Any quick visit to r/Kanye on Reddit reveals fan’s urgency to criticize his music on the grounds of his childhood, encouraged by his mother to pursue his creative interests and life characterized by raw, artistic expression.

During his childhood, West’s family came from modest financial means. At many points in his life, his father failed to help provide for the family. West once recounted to Complex magazine, “I remember he was in vacuum cleaner sales,” reminiscing on his father’s odd jobs he held down throughout the year (Sakellariou, 2018, para. 12). West lived with his mother throughout the year, and his father throughout the summers. He recounts on Graduation’s (2007)

“I Wonder”: 36 I don’t know, I just want it better for my kids And I ain’t sayin’ we was from the projects But every time I wanted a lawaway or a deposit My dad’d say “when you see clothes, close your eyelids.” We was sort of like Will Smith and his son In the movie, I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout the rich ones Cause every summer, he’d get some Brand new harebrained scheme to get rich from And I don’t know what he did for dough But he’d send me back to school with a new wardrobe.

Donda West later recounted that despite his father’s shortcomings, and in-and-out presence in West’s life, his father “helped him develop sophisticated tastes and become culturally rich” (Sakellariou, 2018, para. 22).

From ages eight to ten, West briefly lived with his mother in China, as she traveled for her work as a university professor (Sakellariou, 2018, para. 25). He learned to speak Mandarin and reportedly enjoyed the experience. He loved Chinese cuisine - later in life, he once ordered

Chinese takeout from jail using his one phone call rather than calling a loved one to post bail

(Sakellariou, 2018, para. 29).

By all accounts, West has never been a one-trick pony - “entrepreneurial” understates

West’s personality and interests. At five years old, he started writing poetry (Sakellariou, 2018, para. 37). As a thirteen-year-old, West used to charge other schoolchildren to watch him breakdance (Sakellariou, 2018, para. 32). He also began charging local musicians for the beats he was producing. In a 2009 interview with Details, West admitted that he began producing beats because he needed soundtracks for the videogames he was working on (to presumably sell):

My game was very sexual. The main character, was, like, a giant penis. It was like Mario Brothers, but the ghosts were, like, vaginas. Mind you, I’m 12 years old, and this is stuff 30-year-olds are programming. You’d have to draw in and program every little step - it 37 literally took me all night to do a step, ‘cause the penis, y’know, had little feet and eyes. (Cady, 2009, para. 7)

West began selling his music as a teenager, eventually turning down a full scholarship from Chicago’s American Academy of Art where he had been recruited to continue his passion for painting, in pursuit of his career as a producer, (Sakellariou, 2018, para. 37). Just one short year after graduating from Polaris High School, West dropped out of Chicago State University to move to New York and produce beats for Rock-A-Fella records (Sakellariou, 2018, para. 8). He later explained his rationale in a 2004 interview to Ebony Magazine, claiming “I dropped out of school because I wasn’t learning fast enough...I learned from real life better.” Explaining to

MTV two years before the album debuted, “The name of my album is called The College

Dropout. All that’s saying is make your own decisions. Don’t let society tell you, ‘This is what you have to do.’ Society told me, ‘Man, don’t move from Chicago.’ People told me to stay in school, this music is this, this music is that’” (Sakellariou, 2018, para. 44).19

West also self-disclosed that he suffered from a pretty severe sexual addiction starting when he was twelve years old, though there are no other conclusive sources to confirm this.

Cady (2009) playfully notes when analyzing the behavior, “That actually sounds more like normal behavior than a full-blown sexual addiction, but if Kanye says he was a sex addict then he was probably the greatest addict to have ever been addicted to sex in the history of sexual studies” (para. 7).

Yet, in her limited experience with his father and his step-mother, West’s step-mother recounts him as generally mild-mannered and respectful to others. In a 2016 interview, she

19 I should note that from an early stage in his career West imposed a sense of authority over his music and how its contents were to be interpreted, perhaps suggesting he would personally rather consumers critique his music using biographical antecedents than purely intrinsic critical approaches. 38 claimed “[i]f he ever had a tantrum it would not last long and he would go back to being a good boy again.” Biographer Barbara Sheen claims in her book Kanye West that despite his intermittent presence in his life, “[Ray West] influence helped Kanye to develop a unique perspective on the world around him. Moreover, Kanye inherited his father’s creativity and artistic talent” (as cited in Castro, 2018).

RISE TO FAME

As a teenager, West began recording verses for local artists. He recorded his first verse with rapper Grav in 1996, eventually recording five features with artists for whom he produced beats between 1999 and 2001 (“The Complete History Of Kanye West Guest Verses,” 2012). He received notable attention for his beats and features with Jay-Z and Talib Kweli, eventually convincing Rock-A-Fella Records to release his first single “Through the Wire” (2004) following a cataclysmic car accident during which he almost lost his life. He released multiple mixtapes - The Prerequisite (2001), Get Well Soon… (2003), and I’m Good… (2003) - via CD while waiting for his big break with the record label.

As a single, West’s “Through the Wire” was released on October 22nd, 2004 to create hype for his forthcoming album The College Dropout (2004). Critics widely lauded the track as a success, with critic Andy Kellman (2004) noting: “Whether or not it was intended, the song perfectly aided West’s sculpting of dual-status as underdog and champion, keeping one foot in the underground while another remained in the mainstream” (para. 1). The track remained on

Billboard 100’s charts for 21 weeks, peaking on Valentine’s Day in 2004 at 15th on the list

(“Kanye West | Chart History,” 2018). 39 The College Dropout (2004) released on February 10th, 2004 to massive critical appeal and sales. The album peaked at #2 on Billboard and sold over 3,300,000 CDs (“Kanye West |

Chart History,” 2018). Fairfox (2014) notes that at the time, The College Dropout (2004) changed hip-hop’s direction as a genre:

The College Dropout’s story made Kanye West a star almost instantly...the album spoke to the concerns of everyday people at a time when Hip Hop icons pretended to be immortal. Songs like “Spaceship” and “Last Call” captured hearts and minds, while “All Falls Down” confronted materialism without judging anyone that was susceptible. By the fall of 2007, Kanye would dethrone 50 Cent as Graduation [(2007)] outperformed Curtis [(2007)]. (para. 3)

The impact of The College Dropout (2004) can never truly be quantified. Hip-hop - and other genres of music broadly - is mutable and immutable, with artists attuned to others’ releases and susceptible to mutual influence within the genre. Still, The College Dropout (2004) and

Kanye West did things differently: he bridged the gap between hip-hop’s underground and mainstream artists, having worked with and producing beats for both (Fairfox, 2014, para. 5); he embraced and incorporated spirituality into his music (Fairfox, 2014, para. 4); he cemented his multi-million dollar coalition with rap superstar Jay-Z (Anwar, 2014, para. 4); and Kanye West virtually invented major sampling, using twelve unique samples and enlisting twelve big-name vocalists to supplement his own mixing and rapping.

In the coming years, West would release several multi-platinum albums, each more captivating and unique than the last - Late Registration (2005), Graduation (2007), and 808’s and Heartbreak (2008). Donning his pink polo t-shirt, West lamented about the fashion industry at a performance at Webster Hall in 2004: “No one would give me a deal...maybe it’s because of what I had on...I guess they judged a book by its cover” (as cited in Woolf, 2016). As he relished in commercial success - each of his next three albums debuted at #1 on the Billboard U.S. 40 Charts, with Late Registration earning a triple-platinum rating from the Recording Industry

Association of America (RIAA) (“Kanye West | Chart History”, 2018) - West simultaneously changed the aura and direction of hip-hop music. He received a whopping 32 Grammy nominations and twelve Grammy awards during his first four years as an artist, including awards for best new artist, best R&B song, best rap song, and best rap album (“Kanye West | Artist,”

2019). No stranger to controversy, West epitomized the future-soul experimentalism that would later influence super-artists Drake, Future, Lil’ Wayne, and Nicki Minaj.

LIST OF MAJOR CONTROVERSIES PRIOR TO FALL 2016

West involved himself in a number of notable controversies following The College

Dropout (2004) but prior to the release of The Life of Pablo (2016). These widely-publicized blunders are unequivocally condemned by almost every non-Kanye fan in the universe. Some stark supporters rushed to his defense, occasionally braving almost universal condemnation in defense of their favorite artist. Zola Zingithwa (2018) of The Sunday Times explains this phenomena by suggesting West enjoys the controversy:

West knows he is controversial. He knows people dismiss him as a deranged blabber- mouth and although this image bothers him, he also uses it to his advantage. He says and does things knowing they will cause a stir, which he then leverages to promote his work and that of those around him. He also seems to be aware it is only when he makes outrageous statements that the world stops to listen to [a] man who has referred to himself as Yeezus. And we do listen. (para. 11)

West understands his experience differently. He makes several clear attempts in ye

(2018) - his most personal album to date20 - to explain away his seemingly erratic behavior in the

20 Perhaps - with a particular emphasis on perhaps - second to 808’s & Heartbreak. 41 public sphere. To usefully understand any of his fans’ critiques of his music, an independent observer must understand the context of his ill-mannered behavior and his self-stated motives for partaking in each blunder,21 so they can become better informed for a critique of ye (2018).

George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People

Houston-based hip-hop group The Legendary K.O. wrote an entire song entitled “George

Bush doesn't care about black people” after Kanye West famously blurted the line during a 2005

NBC Concert for Hurricane Relief. West’s initial commentary proved moderate, though certainly political, and expressed his stoic and organic hatred for the media:

I hate the way they portray us in the media. When you see a black family, it says they’re looting - you see a white family, it says they’re looking for food. And - you know - it’s been five days, and you know because most of the people are black, and even for me to complain about [it], I would be a hypocrite because I tried to turn away from the TV because it’s too hard to watch. I’ve even been shopping before giving a donation. So now, I’m calling my business manager to see what is the biggest amount I can give...and just to imagine if I down there, [because] those are my people down there. (Shockroc1, 2006, 0:00-0:14)

Then, after Mike Myers delivered his on-cue monologue, West diverts from his own, claiming “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Visibly shocked, Mike Myers and the cameraperson exchange glances before the video cuts to another scene. NBC elected to edit the

West Coast airing of the broadcast - only viewers from the East Coast were able to view the comment live. West stood by his comments in a 2007 interview NBC’s Nightline

(dailybackground, 2007, 0:52), but later apologized to Bush, who eventually forgave him. Bush spoke doggedly of West’s outburst, calling it the “all-time-low point” of his presidency

(Eltagouri, 2018, para. 12).

21 I.e. - the independent observer must understand how the orindary Kanye fan regards - and potentially excuses - these acts. 42 West Interrupts Taylor Swift at the Grammy Awards

During the 2009 MTV Music video awards, West interrupted freshman artist Taylor

Swift while she delivered her acceptance speech for the Best Female Video award. West ran to the stage, asked Taylor for the microphone, and blurted: “Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you,

I’m going to let you finish, best Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all-time” (Alessandro

R.C., 2013, :57). As a result of universal backlash for his comments, West spent most of 2009 out of the public eye, attempting to rebuild his reputation (Kautz, 2018, para. 5). Almost one year after West made the comments, he apologized to Taylor Swift for a second time via twitter, tweeting dozens of times throughout a two hour window. Some of his apologies were humble - others, not: “I’m sorry, Taylor,” “When I woke up from this crazy nightmare I looked in the mirror and said GROW UP KANYE….I take responsibility for my actions,” and bizarrely, “I wrote a song for Taylor Swift that’s so beautiful, and I want her to have it. If she won’t take it then I’ll perform it for her. She had nothing to do with my issues with award shows. She had no idea what hit her. She’s just a little girl with dreams like the rest of us. She deserves the apology more than anyone.”

West referenced the famous incident in multiple tracks over the next decade, though his track for Taylor was never released. He raps in “Famous” from The Life of Pablo (2016):

From all my south side n****s that know me best I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex Why? I made that bitch famous I made that bitch famous.

Taylor Swift famously rebuked these lyrics, having a spokesperson announce in February of 2016 that “Kanye did not call for [her permission to use the above lyrics], but to ask Taylor to release his single ‘Famous’ on her Twitter account. She declined and cautioned him about 43 releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message” (Young, 2016, para. 2). Her claims eventually proved to be false - Kim Kardashian West released a video of Kanye explicitly asking

Taylor Swift for her approval, and her granting it to him. She says “I really appreciate you telling me about it. That’s really nice...It’s all very tongue-and-cheek either way” (Abad-Santos, 2016, para. 5). All of these events transcended following a 2016 acceptance speech in which Swift threw subtle jabs at West for his 2009 comments. West finally issued a series of tweets about the matter, included below as Figure 3. Taylor submitted a response to her response in Figure 4.

Regardless of the perception of who “won” the conflict, the incident greatly damaged West’s reputation for years. 44 Figure 2. West Calls Out Taylor Swift on Twitter Over 'Famous' (2016) Drama

45 Figure 3. Taylor Swift Responds to 'Famous' Drama on Instagram

Sway in the Morning Interview

During a 2013 interview with Sway Calloway on Sway in the Morning, West made some particularly ambitious remarks regarding his lasting impact and legacy as an artist. Around the same time, West embarked to enter the fashion industry. In his interview, Sway presses him on why West faces so many difficulties breaking into the fashion industry, and the media published several articles detailing the absurd soundbites. West responds with several rants and introductions, some of which included the following quotes: “I’m standing up and I’m telling you - I am warhol. I am the number one most impactful artist of our generation;” “I am

Shakespeare in the flesh;” “Now who’s going to be the Medici family, and stand up and let me create more;” “Or do you want to marginalize me until I’m out of my moment;” “We all slaves;” and “You ain’t got the answers Sway! I’ve been doing this more than you” (hotnewhiphopde,

2013). 46 ANTECEDENT CONDITIONS TO YE

Unsurprisingly, West accounts for most of these blunders through public statements about his actions, twitter, or songs he released following the events. West ambiguously references needed prayers for his actions in “Ultralight Beam,” not being worried about

“everybody saying something” in “Father Stretch My Hands,” and claims that “no matter how hard they try, we never gonna die!” in “Famous.” He speaks further about his wife’s sex tape and

Rob Kardashian in “Highlights,”22 his cousin who stole his laptop23 and tried to release nude videos of West in “Real Friends”24 and “No More Parties in LA,”25 and addresses popular media speculation as to his mental health on “Saint Pablo.”26 In each of these songs, West somehow refers to the biographical antecedents preceding the album, and signifies some part of his attitudes and opinions on these matters.

Accordingly, my research must examine the antecedent biographical conditions preceding the release of ye (2018) in an effort to understand the breadth of possible allusions

West could be making in his most recent project. West released few singles27 between dropping

The Life of Pablo (2016) and ye (2018), providing him little platform to speak publicly on his

22 In the track, West raps: “I bet me and Ray J would be friends / if we didn’t love the same bitch” and “Blac Chyna fuckin’ Rob, help him with the weight.” 23 There’s conflicting reports on this story. The Daily Mail reports that West’s cousin seconded the story that West gifted the laptop to a different cousin in 2012, not realizing that West had sex tapes on the laptop. Other versions of the story speculate that the aforementioned cousin actually stole the laptop in 2015. Either way, West settled with the cousin for $250,000, avoiding further legal action. 24 Derived from the verse: “I had a cousin that stole my laptop that I was fuckin’ bitches on / Paid that n**** 250 thousand just to get it from him.” 25 Derived from the verse: “As far as real friends, tell my cousins I love ‘em / Even the one that stole the laptop, you dirty motherfucker.” 26 Derived from the verse: “People tryna say I’m going crazy on twitter / My best friends’ advice was to stay low.” 27 Of the singles and few features West released during this time – “Champions” (2016) and “Glow” (2017) particularly - West makes no mention of the major biographical antecedents I document, deviating from his past tendency to directly address his mistakes through his music. 47 recent concert and twitter rants, hospitalizations, and beefs with other artists. Many of these antecedents can be accounted for through the music.

The Paris Robbery and Subsequent Fallout

On October 3rd, 2016 several robbers stole millions of dollars from Kim Kardashian

West at gunpoint in the No Address Hotel during Paris Fashion week (Corinthios, 2018, para. 2).

West was performing live at a concert when he got the call that Kim had been robbed, and he canceled the show and much of the remainder of the Saint Pablo Tour to spend time with his family. A short month and a half later, West’s personal doctor reportedly called emergency services to involuntarily admit Mr. West to the hospital on November 22nd, 2016 for what he described as “temporary psychosis as a result of sleep deprivation and dehydration” (D’Zurilla,

2016). TMZ obtained a copy of the 911 recording discussing the incident, with People magazine having quoted a source claiming West was “physically exhausted” and felt like he was under

“spiritual attack” (as cited in D’Zurilla, 2016).

Following several elongated rants at his San Jose and Sacramento concerts, West devolved into his latter state. Interestingly, West’s bipolar disorder failed to capture the public imagination at this time. Similar to when Lil’ Wayne was hospitalized in 2014 and 2016, many pundits rushed to criticize Mr. West as “crazed” and “exhausted.” Joe Coscarelli (2016) of the

New York Times partially attributed West’s breakdown to his work-a-holism, citing concerns over West’s release of “The Life of Pablo,” presentation of two fashion selections, and performance of over 30 shows during the beginning of the Saint Pablo Tour (para. 8-9). Later, the public would learn that the hospitalization may have resulted from opioid abuse and bipolar symptoms.

48 Liposuction & Subsequent Drug Addiction

During an exclusive interview with TMZ magazine in April 2018, West admitted to becoming addicted to opioids following a liposuction surgery in 2016. West confessed “I got liposuction because I didn’t want y’all to call me fat, like y’all called Rob [Karadashian] at the wedding, and made him fly home before me and Kim got married” (Drysdale, 2018). His doctor prescribed West opioids after the surgery, which he took despite some of the pleas of members of his internal team, who told him the drug “kills genius” (para. 4). West attributes this drug addiction - among other contributing factors - as a major reason why he was hospitalized in

November 2016. In an interview on Charlamagne the God’s The Breakfast Club show, West claimed that “fear, stress, being in control, manipulation, like being a paw in a chess piece of life” (para. 9) all contributed to his paranoid episode, in addition to the reemergence of the feud between Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian West and his wife’s robbery in Paris (para. 10).

The problem worsened when West left the hospital. According to his TMZ interview, “I went from taking two pills to taking seven...so the reason I denounce, why I drop those tweets about everything, because I was drugged the fuck out” (para. 7). In addition, West attributes his feud with Jay-Z as a motivating cause for his addiction. Jay-Z and Beyoncé failed to make an appearance at Kim Kardashian West and Kanye West’s 2014 wedding, recently rapping in their song “FRIENDS” off their joint album Everything is Love that “I ain’t going to nobody for nothin’ when me and my wife beefin...I don’t care if the house on fire, I’m dying, n***a, I ain’t leavin’” (Thompson, 2018). West rebuked during his interview with Charlamagne the God: “I understand they were going through some things, but if it’s family, you’re not going to miss the wedding” (as cited in Calvario, 2018, para. 13).

49

Cancellation of the Saint Pablo Tour & Subsequent Lawsuit

Regardless of the clearly muddied reasons West’s doctor hospitalized him for eight days in November 2016, West canceled his remaining 21 concerts. The insurer for the Saint Pablo

Tour - Lloyd’s of London - believed that West’s degradation was fueled by “his use of prescription and illegal drugs,” and was therefore his fault (Ross, 2017). They refused to pay

West for the remainder of his tour dates, which sparked a lawsuit from West’s encampment and a countersuit from the insurance firm. A judge in California dismissed the case in February 2018 after both parties requested so - Lloyd’s of London and West’s attorney Howard King refused to comment beyond claiming the dispute had been resolved “amicably” (BBC News, 2018).

Return to the Public Eye & Twitter Usage

At several points throughout his career, West deleted and reactivated his social media accounts as he felt a necessary desire to express himself artistically. On Valentine’s Day in 2018,

West briefly reactivated his Instagram to send his wife a message - “HAPPY VALENTINES

DAY BABE” (Cohen, 2018). He posted several dozen photos of couples - some of which, ironically, were of famous couples who are no longer together. The next day, West deactivated his account.

Beyond this brief hiatus, West had not made a major appearance on a social media account since May 5th, 2017 when he deleted all of his social media accounts (Ashcraft, 2018). 50 On April 14th, 2018 he received a warm welcome back to Twitter from founder @Jack, as seen below.

Figure 4. Twitter Founder @Jack Welcomes West Back to Twitter

West’s return to social media parallels the release of five albums from his record company G.O.O.D Music. Five days after returning to social media, West tweeted album release dates for several prominent musicians including himself, Kid Cudi, and Pusha T. In the days prior, West called his twitter account Break the Simulation, a book in which West claimed to be writing in “real time.” All of these tweets and expressions were initially met with open arms by a twitter following that was once tripling every hour. His most pertinent tweets during his first week return to Twitter can be found below:

Figure 5. West Announces His New Book on Twitter, Break the Simulation

51 Figure 6. West Announces Pusha T's Forthcoming Album Daytona

Figure 7. West Announces Teyana Taylor's Forthcoming Album K.T.S.E.

Figure 8. West Announces a Collaborative Album with Kid Cudi, Kids See Ghosts

52 Figure 9. West Announces Nas's Forthcoming Album Nasir

Figure 10. West Announces His Eighth Studio Album ye

Each of these albums were highly anticipated, spaced just one week apart. Pusha T would later nickname the rapid-album release “The Surgical Summer” in his diss-track of rapper Drake,

“The Story of Adidon” (2018).

Controversy and Subsequent Fallout

In the coming days before the release of these albums, West embroiled himself in controversy because of his tweets and public appearances presenting controversial and deeply offensive views on several social issues. West began on April 21st, 2018 by tweeting some seemingly abstract and nonsensical thoughts, including “we have freedom of speech but not 53 freedom of thought” and “The thought police want to suppress our freedom of thought.”28 West progressively became more arrogant - on April 22nd, West tweeted his first reference to slavery:

“there was a time when slavery was the trend and apparently that time is still upon us. But no it’s a mentality.” He bragged about his company, Yeezy, claiming “we have 160 positions to fill by the end of this year...Yeezy will hit a billion dollars...it is the 2nd fastest growing company in history....It is a unicorn on its way to becoming a decadorn.”

Over the next few days, West tweeted hundreds of times, with each progressively more abstract and seemingly erratic than the last. On April 27th, 2018 West dropped a single entitled

“Lift Yourself,” with the title seeming to imply that the Black community must “lift themselves” because they were no longer physically enslaved. Below is a small sampling of the types of messaging West espoused prior to his controversial TMZ interview, each detailing a unique message of love, arrogance, critique, possibility, awe, and optimism:

28 For more, visit Mashable’s Nicole Gallucci’s guide on West’s tweets leading up to the infamous TMZ interview, accessible via this link. 54 Figure 11. West Engages in a Tweeting Spree Prior to his Infamous TMZ Interview

55

56

“Slavery Was a Choice” - The Ultimate Devolution

Alongside his increasingly erratic twitter behavior, West doubled-down on his pro-Trump and conservative rhetoric, while espousing increasingly controversial views on race relations.

Prior to his praise on Twitter, West had met with the presidential-elect in Chicago’s Trump 57 Tower in 2016 to discuss race relations in Chicago. West debuted his “MAGA” hat, which many in the rap/hip-hop scene regarded to be a symbol of hate and oppressive impositions on the Black community. Below are two of his tweets before his eclipsing TMZ interview, one of which drew the attention of the president. According to Marcus Gilmer, several of West’s most controversial tweets have been since deleted, partially because of Kim Kardashian West’s objections.

Figure 12. Donald Trump Thanks West for his Support

Figure 13. Kim Kardashian West Asks Kanye to Clarify his Support of Trump

58 West continued to tweet parkland survivors, dropped another song (“Ye vs. the People”, 2018), and tweeted a photo of Jan Adams, the surgeon who botched Donda West’s plastic surgery just

48 hours before she passed, and expressed a desire to use his mugshot as his next album cover

(which resulted in a kind and humble open letter, accompanied by a cease and desist).29 Those tweets have since been deleted.

Finally, West took to Twitter to address the comments he made during an exclusive TMZ interview on May 1st. Some of his most notable comments include: “people say they want us to feel free, but they don’t really want us to feel free”; “I felt a certain freedom in doing something that certain people tell you not to do”; “I just love Trump”; “People try to minimize me to [just]

‘artist,’ ‘hip-hop,’ ‘black community’”; “When you hear about slavery for 400 years? That sounds like a choice”; “I like the idea of prison because slavery goes too far into the idea of

Blacks.” In the video, available online as entitled Kanye West Stirs up TMZ Newsroom over

Trump, Slavery, and Free Thought | TMZ, staff member Van Lathan berates West following his comments, and further accuses him of only espousing these opinions because of the privilege he possesses as an independently wealthy man.

The public responded to West’s comments on Twitter using the hashtag

“#IfSlaveryWasAChoice” (Judge, 2018). His comments were widely publicized, with Judge

(2018) claiming a reader should have heard them “unless you have been under a rock” (para. 1).

Will.I.Am took to twitter to express that West’s comments “broke his heart,” and John Legend personally texted West to reason with him. West posted those text conversations on Twitter, which have seen been deleted (Framke, 2018). In response, John Legend issued the following

29 A full copy of the letter can be found via this link. 59 tweets,30 and later eventually came to peace with West in the months that followed (Singh,

2018):

Figure 14. John Legend Rebukes "Slavery was a Choice" Comments

30 At the time of this thesis’s publication, the twitter link for John Legend’s tweets is still live. Access it via this link. 60 As several prominent celebrities issued public statements and interviews condemning

West’s comments - whether they be pro-Trump messages or his comments from the TMZ interview - West continued to produce and write lyrics for the Surgical Summer projects. While public respect for him tanked - a CNN poll conducted by SRSS reported that West’s favorability tanked to 23% and 52% of the country believed Kanye really believed that slavery was a choice

(Sparks, 2018) - West reprioritized his twitter musings to primarily entail themes of individualism, rather than social or political commentary. West tweeted on May 15th, 2018 “for anyone whose tried to text or call me in the past 2 weeks I got rid of that phone so I could focus on the albums.”

Rewriting ye

West revealed in an exclusive interview with TMZ on June 3rd, 2018 - just two days after his album ye (2018) released - that he had scrapped the entirety of the album’s lyrics following the TMZ interview. West elaborated:

I completely re-did the album after TMZ. We just sat there and really honed in on the words because no it’s all headlines, it’s like every bar can be used...you know, there’s even bars we had about that...I took a bar off the album. It was just too sensitive. It was about that topic. And I just let go. I’m gonna just chill right now, let’s just keep making some music...you know, I feel like the best thing I could do is sit there, and go in that studio, and keep chopping that thing that only I know how to do and only me and my crew know how to do. (Paine, 2018)

West debuted the album to a listening party of celebrities and rappers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on Friday June 1st, 2018. Though the livestream on WAV experienced several technical difficulties, fans could access the experience and atmosphere of the release themselves (“Kanye

West’s new album ‘YE’ had its first run…”, 2018).

61 Rap Music “Beef” Prior to ye’s Release

Several prominent voices in the hip-hop and rap communities made ‘sneak diss’ references to Kanye West prior to the release of ye (2018), his most autobiographical album yet.

Jermaine Cole (colloquially known as ‘J Cole’) wrote a song dissing West in late 2016 entitled

“False Prophets” shortly following West’s involuntary committal to the UCLA psychiatric ward.

Prior to his committal, West had additionally dismissed the Black Lives Matter movement in

November 2016 (“False Prophets”, 2016).31 Cole wrote the following about West:

Ego in charge of every move, he’s a star And we can’t look away due to the days he caught our hearts He’s fallin’ apart, but we deny it Justifying that half ass shit he dropped [The Life of Pablo], we always buy it When he tell us he a genius but it’s clearer lately It’s been hard for him to look into the mirror lately There was a time when this n**** was my hero, maybe… Nobody with the balls to say something to contest him So he grows out of control Into the person he truly all along, it’s startin’ to show…

Later, Jay-Z addressed West’s Sacramento rant in which West berated Jay-Z for not attending his wedding with verses on his track “Kill Jay-Z” (2017). In the track, Jay-Z makes several overt references to West, which were left virtually unaddressed by both parties after the album released in June 2017:

You walking around like you invincible You dropped out of school, you lost your principles I know people backstab you, I feel bad too But this fuck everybody attitude ain’t natural But you ain’t the same, this ain’t KumbaYe But you got hurt because you did cool by ‘Ye

31 It is important to recognize the general consensus in the rap community that Jermaine Cole intentionally and overtly refers to Kanye West in the lyrics of ‘False Prophets. This is not my interpretation – this is fact, as determined by the genre. 62 You gave him twenty million without blinkin’ He gave you twenty minutes on stage, fuck was he thinkin’? “Fuck wrong with everybody?” is what you sayin’ But if everyone’s crazy, you’re the one that’s insane. (“Kill Jay-Z”, 2017)

The “[h]e gave you twenty minutes on stage” lyric clearly refers to West’s Sacramento rant on

November 20th, 2016. “You dropped out of school, you lost your principles” may allude to

West’s debut album, The College Dropout (2004). Finally, Genius users suggest that “You gave him twenty million without blinkin’” refers to a feud between Jay-Z and West regarding the release of The Life of Pablo (2016). In their analysis, West had mentioned considering signing to

Apple music and giving Jay-Z - his co-founder of TIDAL32 - $20 million in exchange for the freedom to release his album on other streaming platforms (“Kill Jay-Z”, 2017). Prior to their ongoing feud, Jay-Z and West were best friends. Together, they released an album entitled

Watch the Throne (2012) and were involved in joint-venture TIDAL. As detailed earlier in this chapter, West got his start in the industry by producing for Jay-Z’s albums.

Several less prominent celebrities in the industry voiced disapproval during his most major public disintegration shortly after the release of The Life of Pablo (2016). Rappers including Hopsin33 and Ray J34 expressed serious discontent with West’s worldly allusions and

32 TIDAL is a “global music and entertainment platform” bringing artists and fans together through “unique music and content experiences” (“What is TIDAL?”, 2019). The venture boast joint stakeholders and ownership amongst prominent recording artists, including Beyoncé, Shawn Carter (Jay-Z), Kanye West, Rihanna, and Usher, among others (Flanagan, 2015). 33 Hopsin raps in “Hop is Back” (2013): “I gotta problem yo’ / I was ecstatic to buy Yeezus / But i burned it first, heard it and snapped in 5 pieces / Man, Kanye on that bullshit / That’s why the paparazzi made that n**** hit his fucking head that’s what that fool get / You think you God now, you half assin’ rap little fuckin’ bitch? / Perhaps you suffered brain damage back when you had that accident” (Banks, 2016). Hilariously and unironically, Hopsin uses a homophobic slur to slander West for his godly allusions in “I Am A God” (2013). 34 Ray J raps in “Famous” (2016): “Look at the family, they walk around proud / All because she had my dick in her mouth / Wanna have me in bed while you fuckin’ your spouse / Shows that you still a rat and your man Mickey Mouse” (Banks, 2016). 63 infrequent disses. These lyrics were largely left unaddressed by West, who most likely ignored them given the irrelevance of the artists voicing these grievances.

Conclusion

Any rich and valuable extrinsic interpretation West’s ye (2018) requires strict scrutiny of

West’s biographical antecedents. In evaluating the critical cultural approaches inherent to this project, I turn to the most integral antecedents to the album ye (2018). While this chapter does not completely cover West’s already-exhaustive list of controversies,35 it provides an orienting schema for a layperson’s scrutiny.

35 Notable exclusions from this chapter include West’s album Kids See Ghosts (2018), several of his tweets from April 2018 to May 2018, and other interviews and albums he has produced and given throughout the years, particularly those surrounding the release of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010). 64 Chapter 4

“I THOUGHT ABOUT KILLING YOU”

When decoding “I Thought About Killing You” (2018), I encourage the reader to listen to the song themselves. Many expressive contexts and subtleties emerge, and without a proper orientation to the timbre and decadence of the music the reader does themselves a disservice in attempting to understand what they have not yet heard. Further, I encourage the reader to listen to the music while reading, as it may help them understand the climate and atmosphere I most certainly fail to capture with words.

The track marks the beginning of Kanye West’s ye (2018). The song entails two-minutes of spoken word poetry, expressing the catharsis of emotions associated with homicidal and suicidal thoughts. West repeats several key verses, including “I thought about killing you,” “I thought about killing you, premeditated murder,” and “I think about killing myself, and I love myself way more than I love you.” A stark beat switch marks the transition from somber free verse to a spurred braggadocio of West’s invincibility as an artist. Peaking at number twelve on

Billboard the week of June 16th, “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) directly addresses issues of mental health, foreshadowing the tumultuous catalogue of songs to come.

INTRINSIC CRITICISM

Persona

The lyrics in “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) detail the struggle of a contemplative depressant. Lyrics such as “The most beautiful thoughts are always besides the darkest” characterize the narrative voice as an individual who struggles with juxtaposed internal conflicts 65 - life and death. The persona presented not only contemplates the life of the individual he seeks to kill, but himself: “I love myself way more than I love you / and I think about killing myself.” the tone of the narrator changes from a high-pitched screech to a low, melancholy when discussing his own insecurities and desire to kill himself. He cares about the person he wants to kill - “You’d only care enough to kill somebody you love” - and later raps that he and the aforementioned individual “go way back / to when [he] had the braids and [individual] had the wave cap.”

The persona presented seems to escape his ruminating thoughts through a beat switch.

Rising with a crescendoing beat, the persona raps “I called up my loved ones / I called up my cousins / I called up the Muslims / said I’m ‘bout to go dumb.” Presumably, “‘bout to go dumb” refers to the persona’s subsequent outburst of emotion. As the beat switches, the persona goes from saying “I’ma make my name last, put that on my last name” to “[i]t’s a different type of rules that we obey.” Following the switch, we learn the name of the author “Ye, ye, ye, season, n****,36 we Old Bay.” Ye directly refutes the dramatistic thoughts of the freeverse, claiming

“Even when I went broke, I ain’t break,” and “Sorry, but I chose not to be no slave.” Each of these lines heavily imply Ye conquered some level of mental, physical, or economic adversity, of which he now freely and openly resents. His flashes of anger and sharp rebuttals to his previous free-verse reveal a deep internal conflict and a stark change in attitude. In many ways, the persona presented before and after the beat switch are two entirely different people: the former characterized by self-loathing and hatred, the latter characterized by a bitter sense of superiority and a strong self-concept.

36 These asterisks depict the use of a common racial epithet used in hip-hop music. I will continue to use these asterisks throughout the completion of this paper to signify the usage of aforementioned epithet. 66 West includes three pronoun-based characters in the song: Ye, you, and they. The narrative elements of the song characterize Ye, but you and they are only described through Ye’s biases. You is the object of Ye’s resentment and anger, whether that resentment be with Ye or

You. It appears that Ye and You were once friends who fell apart - Ye claims that despite loving himself more, he “loves [you],” and that “you’d only care enough to kill somebody you love.”

His premeditated thoughts suggest a conflict separated the two. Though the duo “go way back,”

Ye compares you to Buckwheat and asks “How you gon’ hate?” suggesting that the conflict may have been public. Conversely, though also a target of Ye’s contempt, they seem to have always been in conflict with Ye. Following a rise in Ye’s tone and audible anger, Ye claims “They wanna see me go ape / All you gotta do is speak on ye / Don’t get your tooth chipped, like Frito-

Lay.” Earlier, Ye claimed that “they’ll say he died so young,” referring to his own anticipated death. In this sense, and in context of Ye’s drug use,37 They could either be the paparazzi or Ye’s immediate peers. There’s some textual or auditory evidence to suggest that Ye possesses any level of fame,38 but his perceptions of grandiosity may indicate that Ye believes others are overly concerned with his actions, despite his impropriety.

Purpose

“I Thought About Killing You” (2018) follows a narrative arc recounting a time Ye quelled suicidal and homicidal thoughts. It appears the author crafted this narrative to detail a

37 Ye includes several references to drug or drug use, including: “I need Coke with no rum, I taste coke on her tongue,” “they’ll say he died so young,” “got too many bad traits, used the floor for ashtrays,” “I thought I was past my Deebo ways,” and “hurt so bad, I go numb.” 38 There are two exceptions to this claim: “If I wasn’t shinin’ so hard, wouldn’t be no shade,” and “Set the NewTone of ‘em, set the nuke off on ‘em.” The first metaphor could be reasonably interpreted to either further demonstrate Ye’s grandiose delusion, or affirm that Ye is important enough to produce shade for others. The second - more interestingly - suggests Ye is the author of the song. As the author, he also recognizes he can “set a NewTone on ‘em,” producing new narratives and songs that effectively would “set a nuke off on ‘em.” The second example strongly suggests They is the paparazzi, or just people in general; and that Ye is generally popular and well-known. 67 very vulnerable and dark period in his39 life, but also to assert his new, strengthened identity, like a Phoenix rising from the ashes. The beat switch - and subsequent transformation of tone, cadence, diction, and syntax - distinguishes the two invariant identities and differentiates their motives.

Throughout the free verse narrative, Ye repeats many of his thoughts. He appears to ruminate over his conflict with You, rapping “I thought about killing you” and “I Love myself way more than I love you” matter-of-factly four times. He appears trapped within his own mind, unable to escape the paradoxes entrapping him: Several bridges interrupt his thoughts (a mhm- mhm-mhm-mhm-mhm-mhm-mhm-mhm-mhm-mhm sounds intrude two times), he exhibits paranoid characteristics,40 and the background music rotates two high pitched sounds representing paradoxical beliefs. Based on the textual evidence, it seems Ye raps these verses in spoken word to be brutally and truthfully honest with himself and They.

The theme of remaining honest to your thoughts continues through the beat switch, where

Ye boasts unapologetically of his former and future intentions. The heavy beat switch occurs after the rising free verse, with Ye’s voice rising and the beat becoming emblematic of club/trap music. Ye cusses only once before the beat switch, but eleven times after. He boasts arrogant diction, including: “N****s say they hero, mm, I don’t see no cape,” “Sorry, but I chose not to

39 Ye’s gender is not explicitly stated, though the narrative voice is stereotypically masculine. 40 Ye remains calm and collected when considering if he should kill You. However, he wonders what other people will think if he murders You: “If I was trying to relate [it; my thoughts] to more people I’d probably say I’m struggling with myself because that seems like a common theme / but that’s not the case here / I love myself way more than I love you / and I think about killing myself / So, best believe, I thought about killing you today / Premeditated murder.” Additionally, he exhibits a jarring sense of internal awareness, claiming “I think this is the part where I’m supposed to say somethin’ good to compensate it so it doesn’t come off bad.” Lastly, Ye claims “people say “don’t say this, don’t say that / just say it out loud, just to see how it feels.” Ye clearly understands the implications of his thoughts and still chooses to express them. Ye seems trapped in a paranoia - if he explains himself, he’ll sound crazy - but if he doesn’t, “they” or anybody else will not be able to understand his true motivations. It’s almost as if Ye cathartically expresses himself because he has reached a boiling point - no longer able to contain his emotions, but finally able to articulate them. 68 be no slave, “Young n**** shit , n****, we don’t age,” and “Pay the fire marshal bill ‘cause this shit done got way packed.” At no point does Ye apologize for ideating premeditated murder and shifts the blame entirely from himself. Before the switch, he admits he “[has; got] too many bad traits,” and that he called his family to let them know he’s “‘bout to go dumb” - after the switch, he makes no mention of his negative traits, instead electing to brag. The song’s structure and lyrical content strongly suggests “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) details the story of a troubled young man overcoming his suicidal thoughts by remaining honest to their grotesquery and reasserting his identity.

A second, concurring interpretation involves the audience of Ye. If Ye truly intended to kill You, as the structure of the lyrics seems to suggest, the song possibly functions as a warning or threat to You. Or, conversely, it could address the conflict between Ye and You. But this interpretation is less readily apparent and sensible than the former.

Audience

“I Thought About Killing You” (2018) resonates with a targeted, narrow audience.

Because the song details such grotesque and historically ostracized thoughts, an intended audience may be those individuals who experience these similar thoughts - whether having spoken to them, or not. Or, perhaps Ye explains the rationale for his thoughts to encourage others who feel similarly upset and disenfranchised to reclaim their narrative. Because the narrative Ye presents is not popular among other rap artists or the academies, Ye may intend to legitimize the feelings of his audience. Broader audiences exist - most Kanye fans presumably listen to the 69 song, despite having never experienced the feelings West expresses - but the lyrics and sound are still designed to appeal to a broader hip-hop audience.41

Additionally, the specific references to the characters You and They reveal that Ye potentially targeted a specific individual or industry with his lyrics. The potency of thinking about killing you, an unnamed, singular person, sends a strong message to the audience. Who could possibly be You? Is You meant to represent a genre of people? If so, what characterizes a

You? You could potentially represent the genre of person Ye describes - someone who “goes way back,” enslaves Ye,42 claims they are a hero,43 hates Ye,44 or fuel’s Ye’s depression, despite

Ye loving himself. To Ye, if the consumer of his music exhibits those characteristics, perhaps his message serves to inform them - You cannot stop Ye, or anybody like Ye, from making his

“name last.”45

Consistency

Ye’s credibility falters throughout the piece. Several questions emerge from the paradoxes presented in the free verse and second rap verse: How is the audience supposed to feel about Ye? Is what he’s expressing natural? How does Ye navigate his paradoxes? In its totality,

“I Thought About Killing You” (2018) leaves many of these questions unresolved, ultimately conferring the responsibility of answering to the audience.

41 To this end, I should note that West remains relatively consistent with the genre. Despite including a lengthy free- verse - a concept not entirely new to rap, but unfamiliar or odd to most of his audience - West does not entirely deviate from the hip-hop genre, ultimately including the typical genre traits: a heavy beat, rhyming lyricism, individual verses, and a coherent flow. 42 Derived from the verse: “Sorry, but I chose not to be no slave.” 43 Derived from the verse: “N****s claim they hero, mm, I don’t see no cape.” 44 Derived from the verse: “How you gon’ hate? N**** we go way back.” 45 The full lyric is as follows: “I’ma make my name last, put that on my last name.” This lyric - the last of Ye’s freeverse, prior to the beat switch - demonstrates that regardless of Ye’s suicidal thoughts, depression, or the negativity of You/They, Ye plans to continue building his legacy and will not be stopped. 70 Several intrinsic contradictions suggest that Ye recognizes the absurdity of his beliefs, yet still expects the audience to conform with his beliefs or “get your tooth chipped like Frito-

Lay.”46 Ye refers to his homicidal and suicidal beliefs as “bad things,” using a low-pitched auto- tune to howl “sometimes I think really bad things / really, really bad things.” Yet, he wonders

“how you gon’ hate,” confused at the prospect that someone could speak negatively about him.

In this sense, Ye appears to be very inconsistent and disconnected from the reasonable, common person. This is apparent through his grandiosity, which contributes to the delusion and juxtaposition the song explores. Though the lyrics heavily imply Ye is famous, Ye expects to people to conform to his beliefs, however unorthodox they are. While his paradoxes are consistent with his self-characterization, they remain inconsistent with an audience’s perception of a credible narrator.

Though the content of “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) matches the persona of the author presented, several portions of the piece fail to resonate with the ordinary listener of the song. Though controversial in its totality and title, the audience potentially could relate to several portions of the song. For example, many ordinary people would prefer to “make [their] name last,”47 have “been broke,”48 have “[loved] themself way more than I love you,” or even

“[thought] about killing [themself].” Surprisingly, many ordinary people do exhibit homicidal thoughts - Duntley (2005) claims between 50-91% of people experience homicidal ideation at some point. However, very few people move towards openly expressing those homicidal

46 This line - the final line of the track - claims that if someone “speaks on Ye,” they will get their tooth chipped. I interpret this to mean that if someone speaks negatively on Ye - which would include the unpopular beliefs he expresses in this song - that they would face physical repercussions from Ye. This implies a degree of expected conformity - that if you disagree with Ye, you’ll have to shut up. 47 From the line: “I’ma make my name last, but that on my last name.” 48 From the line: “Even when I went broke, I ain’t break.” 71 thoughts; thus, Ye’s assertions not only come as a shock, but too as a concern in light of his persona’s demonstrated grandiosity and paranoia.

Content

Ye presents “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) first in a seven-song album, humble and raw in its delivery, yet steeped with controversy. The song deviates from the traditional “trap music” characteristic of many other artists in hip-hop, striking a new chord of emotionality new even for Kanye West. The first lyrics - “The most beautiful thoughts are always besides the darkest” - provide a rich orientation for a continued critique of the music.

Ye frequently pauses, allowing the listener to digest his controversy. At points, he begs them to partake in his catharsis: “[you j]ust say it out loud, just to see how it feels.” In this verse, he is referring to wanted to kill a close friend or lover - somebody who Ye has known for a long time. A build-your-own adventure in its own right, the opening spoken piece is ripe with rich juxtapositions. Ye deals with the pressure of “People say[ing] ‘don’t say this, don’t say that” while just wanting to express his true thoughts - he wants to kill the object of his discontent. The spoken word piece shifts between various autotuned tones, both high and low-pitched, personifying the various identities speaking to Ye through his depression. He seems to eliminate every possible ‘sane’ or ‘normal’ path of expressing his discontent, expressing preemptive refutations, including: “[p]eople say ‘don’t say this, don’t say that’ / Just say it out loud, just to see how it feels / Weigh all the options, nothing’s off the table,” and “[s]ee, if I was tryin’ to relate it to more people I’d probably say I’m struggling with loving myself / Because that seems like a common theme / but that’s not the case here.”

Upon completion of the spoken verse, Ye commences his second verse through an unedited vocal progression, rising towards the beat switch. In this moment, Ye expresses the 72 most authentic version of how he feels following his incredible catharsis. At moments, he reflexively recounts how it felt to live in the moment of the spoken word, “I done had a bad case of too many bad days,” and “I don’t joke with no one, they’ll say he died so young.” As he progresses towards an abrupt shift, Ye reaffirms his destiny - making his name last, and dedicating himself to his next endeavors.

The song builds in energy and emotion following the beat switch. An upbeat switch provides a platform for West to adjust the speed of his verses and match the energy of the intense screaming sampled with the beat. The song builds, gradually moving from the gripping critique of himself towards declarations of Ye’s invincibility. In many ways, “the most beautiful thoughts are always besides the darkest” - Ye masterfully employs juxtaposition of a somber spoken word with an upbeat, genre-driven, ‘classic’ Kanye West verse to express that beauty lies right around the corner. To Ye, no matter how twisted or distorted your thoughts are (even those suicidal and homicidal), the most beautiful thoughts are around the corner - beliefs that you can perform for sold out crowds, choose not to “be no slave” to your darkest thoughts, and “make your name last.” “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) lends its coarse messaging to those conquering their darkest thoughts: beauty awaits you. You are not alone. Perhaps, You are Ye.

Pathos

“I Thought About Killing You” (2018) shocks in its delivery. Overall, the song provides exaggerated content: romanticizing murder, suicide, and grandiose (and somewhat unrealistic) expectations of reality. Ye appeals to his intended audience - whether You, They, or the ordinary hip-hop fan - by igniting and juxtaposing the most extreme emotions. The extremity of these juxtapositions - life and death, success and failure, friends and enemies - rouses any listener’s 73 emotions. Further pathetic appeals include profane language, threats of violence,49 and the unremitting use of pronouns throughout each verse.

Design

Free verse spoken word and human sounds drive the track’s production. Pitch-alternating human voices constitute the ‘empty air’ between Ye’s lyrics in the first verse, bombarding the audience with an unremitting expressions of the human sound. The subsequent echoing effect creates a chilling aura of the music, driving much of the emotion of the piece.

Plot

“I Thought About Killing You” (2018) testifies to a simple, yet elemental confessional: a well-known man, Ye, recounts many of his darkest thoughts and provides commentary. He speaks of his past struggles, pairing his most “beautiful thoughts….besides the darkest,” and boasting that he seriously considering murdering an unnamed You. Ye admits to his own suicidal ideation, unceasing in his candid professions. Following a beat switch, he describes calling his friends and loved ones - presumably to confess to his extreme fits of mood. He exhibits certain characteristics of mania - explaining that his world “[go]t so bright, it’s no sun, get so loud [he] hears none” and that he “[s]creamed so loud, got no lungs, hurt so bad, [he] go[es] numb.”

Quickly returning to a normal state of mind, Ye decides to rededicate himself to his goals and

“make his name last.” For the remainder of the piece, Ye maligns his “enemies,” and avowals to

“go ape” and match the energy expected of him.

49 Textual evidence of Ye’s threats include: “Don’t get socked in the mouth, you know homie don’t play that,” and “don’t get your tooth chipped like Frito-Lay.” 74 Style

The style of this piece is expressed in the Persona, Plot, and Design sections of Chapter

3. In its totality, “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) relied heavily on successive rhyme schemes and changing human sounds. In the second verse, Ye often rhymes eight, eight, seven, and five successive lyrics, rhyming with the words “dumb,” “bay,” “break,” and “back.” Ye employs parallel structures within concurrent lines, such as “[e]ven when I went broke, I ain’t break,” and internal rhyme such as “[d]rop a pin for the fade and I’m on my way ASAP.”

Overall, the style is unique and variant - providing for rich successions of unexpected wordplay and catharses.

Production Value

“I Thought About Killing You” (2018) endured one grave change since its release. Due to copyright infringement issues with the original sample, West updated the album in November

2018 to account for an unapproved sample.50 Several of the key insights regarding production value can be found in the Purpose section of chapter four. However, the track is most emblematically summarized through a heavy beat switch occurs after the rising free verse.

Following a beat and tone switch, West moves from his vulnerability to his arrogance - a two- poled theme common throughout the rest of the album.

50 Ye (2018) co-producer Adam Wolpert (@AdamWolpert1) took to twitter, claiming “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) endured “a fresh mix more leveled out w/emphasis on drums.” The tweet is available at this link. Additionally, many users took to reddit to dissect the newly updated version, released to Apple music (“[FRESH] Kanye West - I Thought About Killing You [UPDATED VERSION]”, 2018). 75 EXTRINSIC CRITICISM

Mental Health

The theme of mental health permeates throughout “I Thought About Killing You”

(2018). West repeatedly and sporadically claims “Today I seriously thought about killing you, I contemplated premeditated murder.” Understanding that West rewrote the majority of the album following his controversial interview with TMZ,51 he clearly expressed anger and angst regarding the central “you” of the song. Interesting questions emerge - who is you? How does you inform a critique of West’s mental health?

Several popular interpretations emerge - however, in a section regarding mental health, the interpretation West himself is you dominates the discussion. In an album so critically self- aware of its own bipolar condition - born out of the disorder itself, and an exemplary account of how the disorder feels and manifests - how can a listener not imagine that West could wish to kill a part of himself? The introduction to the hums a distorted “I know, I know, I know, I know, I know” - perhaps West here confesses to how much he exactly knows about these thoughts (and their consequences) because “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) is really an anthem and expression of himself and his own disorder.

Several textual and biographical conditions support this assertion. West notes the extremity of his emotions, noting “the most beautiful thoughts are always besides the darkest,” hinting at his suicidal ideation just as he confessed eight years prior on “Power” (2010).52 West spoke frequently to this theme on his twitter account, arguing that beauty and tragedy go hand-

51 During which he declared “Slavery was a choice.” 52 Derived from the lyrics on “Power” (2010): “now this will be a beautiful death / I’m jumping out the window / I’m letting everything go.” 76 in-hand. On April 26th, 2018 West tweeted “Artist transform tragedy into beauty” (Lopez,

2018).

To this end, the juxtaposition of “thinking about killing you” with loving himself53 may allude to West’s acceptance and healing journey regarding his bipolar disorder. West litters the album with themes of extremity and poles, even scribbling in abrasive green text on the album cover, “I hate being Bi-Polar / it’s awesome.” Later in the song, West comes to the resolution that he can keep going after a start beat switch - another instance of the polarity theme. He remains true to himself and the musings that characterize his personality and human condition.54

In this way, through merely recognizing and acknowledging his polar identity, and the challenges that surround it, West can finally release himself of his suicidal thoughts and be free.55 In this way, West presents himself as a self-revisionist - an example of what it means to be editing your own life, and making sense of it as you go.56

As the author, I must note that West only thinks about killing this part of himself - the mania, the bipolar disorder, whatever it may be. West has publicly refused to take medication for his disorder at times throughout his career. In October 2018, West even claimed “Those five albums that I dropped earlier were like superhero rehabilitation. Now the alien Ye is fully back

53 Critics and news media meticulously document West’s arrogance - it is no secret West loves himself, whether he declares so during his interviews, on his Twitter account, or in his own songs entitled “I Am A God” (2013). 54 Several textual (and biographical) cues support this assertion. Later in the song, West raps “Sorry, but I chose not to be no slave,” a clear reference to his TMZ interview. Interestingly enough, this particular lyric only occurs in the ‘clean’ version of the song, rather than the explicit - perhaps again asserting the theme of making sense of yourself and your condition out of polarity and chaos. 55 West later calls his bipolar disorder “his superpower” in “Yikes” (2018). In a 2018 interview with New York Times columnist Jon Caramanica, West said of artists, “We need to be able to be in situations where you can be irresponsible. That’s one of the great privileges of an artist. An artist should be irresponsible in a way - a three-year- old.” Finally, West exhibits this brutal honesty and self-reflection in claiming in “I Thought About Killing You” (2018), “See, if I was tryin’ to relate it to more people / I’d probably say I’m struggling with loving myself / because that seems like a common theme / But that’s not the case here / I love myself way more than I love you.” 56 The song itself is very confessional. West espouses several symptoms of mania and severe depressive bouts, claiming “get so bright, it’s no sun, get so loud, I heard none / Screamed so loud, got no lungs, hurt so bad, I go numb.” 77 in mode, off of medication, working out, breaking as much fresh air as possible, thinking, doing, being himself” (Hohman, 2018). He addresses the challenges he faces in his depressive states by claiming “just say it out loud to see how it feels,” which he often does in the public persona. He later claims that “nothing’s off the table,” which aligns with several of the themes presented in his Twitter book Break the Simulation.57

However, if a critic considers you as an abstract artifact - something, and not someone, that West desires to kill - West may be referring to his 2016 addiction to opioids. Though a less likely candidate - West directly addresses his opioid addiction elsewhere in the album - West could be referring to you as either side of his addiction; the West who wished to live, or the West who wished to die.58 To this end, the lyrics in the remainder of the song may represent how the depths of addiction feels (before the beat switch) or how the highs of the drug exteriorize.

Relationships

If a critic considers you as an inherently human artifact, Jay-Z emerges as the likely candidate, and “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) becomes a memorandum for the duo’s relationship. Given Jay-Z likely wrote “Kill Jay-Z” (2017) as a response to West’s (and others) criticism, West may use this opportunity to attempt to balance his love for himself, hatred for

Jay-Z, and all of the complex emotions surrounding their relationship. Later in the track, West raps “How you gon’ hate? N****, we go way back / To when I had the braids and you had the wave cap / Drop a pin for the fade and I’m on my way ASAP.” Looking elsewhere for context, a critically-informed audience can reasonably infer that Jay-Z is the subject of this reference - he once wore a wave-cap regularly in the public eye, and also goes “way back” with West (“I

57 West tweeted on April 26th, 2018 “if you feel something don’t let peer pressure manipulate you.” 58 Given that the public impression is that West is now off of opioids, it would seem more likely West would be referring to murdering his opioid addiction and living free on his own mental highs. 78 Thought About Killing You”, 2018). West then quickly moves on, claiming “They wanna see me go ape (ape ape) / All you gotta do is speak on Ye.” Clearly, West is most likely referring to Jay-

Z. Jay-Z wrote “Kill Jay-Z” (2017) in a way that “spoke on his name,” and in an album with his wife Beyoncé called EVERYTHING IS LOVE (2018), The Carters released a track entitled

“Apeshit” (2018). Earlier in the song, West admits that “I called up my loved ones, I called up my cousins / I called up my cousins, said I’m ‘bout to go dumb.” In their past peace, West likely would have called Jay-Z - however, during their ongoing feud,59 West resorts to calling others because he no longer has you in his life.

Intertextuality

This song lacks any meaningful intertextual nature worthy of discussion. Beyond the somewhat obvious allusions to Jay-Z, the song’s samples carry no meaningful interpretation, given Berlin label PAN claims West used the sample without proper authorization (Fu, 2018). In response, West simply updated the track to eliminate the sample (Cowen, 2018), and it seems

West had no desire to impose a particularly meaning through his choice of sampling beyond the effects of the beat’s sound.

Identity

“I Thought About Killing You” (2018) presents an interesting case study in extrinsic criticism because of West’s sudden authorial imposition upon its meaning. West undoubtedly identifies (or identified) an egomaniac. Whether or not critics agree with the exact definition or degree of his ego is irrelevant - his ego is irrefutable. However, for one of the first times ever,

West expressed a vulnerability and questioning of his own egomania during a series of tweets on

June 14, 2018.

59 The feud itself dates back to 2014, when Jay-Z and his wife Beyoncé made no appearance and West’s wedding. 79 Figure 15. West Rebukes his Own Infamous Ego for the First Time Publicly

80 Figure 16. West Comments on his Pride and Identity

81 To this end, “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) may refer to West’s own ego. He admits “you’d only care enough to kill somebody you love,” and clearly he loves himself just as much as anyone else.60 Clearly West struggles with his own arrogance if he released an album so fundamentally rooted in it, then tweeted thoughts questioning whether or not he was doing the right thing. The tweets could be read as the “really, really bad things” West thinks,61 or him “just say[ing] it out loud just to see how it feels.” But really, the song takes on a new meaning if the author changes one of the more fundamental biographical antecedents62 informing any extrinsic critique of the song.

Viability/Truth

To this end, it is not merely fantastical to assume an ordinary audience of this album would lack awareness of West’s recent life developments - i.e. the allusions presented in this chapter are either self-evident, obvious, or easily accessible.63 Simply put, an extrinsic criticism of “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) is not difficult for any audience, and presents new insights into several of West’s more recent controversies and feuds.

Oppositional Codes

The public record clearly corroborates West’s lyrical posits, but does not necessarily impose a particular narrative upon the song. West’s position at the nexus - whether of controversy and love, mania and depression, or genius and fool - allows for the affirmative prescription of any narrative into the song. In simpler terms, there’s so much out there that you

60 As evidenced in the line: “I love myself way more than I love you, so.” 61 Whether as a result of his bipolar disorder or some other sort of depression. 62 That being that Kanye West is an arrogant person. 63 The most popular website in hip-hop music is Genius.com, formerly known as Rap Genius. Any brief peruse of this website would illustrate several of the themes demonstrated in this chapter. However, it is important to acknowledge that some allusions may not be accessible without the website. For example, a critique of you as opioids is further “out there” than many of the other critiques. 82 can really say whatever you want, and there will probably be a dozen articles to corroborate your belief. But, at the generalizable level, the lyrics of “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) fit into a seldom-disputed fact pattern of West’s life immediately preceding ye (2018).64

Work-Pleasure in Interpretation

When evaluating the work-pleasure ratio in imagining “I Thought About Killing You”

(2018) as an autobiographical confessional, it is important to recount the public persona West presented during the time before and prior to the album. West had made headlines for years - most any Kanye fan likely would have heard of his debauchery on TMZ, or his ongoing feud with Jay-Z. Because the viability/truth of West’s narrative is believable and squares with publically accessible biographical conditions, diving deeper into “I Thought About Killing You”

(2018) is not only easy, but valuable.

Politics

West steers clear of overt political messaging in “I Thought About Killing You” (2018).

However, several subliminal, inherently political messages bleed through - for example, West makes reference to comedian Louis C.K. in the lyric “Weigh all of the options, nothing’s off the table” (Berman, 2018). In quoting Louis C.K. following the allegations of his sexual misconduct,

West combats a progressive ideology that often seeks to discredit those who align or associate with a perceived evil (Hughes, 2018).

Otherwise, West’s only remotely political remark is “Sorry, I chose not to be no slave.”

West initially released ye (2018) without this verse, telling Samantha Maine (2018) of TMZ: “I completely redid the album after TMZ…[we] really honed in on the words because now it’s all

64 Or, in other words, the songs clearly fit the broader narrative of West’s life from 2016 to 2018, and the traits (or unchanging personality characteristics) that have always been true of West (for example - arrogance). 83 headlines, it’s like every bar can be used...you know, there’s even bars we had about that...I took a [single] bar65 off the album” (para. 6). The message itself is inherently political, and offensive to a large constituency of both West and the American people.

65 Note the singular use of “a bar.” Given that this particular interview occurred prior to the release of ye (2018), and that the lyric was added during week three of the Surgical Summer - certainly an expressive and confidence-building moment in West’s career - that this line was the exact “bar” he precluded in the first release of the album. 84

Chapter 5

“YIKES”

“Yikes” (2018) is the second song on ye (2018). The song entails several choruses between three verses, then an outro. The track largely functions to entertain the consumer, but does carry certain narrative elements from “I Thought About Killing You,” particularly themes of polarity and further characterization of the authorial voice.

INTRINSIC CRITICISM

Persona

“Yikes” (2018) continues the episodic juxtapositions featured in “I Thought About

Killing You” (2018). Ye details some ‘episodes’ of some sort, where “[s]hit could get menacin’ frightenin’ find help / Sometimes I scare myself, myself.” Ye delves further into a world of drug addiction and violence, explaining that he “done died and lived again on DMT,” and felt “the type of high that get you gunned down.” He clearly exhibits acute mania in the song, going as far to claim in the final verse (“Yikes”, Genius.com):

You see? You see? That’s what I’m talkin’ bout! That’s why I fuck with Ye! See, that’s my third person! That’s my bipolar shit, n****, what? That’s my superpower, n****, ain’t no disability I’m a superhero! I’m a superhero! Aghhh! 85 Given his expressly homicidal thoughts, heightened sense of superiority, and paranoia evident in

“I Thought About Killing You” (2018), can we trust this narrator?66 What would it mean if we could not?

Regardless, Ye characterizes himself as a bipolar “superhero,” asking his rhetorical audience: “Do you know how many girls I took to the titty shop?” His exaggerated lifestyle, entangled with Russell Simmons’ prayers,67 traveling to North Korea, smoking with Wiz

Khalifa,68 and pending stints on E! News,69 is that of a super-celebrity, one who shocks his fans, but never ceases to amaze himself.70 Between bragging of how many women he can party with and detailing his lengthy drug binges, Ye finds time to give himself a brief shout out (“Yikes”,

Genius.com):

See, this is why all the bitches fuck with Ye! Fuck what they take about!... They take me on meds, off meds, ask yourself Ask your homegirl right now, “Look, you had a shot at Ye?” You’d drop everything!

Through capacious gloating and paranoid whispers, Ye cements his identity as a delusional socialite epitomized by a fundamental lack of structure and anchoring in his life. Considered in concert with the second verse of “I Thought About Killing You” (2018), “Yikes” (2018) progresses Ye’s journey through his “beautiful thoughts,” much less any real hero’s journey.

66 This question is especially important when evaluating the shortfalls of extrinsic criticism. In an extrinsic decoding, consumers may all-too-readily accept the narratives of the author as fact, when really, a rift can exist between the persona the author presents and the author’s actual life. 67 Derived from the lyric: “Russell Simmons wanna pray for me too / I’ma pray for him ‘cause he got MeToo’d.” 68 Derived from the lyric: “Uh, just a different type of leader / We could be in North Korea, I could smoke with Wiz Khalifa, uh.” 69 Derived from the lyric: “Thinkin’ what if that happened to me too / Then I’m on E! News!” 70 Derived from the lyric: “See, y’all really shocked, but I’m really not.” 86 Purpose

Intrinsically, “Yikes” (2018) furthers the narrative of Ye, and details his experience with drug abuse and frequent partying. However, it is unlikely Ye produced the track to deter the audience from using, as he frequently speaks positively of his experiences. However, Ye does use the third verse to continue to address They, as referenced in “I Thought About Killing You”

(2018) (“Yikes”, Genius.com):

I can feel the spirits all around me I think Prince and Mike was tryna warn me They know I got demons all on me Devil been tryna make an army They been strategizin’ to harm me They don’t know they dealin’ with a zombie N****s been tryna test my Gandhi Just because I’m dressed like Abercrombie

The first they refers explicitly to Prince and Mike, but the context surrounding the lyric seems to imply the second they refers to the same They discussed in “I Thought About Killing

You” (2018). Similar to in the first track, They wishes to harm West. Considering new evidence

“Yikes” (2018) presents of Ye’s mental fitness, They could refer to a number of things: those who truly do want to harm a celebrity, whether friends, family, or other rappers; the paparazzi; or, delusions, voices, and paranoia inside his mind. Ye responds by comparing himself to a zombie - the undead, which cannot be harmed. In response to “[n]****s71...tryna test [his]

Gandhi,” Ye triumphantly and energetically details his superhuman powers in the outro. His delusions suggest that Ye wishes to articulate his revelation to They, to protect himself from their negative energy threatening his newfound peace and love (Gandhi).

71 In hip-hop, the colloquial usage of this racial epithet tends to be synonymous with “people” or “person.” So, who Ye refers to in this lyric may well be the same They who he alleges have “been strategizin’ to harm me.” 87 The lyrical revelations in the outro of “Yikes” (2018) furthers the narrative that Ye believed he would address and settle longstanding conflicts with They.72 Ye asserts total and complete over his “darkest thoughts” referenced in “I Thought About Killing You” (2018), speaking in the third person and declaring “that’s my bipolar shit...That’s my superpower...ain’t no disability!” The prior line “I think Prince and Mike was tryna warn me,” likely alludes to the performing artists Prince and Michael Jackson, who the paparazzi fiercely criticized throughout their career. Ye most likely believes Prince and Michael were trying to warn Ye of the demons accompanying fame, including the drug binges, night-life, and sporadic moods swings Ye experiences earlier in “Yikes” (2018). To this point, Ye frantically responds that he’s a

“Superhero!” and expresses his excitement about the life to come. Regardless of what They try to do with him, West has his superpower - the energy and pure euphoria of his manias - to protect himself. In this sense, Ye most likely recorded “Yikes” (2018) to not only boast of his exorbitant lifestyle, but to warn They that Ye will not be stopped.

Audience

Ye allows ambiguity and room for multiple interpretations of “Yikes” (2018). Certainly one could reasonably interpret Yikes to supplement the narrative presented in “I Thought About

Killing You” (2018). In this context, Yikes could be written for either You or They.73

Conversely, Ye may target a broader audience, performing Yikes merely for the sake of entertaining his own ego.

72 There's also an interesting analysis of "That's my third person shit" to indicate that anytime Ye experiences the "dark thoughts" from “I Thought About Killing You” (2018), Ye has the superpower of using his disorder to displace himself in place in time - both protecting himself from They and Himself (and his own accompanying dark thoughts). However, this analysis is a bit deep, and not readily accessible to typical consumers of hip-hop music. 73 Within the context of “Yikes” (2018), You remains the individual West considers murdering, and They most likely is the paparazzi or the public. 88 However, a more interesting theory remains. Throughout “Yikes” (2018), Ye frequently refers to himself in the third-person. Perhaps Ye wrote “Yikes” (2018) to perform his identity as an individual with bipolar disorder. In “I Thought About Killing You” (2018), Ye provides little to no justification for the extremity of his erratic thoughts and boasts. However, Ye declares in

“Yikes” (2018) that he not only refuses to believe he “suffers” from bipolar disorder, but that his disorder is his superpower. This not-so-shocking admissions arrives at the conclusion of the track, suggesting that Ye may use the outro to explain the precarious and thorny behaviors and opinions he has presented leading to this point in Ye. Beyond a brief note in the album art,74 Ye avoids directly addressing his mental health in much of the album. By performing his bipolar identity in “Yikes” (2018), Ye can reimagine the traumatic narratives arising from time spent

“tweakin’ off that 2C-B,” being taken “on meds, off meds,” and “feel[ing] the demons all on” him.

Consistency

Ye’s asserted bipolar identity aligns with the reckless persona presented in “Yikes”

(2018). Abusing hallucinogens, frequently partying, and fantasizing about trips to North Korea characterize Ye as more of a manic figure. However, “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) details his depressive swings, revealing Ye also considered killing himself, despite loving himself more than he loves You.

In many ways, I consider the majority of each verse to be meaningless fanfare. Though

Ye’s behaviors align with the behaviors of a manic-depressive, they hardly matter in light of his unreliability as a narrator. Though the listener cannot directly point to a lie Ye tells, the extremity

74 Ye’s album art is a picture of the Rocky Mountains from a valley adjacent to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Kanye West recorded the album. Overlaying the picture, green text reads “I hate being bipolar / it’s awesome.” 89 of his juxtapositions and degree of exaggeration in his tracks suggests some of his claims are untrue. In the instance of interpreting the actions and life of a self-proclaimed manic-depressive, context matters the most. Certainly, inconsistencies and exaggerations will continue throughout the remainder of the album - but how, where, when those inconsistencies occur, matters most in interpreting Ye because they reveal the inner conflicts and tensions haunting Ye the most.75 What

Ye cannot articulate - those feelings and behaviors in which he cannot consistently and coherently explain - are revealed through the complex interplay of conflict, Ye’s narrative, and his persona.76

Content

“Yikes” (2018) produces several messages to its intended audiences. First, “Yikes”

(2018) expresses that those suffering from mental disorders routinely navigate tortured, paradoxical feelings and circumstances. By declaring himself a bipolar superhero and structuring the track as an inwards reflection of the crazy manias in each verse, Ye proves his experience makes little sense. Switching from an excited demeanor each verse to a reflexive, low-pitched tone in the chorus, the track irradiates themes of polarity and incoherence. However, the outro provides a clear answer for Ye’s contradictory feelings - he is bipolar. In this sense, Ye uses the first three verses and choruses to take his listeners on a journey of what it feels like to be bipolar

- suffering sweeping, intense changes in mood. Through capping this initially incoherent

75 In “I Thought About Killing You” (2018), Ye’s declaration that he loves himself way more than he loves You is an appropriate example of this phenomena. To the ordinary listener, Ye completely contradicts himself and is inconsistent by saying that he loves himself way more than he loves You. He immediately follows this commentary by saying “You’d only care enough to kill somebody that you love.” So, Ye leaves the audience with this inconsistent information: Ye loves you, Ye thought about killing you, Ye loves Ye, and Ye thought about killing Ye. The ordinary listener most likely will share the commonly held belief that you only kill people that you hate - however, this is not what Ye desires. This inconsistently reveals Ye’s struggle to articulate the conflicting tensions and feelings haunting him the most. 76 For example – Ye must shout that he has a superpower, even though he doesn't (technically). He also juxtaposes the extremity of his aggrandized lifestyle in the verses of “Yikes” (2018). 90 narrative with the declaration of his disorder, Ye puts a label on these feelings - bipolar disorder, or his superpower - that remarkably defines the bipolar condition exactly as he sees it: a series of incoherent and uncontrollable thoughts, actions, and behaviors.

Second, “Yikes” (2018) produces a new, non-victimized narrative of bipolar disorder to its audience. Lyrical evidence supports the assertion that Ye believes his disorder amounts to a superpower, enabling him to accomplish (or survive) all of the adventures in each verse. Despite exhibiting paranoia and suicidal thoughts, Ye proudly subscribes to the bipolar label, believing that the symptoms he disorder affords him amount to an ability to see a different and valuable perspective. In this sense, “Yikes” (2018) succeeds in communicating to its audience the incredibly positive and transformative experience manias can provide, dispelling the common stigma about bipolar disorder - that every manic-depressive is a victim.

Third and finally, “Yikes” (2018) suggests the communicative value of narrative. Despite the chaos and contradiction of the track, Ye still appears incredibly happy and in-control upon conclusion of the track. Why is this? Lyrical and textual evidence suggests Ye’s labeling of his experience is the sole contributor. Despite admitting he “scares himself” in the chorus, none of the solutions or behaviors in each verse cause the chorus77 to cease besides the outro, where he finally confesses his condition. By providing a positive narration of his experience in “I Thought

About Killing You” (2018) and “Yikes” (2018), Ye proves that reimaging one’s own condition - moving from the victim to the hero - can save your life and protect you from harm.78

77 The song begins with the chorus detailing how frightening Ye’s experience is, and that Ye is aware he needs help: “Shit could get menacin’, frightening, find help / sometimes I scare myself, myself.” 78 Suggested by the lyric: “They been strategizin’ to harm me.” After Ye declares his bipolarity and superpowers, the chorus, it’s frightening messaging, and those trying to harm Ye disappear, ending the song. 91 Pathos

“Yikes” (2018) marks the peak of emotional swings in ye (2018). From “All Mine”

(2018) and on throughout the rest of the album, Ye moves towards expressing singular moods and attitudes, avoiding the buffering the severe swings associated with bipolar disorder. “Yikes”

(2018) is the last track where Ye juxtaposes his brazen arrogance with a reflexive tone.79

Additionally, Ye employs sharp shifts in cadence when moving from chorus to verse, and verse to chorus. Other pathetic appeals include: repetition of jarring imagery (evident in the chorus and

‘tweaking, tweaking’ lyrics), sharp diction choices, and the heavy, alternating beat.80

Design

“Yikes” (2018) consists of a chorus, three verses, and an outro. The chorus reminds the listener after each braggadocios verse that Ye’s life - whether tweaking off of drugs, cheating on his wife,81 or - can get “menacin’” and “frightenin’.” Additionally, the chorus’s most interesting two words remains unanswered. How does Ye plan to “find help?” Certainly a bipolar individual would benefit from some sort of external help.

To this, Ye responds boldly: Ye is Ye’s own help. Ye transcends into the third-person, where he can speak about and to himself. Outside of his own mind and the tortures expressed in the chorus of “Yikes” (2018) and the spoken word verse in “I Thought About Killing You”

(2018), Ye confidently declares that his manias are his superpower. By reclaiming his identity as a bipolar individual, Ye can defeat They and the harm they strategize to bring him. In this way,

79 Reflexive tones similar to the chorus in “Yikes” (2018) appear later in “Wouldn’t Leave” (2018) and “Violent Crimes” (2018). 80 The beat itself features the rhythmic use of a snare drum with an adjusting velocity, a clap drum, hi-hats, and alternating high-low sample chops (Ivory Reserve, 2018). 81 Derived from the lyric: “Told my wife I’ve never seen her / After I hit it, bye Felicia, that’s the way that I’ma leave it up.” This lyrics seems to heavily imply that Felicia (a generic name) is not his wife, and that in a mania of his, Ye would tell his wife he’s never seen her before. 92 the structure of “Yikes” (2018) as a conversation between Ye and third-person Ye - who has transcended his own suffering through his manic superpowers - is fundamental to an critique of the track.

Plot

A clear plot of Ye’s spiraling descent and eventual rescue materializes through “Yikes’”

(2018) design and its expository characterizations of Ye. The colloquy between Ye’s chorus and verse personas create a decadent dialectic in which meaning emerges - only through the conflict of Ye’s inner feelings can the audience begin to understand that these feelings create a superhero out of Ye, or at least the feeling thereof. The order in which the conversation framed strategically emulates the rising crescendo and emotion of a manic meltdown that most adequately be expressed through the subtleties of particular artistic choices such as plot, order, word choice, tone, timbre, etc. It is not enough to merely tell his audience what he feels - he must show them, forcing them to experience his own back-and-forth emotions and their grave consequences.

Style

For further commentary on the style of “Yikes” (2018), view the discussions in the following sections: Persona, Purpose, Audience, and Pathos. Broadly speaking, the use of language is relatively simple, but the contract between the diction of the chorus persona and verse persona contributes most to a valuable intrinsic critique.

Production Value

The production value on “Yikes” (2018) surpasses expectations. The beat itself is simple, allowing for Ye’s cadence shifts and lyrical content to impress the audience. The beat itself utilizes a snare drum with an adjusting velocity, a clap drum, hi-hats, and alternating high-low sample chops. The chops seem to imitate two “poles,” alternating throughout the track. 93 EXTRINSIC CRITICISM

Mental Health

Mental health dominates any thematic conversation of “Yikes” (2018). One interpretation of the song details his short-lived addiction through each of his verses and the main chorus: in the chorus, West admits how out of control he was in his addictive state; in each verse, West presents unique attitudes on addiction and fame. Another interpretation posits West’s addiction as symptomatic of his bipolar disorder - his drug use and erratic behavior derives from his mania.

The chorus in “Yikes” (2018) echoes a vulnerable sentiment amongst West in an emboldened, darkened cadence: “Sometimes I scare myself.” Throughout the remainder of the song, West takes his audience through his personal struggle “tweakin’ tweakin’ off that 2C-B”82 and when his doctors took him “on meds, off meds.” The interpretation of West’s mental state from here is clear: West first wonders whether he will make it out of his addiction and drug use,83 then boasts that he could do anything (assuming he survives his mania),84 and aligns his narrative with several “great men.”85

Despite his accumulation of public embarrassments, West still embraces the delusion (or, in his opinion, reality) that he can do whatever he wants, regardless of his mental state.

82 The drugs 2C-B and DMT, each referenced multiple times throughout the song, are hallucinogenic drugs. 83 Derived from the lyrics in “Yikes” (2018): “Is he gon’ make it, TBD, huh,” “This the type of high that get you gunned down,” . Additionally, in “Ghost Town” (2018), West boasts that he’s on “one two three four five” pills at a time. Finally, the biographical antecedents to this track clearly suggest that the song involves West’s drug abuse. Though West was hospitalized in 2016 during his tour, his liposuction procedure earlier that year truly cemented his opioid addiction (Murphy, 2018). He spoke openly about his opioid use during several interviews preceding the album (especially with Charlamagne the God), and declared himself both medication and drug free on his twitter in the autumn and winter of 2018 on his twitter account. 84 Derived from the lyrics in “Yikes” (2018): “You know how many girls I took to the titty shop?”, “I still bring the bad bitches in the city out,” “We could be in North Korea,” “This is why your bitch wants to fuck with me, huh!”, and “Ask your homegirl right now, ‘look, you had a shot at Ye?’ You’d drop everything!” 85 Derived from the lyrics in “Yikes” (2018): “I think Prince and Mike was tryna warn me,” “N*****s been trying to test my Gandhi,” “I could smoke with Wiz Khalifa,” and “We could be in North Korea.” 94 Implicitly, he asserts himself - embracing his polar swings as what they are, as suggested in “I

Thought About Killing You” (2018) - and doubles-down on the public persona presented through his twitter account and various public appearances throughout 2018. West furthers this narrative in the outro, screaming the following:

You see? You see? That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout! That’s why I fuck with Ye! See, that’s my third person! That’s my bipolar shit, n****, what? That’s my superpower, n****, ain’t no disability I’m a superhero! Aghhhhh!

These lyrics undoubtedly present a defining moment in the album and in West’s mental health journey. Despite the adversity and setbacks he faced - and still faces - West believes that the polarity and extremity of his emotions and feelings constitute a superpower. Moreover, these lyrics mark the first moment West formally acknowledges a diagnosis (or reasonable public suspicion of) bipolar disorder.

The outro complicates “Yikes” (2018) by suggesting that the manic energy contained in the song derives from the disorder and not a drug. After all, while Genius attributes the choral text to represent West’s addiction, the text makes no explicit mention of drugs:

Shit could get menacin’, frighten’, find help Sometimes I scare myself, myself Shit could get menacin’, frighten’, find help Sometimes I scare myself, myself.

Accordingly, the “shit” getting menacing could be West’s manias or depressive state. In fact, while the common consensus amongst the community on Genius considers the song to be a response to West’s addiction, West’s only allusions to drugs involve hallucinogens, a drug 95 distorting reality - similar to a mania. West’s allusions to painkillers only come later in “No

Mistakes” (2018), far beyond the chronological narrative presented in the first three tracks.

Relationships

West directly references his relationship with Drake and Pusha T, maintaining his neutral position in the conflict while asserting himself as the most relevant of the trio.86 West raps in

“Yikes” (2018): “I hear y’all bringing my name up a lot / Guess I just turned the clout game up a notch / See, y’all really shocked, but I’m really not.” The conflict began when Pusha T called out

Drake for utilizing ghostwriters in “Infrared” (2018), a song off of Daytona (2018), one of the critically acclaimed albums from the Surgical Summer. Pusha T claims:

The game’s fucked up N****s beats is banging, n****, your hooks did it The lyric pennin’ equal the Trumps winnin’...87 It was written like Nas, but it came from Quentin...88 How could you ever right these wrongs When you don’t even write your songs?

Drake responded with an entire song explicitly devoted to dissing Pusha T, “Duppy

Freestyle” (2018). This marks the first introduction of West into the conflict:

What do you really think of the n**** that’s makin’ your beat? I’ve done things for him that I thought he never would need Father had to stretch his hands out and get it from me I pop style for 30 hours then let him repeat Now you poppin’ up with the jokes, I’m dead, I’m asleep.

86 Admittedly, this is the most exciting of the extrinsic pieces of the track. The Pusha T and Drake beef captured the public’s attention, with some calling Pusha T “Rap music’s greatest villain” (Setaro & Fitzgerald, 2018). 87 This is a clear comparison between Drake and Donald Trump’s rise to fame - full of empty and meaningless rhetoric, lying, cheating, ghostwriting, etc. 88 Quentin Miller used to ghostwrite for Drake, according to several sources in the industry. He wrote most of the verse for RICO, as evidenced via this link. 96 Embroiled in this conflict sits West - historically allegiant to Drake, but producing and releasing music for Pusha T - suddenly dissed and involved in a conflict he hardly asked for. West responds simply and eloquently, effectually acknowledging the existence of the conflict and claiming it may arise from his own fame, without further involving himself in any meaningful capacity. In this way, and beyond thematic critiques, ye (2018) partially functions to manage real-life relationships in the genre.

Beyond his relationship with other rappers, West still must manage his relationship with his wife. While West is known to boast erratic displays of love,89 he overtly references taking multiple girls to the “titty shop,” still bringing “the bad bitches in the city out,” and how women pursue him because he is famous.90 Kim Kardashian West appeared unphased by the lyrics - she did not issue any public comment to address them - but did note in a 2018 interview with

Entertainment Tonight (“ET”) that sometimes West did not play a song for her “until the last minute” (France, 2018). Additionally, Kardashian West admitted that “I left to go home for like two days and I come back and it was a whole new album” (France, 2018) seemingly implying that West had the creative freedom and independence to assume some narrative persona in his work.

Intertextuality

West samples “Kothbiro” (1976) by Black Savage91 in “Yikes” (2018), a track using a

Kenyan instrument called a nyatiti to produce the emblematic “poles” in the beat. “Kothbiro”

89 For example, West used his Instagram to wish Kim Kardashian West a happy Valentine’s Day in 2018 (as discussed in Chapter 3). 90 Derived from the lyric in “Yikes” (2018): “This is why your bitches fuck with me, huh / Smash, she gon’ end up on TV, huh / last thing you ever wanna see, huh.” West has explored this line of reasoning before - especially during his conflict(s) with artist Taylor Swift. 91 However, West credits Ayub Ogada in his full album credits (SMR, 2018). 97 (1976) is a “traditional”92 song lasting around six minutes. While one cannot help but imagine a deeper meaning from West’s sampling of the track, little resources or criticisms exist of

“Kothbiro” on the internet or elsewhere. It can be assumed that an American audience would have little to no familiar with the track or any of its meaning. Still, West frequently samples

African music for unique beats, as he did in “Clique” (2012) and several other tracks

(“UDiscoverMusic”, 2018).

Identity

“Yikes” (2018) functions to assert West’s identity more than any other goal. After framing his own narrative - and how West looks at himself and his situation - the track emboldens West’s own grandiose, untrue delusions. For example, no biographical indicators93 exist to suggest that West actually has a meaningful relationship with North Korea, could smoke with Wiz Khalifa,94 Prince or Mike was trying to warn him, or that the devil is “tryna make an army” against West.

The content of the lyrics hardly matter, so long as each purposefully inflates his clearly differentiable persona from reality. “Yikes” (2018) - a classic bravado in the rap genre - solicits a high-paced beat and a come-back narrative to glorify a supposed hero of his time, Kanye West.95

Though consumers may gather deeper meanings from the song, the most significant biographical contributions from “Yikes” (2018) comprise a mere admittance to bipolar disorder and vulnerability in the chorus. Otherwise, the song mirrors the author who created it – ostentatious and catchy.

92 I place “traditional” in quotes because I disagree with the term as a use of language, but it is the usage present in the article (“UDiscoverMusic”, 2018). 93 Whether they be a news source, interview, etc. 94 Though Khalifa was quoted by TMZ saying “It’s all love” regarding he and West’s previous beef (Zidel, 2018). 95 Which may be better imagined as the heroic, fictional persona of Kanye West - or his own self-image. 98 Viability/Truth

Several of West’s assertions in “Yikes” (2018) seem delusional when compared to his biographical record. Certainly no outside observer96 can study his entire life experience to disprove his claims, but no public documentation exists of West actualizing any of the boasts in the previous section. The audience is simply left to believe that West’s action “took the clout game up a notch,” comprise “a different type of leader,” or that the devil’s army does not know they are “dealing with a zombie.” Opinionated and polarizing by nature, the claims of “Yikes”

(2018) cannot be corroborated by biographical antecedents and must be judged by the individual critic.

Oppositional Codes

By this point in his career, West had well-established himself as a preeminent (if not the defining) voice in the hip-hop and rap genres. He saw no need to ‘justify’ himself as a rapper - that itself was a given.97 However, West did wish to further his own narrative and explain away the conditions of his own actions in the recent past.

Yet, several of the “deep” interpretations from this chapter may not be accessible to ordinary consumers of the music. For example - when discussing the intertextuality of West’s work, little intelligent discussion of sampling is accessible to an ordinary consumer. In fact, an internet search of “Yikes samples” reveals only four or five media sources who even bother to discuss it. Additionally, these unique sampling insights rarely (if at all) appear on Genius.com

(“Yikes”, 2018). Such truths lend themselves favorable to a common-sense audience

96 No less a college junior. 97 To this end, West likely felt no need to address the early concerns in his career that he was not “hood enough” for the music marketplace, the biographical antecedents to each of his prior albums (which he largely addresses in those albums), or even his successes (Grammy wins, etc). 99 interpretation of “Yikes” (2018) that posits West primarily furthers his own ego in the song, underlining the frivolity of any underlying meaning extrapolated from the track.

Work-Pleasure in Interpretation

Admittedly, the accessibility of the biographical antecedents to “Yikes” (2018) is more difficult than that of “I Thought About Killing You” (2018). Several overt references to drugs in the song are hardly well-known to consumers. West’s boasting gets old. However, by diving deeper into the music and situating West’s claims within the context of the entire album, an ordinary consumer can unearth infrequent but critical details98 with a quick visit to Genius.com.

Politics

Again, West steers mostly clear of political commentary in “Yikes” (2018). The most polarizing comment emerges in the second verse, “Turn TMZ to Smack DVD, huh.” This lyric attempts to reframe his comments, suggesting that his comments merely served as a source of

“beef” in the genre.99 While certainty ignorant in nature, this lyric pales in comparison to West’s other public comments on the matter, and accomplishes nothing but to reaffirm his fascination with attention and tickle his own ego.

Second and finally,100 West claims “Russell Simmons wanna pray for me too / Imma pray for him because he got #MeToo’d.” Simmons - the brother of Run DMC’s Joseph Simmons

98 The most important details in “Yikes” (2018) informing the rest of ye (2018) include: the vulnerability in the chorus; West’s acknowledgement of bipolar disorder, and his subsequent characterization of it; and his partially- delusional alignment of himself and Gandhi, Prince, and Michael Jackson. 99 SMACK (Streets, Music, Art, Culture, & Knowledge) DVD was created in 2003 as a popular source documenting conflict within the rap genre. Rap beefs, battles, and artist interviews appeared in the series. West appeared on the DVD in 2007 to address ongoing feuds with other rappers and his controversial comment, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” (“Yikes”, 2018). 100 West does make one other reference to politics – he claims “this the type of high that get you gunned down.” According to Genius.com, Long Beach Rapper Daz Dillinger issued a “crip alert” urging members of his gang to hurt West because he supports trump (“Yikes”, 2018). 100 and co-founder of Def Jam Recordings101 - penned a letter begging the rap community to come together to help West (Williams, 2018). In the letter, Simmons claimed “...he is unraveling in public. We have lost friends like Chris Lighty and other who have suffered in silence. Reach out to him, he is your brother...Time for intervention. No more memes” (para. 2-4). While West’s opinion on the #MeToo movement has evolved over time,102 the lack of applicable biographical antecedents to the comment suggest the lyric itself acts more as a thrust for freedom - and a desire not to be condescended by Russell Simmons - rather than meaningful political commentary on the #MeToo movement.

101 With whom West has released all eight of his albums. 102 West found himself encased in criticism from several angles regarding his public comments from September 26th to 28th of 2018, months following the release of ye (2018). Within a span of 36 hours, West stated that he’d rather have Louis C.K. host the Saturday Night Live episode he guest starred for, revealed two accused abusers would appear on Yandhi, and suggested men who did not defend other accused men were in the “sunken place” from Get Out (2017) (Munzenrieder, 2018). 101

Chapter 6

“ALL MINE”

“All Mine” (2018) is the third track on Kanye West’s ye (2018). The track mostly functions to boast of an authorial voice’s lavish lifestyle, and brag about their capabilities.

INTRINSIC CRITICISM

Persona

“All Mine” (2018) continues the sporadic and at times sobering narrative of Ye’s manic antics. Coherently in its singular narrative, the track continues to embellish the manias Ye experiences, focusing specifically on Ye’s escapades with women other than his wife. Three distinct voices emerge in the song - one for the chorus, one for the bridge, and Ye rapping alone in each verse. The chorus persona echoes the following message (“All Mine,” Genius.com):

Yeah, you supermodel thick Damn, that ass bustin’ out the bottom I’ma lose my mind in it, Crazy, that medulla oblongata Get to rubbin’ on my lamp Get the genie out the bottle.

The chorus most likely represents Ye’s third-persona persona. The chorus speaks in a similarly high pitch as the free verse in I Thought About Killing You (2018) - shrill, completely distinct from Ye’s lyrical cadence. The lyrics “I’ma lose my mind in it / crazy, that medulla oblongata” imply that “my” refers to Ye himself - later, Ye also refers to the same “you” referenced in the 102 lyric “[y]eah, you supermodel thick.” Ye later references sex with a similarly desirable woman

(“All Mine,” Genius.com):

Ayy, time is extremely valuable And I prefer to waste it On girls that’s basic That’s just some Ye shit Right now, let’s do what we want Let’s have a threesome, me you, and the blunt I love your titties ‘cause they prove I can focus on two things at once.

Later, Ye asks to “hit it raw like fuck the outcome,” presumably to the same woman. The third- person choric persona speaks from outside of Ye’s body, detailing the sex awaiting him.

Additionally, the choric persona refers to the medulla oblongata, which joins the brain with the spinal cord. The medulla oblongata is responsible for many of the body’s involuntary functions, including breathing, regulating the heartbeat, and monitoring blood pressure

(“Medulla oblongata,” 2015). The choral persona, displaced in the third person - or, the

“superpower” Ye boasts in “Yikes” (2018) - allows Ye to see his situation from the third-person.

He taps into his mania - again using his superpower - to create another narrative of the transpiring events from another perspective.

The bridge joins his manic persona with another persona - that of the bridge. The bridge is particularly intriguing because it features a similar cadence shift as the chorus (from the verses), but seems to offer a similar narrative as the chorus. Perhaps this explains the merger of

Ty Dolla $ign and Ant Clemons - who sings the chorus. The bridge persona only appears once, and most likely functions to further the plot of the song, rather than to provide another narrative voice. 103

Finally, Ye’s manic persona exhibited in “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) and

“Yikes” (2018) reaches its apex. His verses feature similar gloats to “Yikes” (2018), bragging that he wastes his time on basic girls, doesn’t use protection, and possesses enormous wealth. Ye grows stronger and stronger throughout each verse of the album thus far, but eventually reduces the speed of his cadence from verse one and settles for slower, louder, and more confident boasts in the second verse, mirroring the heavy beat. Overall, “All Mine” (2018) furthers the grandiose narrative - whether true or untrue - Ye believes to be his reality.

Purpose

“All Mine” (2018) functions almost entirely in the context of the other songs from ye

(2018). The track adds no new perspective or conflict within Ye’s bipolar narrative - rather, it provides a glimpse into the mind of the manic. Catchy and at times perturbing, Kim & Pearce

(2018) capture the essence of “All Mine” (2018) best, christening it “a shameless fuckboy anthem about lusting after ‘girls that’s basic’” (para. 5).

Regardless of its shallow content, “All Mine” (2018) does advance Ye’s narrative throughout his bipolar disorder. In “I Thought About Killing You” (2018), Ye moves from his

“darkest thoughts” to more “beautiful thoughts” as he progresses from his spoken word to the second verse. In “Yikes” (2018), Ye continues to struggle with his depressive moods in the choruses, but combats them with his extravagant and risky lifestyle detailed by each verse.

Finally, in “All Mine” (2018), Ye completely abandons his depressive ideations, electing to write a track entirely about his superpowers - his symptoms during a mania. If “All Mine” (2018) accomplishes anything, Ye attempts to take his audience into the mind of a symptomatic manic- depressive during a bombastic episode.

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Audience

Audience can consider “All Mine” (2018) in several contexts. First, Ye may intend “All

Mine’s” (2018) debauchery to signal to They that he disregards their negative energy. Second, lyrical evidence suggests that Ye may be targeting You, attempting to prove that since You

“spoke on Ye,” he is going to “go ape.” Third and finally, Ye may intend to simply address a wide breadth of individuals, attempting to build empathy for and perform the erratics of his condition and life experience.

First, “All Mine” (2018) may be a direct rebuttal of the negative energy They present throughout the album. As “They” most likely represents the paparazzi or societal norms at large, the track’s outright rejection of descriptive sexual norms and braggadocios sexual descriptions proves that Ye both will not be harmed by103 or care about104 what they talk about. “All Mine”

(2018) completely disregards any potential negative perceptions, frequently referencing celebrities negatively, speaking disrespectfully about women, and detailing fantasies or realities of cheating on his wife.105

The “you” referred to in the chorus could be a number of individuals. In “Yikes” (2018),

Ye mentions that he sometimes ignores his marriage - “you” could potentially be his wife.

However, this is less likely, as other lyrics in “All Mine” (2018) indicate that Ye frequently cheats and desires other women.106 A greater likelihood indicates the “you” rapped about “All

103 Derived from the lyrics: “They been strategizin’ to harm me.” 104 Derived from the lyrics: “Fuck what they talk about!” 105 Assuming that Ye does have a wife, as suggested by the lyrics in “Yikes” (2018): “Told my wife I’ve never seen her.” 106 Derived from the lyrics: “I could have Naomi Campbell / And still might want me a Stormy Daniels” and “Ayy, time is extremely valuable / and I prefer to waste it / on girls that’s basic.” 105

Mine” (2018) refers to a random girl Ye meets, but Ye purposefully recounts the story of “you” to demonstrate to You (from “I Thought About Killing You”, 2018).

In “All Mine” (2018), Ye details his “apeshit” life mentioned in “I Thought About

Killing You” (2018). He frequently references “losing it” in “All Mine” (2018), a deliberate word choice mirroring that of “going apeshit” - “I’ma lose my mind in it.” Ye moves beyond simple profanity, rhyming four lyrics with “cum” (“All Mine,” Genius.com):

Let me hit it raw like fuck the outcome Ayy, none of us’d be here without cum Ayy, if it ain’t all about the income Ayy, ayy, let me see you go ahead and spend some.

These grotesque lyrics may attempt to demonstrate what “going ape” means. Ye’s lifestyle drastically differs from other celebrities - not in the sense that what actually happens is different, but Ye is willing to detail its grotesquery. Ye cynically provides a “thank you” to cum for his own existence, juxtaposing its perverseness to the miracle of life and conception. From this, I infer Ye has little regard for the descriptive norms of society, and views his life and his actions with his own lens. In other words, he does not care at all about social norms.

Third and finally, Ye may be attempting to build empathy with his conditions. Ye often speak of sex in abstract terms, referencing his “medulla oblongata,” “get[ting] the genie out [of] the bottle,” “mak[ing] that pussy sing,” and “enjoy[ing] a sample” of sex in a food court. Ye associates sex, sanctified and vilified by our society, with other, seemingly unrelated objects and ideas. Ye, through his disorder/superpower, sees no problem with breaking descriptive norms and detailing his vastly different perceptions and attitudes towards sex and sexual activity.

Certainly other interpretations exist. Some may suggest “All Mine” (2018) satirizes lustful desires and endeavors. Other may suggest women comprise an extended metaphor 106 through the piece, aiming to compare the complexities of life and success with sexual perversity.

Some may even suggest that Ye produced “All Mine” (2018) for himself. The textual evidence, however, recounts a very different narrative. Considered in the context of the other tracks, “All

Mine” (2018) is most likely exactly as Kim & Pearce (2018) describe it: “a shameless fuckboy anthem about lusting after ‘girls that’s basic’” (para. 5), functioning to detail the extravagant lifestyle of a superstar.

Consistency

“All Mine” (2018) remains consistent with the textual persona presented through the first two tracks, “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) and “Yikes” (2018). Pronoun usage and themes of polarity support this assertion, and overall, the character of the narrator - perhaps an anti-hero - continues towards his devolution.

Content

“All Mine” (2018) instills in its audience that life can be awesome107 and consequence- free. Despite almost definitely being married, Ye expresses his desire to copulate with multiple women, and associates other hip-hop commonplaces108 with an exciting and dangerous instrumental. Ye specifically names three famous celebrities in four lines - all of which he suggests he would sleep with. Additionally, he includes smoking and having sex in his debauchery109 and makes jokes about breasts.110 He rationalizes his actions by saying “that’s just

107 I myself do not contend that sleeping with multiple women is “awesome,” or something to be desired. However, among an audience composed largely of American men and boys - and in a hip-hop genre where popular rappers almost incessantly boast of their misogyny - I conclude that much of Ye’s audience may associate sleeping with multiple women, as Ye describes, with being “awesome.” 108 I should note that while using this particular evidence does seem more like I am conducting an extrinsic critique, I only use a minor genre relation as evidence to support how the text relates to other similar songs, or in an Aristotelian criticism, speeches. 109 From the lyric: “Let’s have a threesome, me, you, and the blunt.” 110 From the lyric: “I love your titties ‘cause they prove I can focus on two things at once.” 107 some Ye shit,” as if his persona and brand exempt him from the descriptive norms of society. At the end of the song, the chorus simply repeats - no additional verse or interlude implies that Ye faces any consequences with his wife. In fact, in the next track, “Wouldn’t Leave” (2018), Ye humble-brags that his wife refuses to leave him, even after all of his mistakes.

The title All Mine warrants further inspection. What does “All” refer to? Lyrical evidence suggests “All” literally refers to a person, but may metaphorically refer to Ye’s hopes and desires. If one subscribes to the belief that the “you” described throughout “All Mine” (2018) functions as a metaphor for what Ye wants,111 then presumably he achieves it in “Wouldn’t

Leave” (2018). Regardless, little textual evidence suggests or prefers one theory over the next theory.

Pathos

If anything, “All Mine” (2018) is primarily an emotional anthem. View the following sections for analysis involving the emotion in the song: Persona, Purpose, Plot, and Style.

Design

“All Mine” (2018) features four choruses, a bridge, and two short verses. Ye presents two choruses and a bridge prior to the first verse, presumably to provide a setting and tone for the rest of the track. The scandalous imagery in the chorus and bridge align with the first verse, brimming with lyrics commodifying women and sexual activity. A brief chorus reminds the listener that Ye, despite several asides in the first verse, is focused on the woman (object) of his present dream - losing “his mind in it.” After the third chorus, Ye speaks directly to this woman

111 This extended metaphor theory suggests that since Ye “wants to make his name last” as suggested in “I Thought About Killing You” (2018), and believes in his ability to live and experience such an extreme life, that his hopes and dreams will be extreme and considered the best. If this is true, the women described in “All Mine” (2018) - with presumably desirable traits such as “supermodel thick[ness]” and being “juicy” 108 he wishes to sleep with, asking for her love and boasting that if she wears Adidas clothing, she can be “his bitch.” Note that Ye provides no resolution to his sexual tensions - he never reveals whether he ultimately sleeps with the woman. The chorus rings for a fourth time, marking an ambiguous ending to the song.

Plot

Remember that in “Yikes” (2018), the mere act of Ye speaking power to his bipolar disorder resolved the tension between each verse in the chorus. In “All Mine” (2018), the tension between Ye desiring to copulate with the woman described in the chorus and directing addressing her in the second verse is never resolved. Even by admitting his darkest desires and wants, Ye never transcends the role of observer and beggar. I believe Ye intentionally structured

“All Mine” (2018) to reflect the insatiability of mania. Individuals experiencing a manic state often lose focus of the task at hand, and cannot be satisfied, often failing to finish the multiple projects they begin (Bressert, 2018). Knowing this, Ye may be intentionally attempting to illustrate this gnawing feeling of mania - he is hyper, hectic, and all over the place in the song, but even everything he wants, the sex itself, cannot satisfy his mania. He has to have “it,” but doesn’t even know what it is. She must be All Mine. Everything must be all his. And yet, nothing

- not even achieving his goals - can stop the madness of his mania. In this way, the structure and order of the song performs the experience of Ye.

Style

Ye employs far more abstract and extreme word choices in “All Mine” (2018) than most of the other tracks on Ye. Ye takes his descriptions of beauty to the extreme, choosing to describe

“supermodels” instead of “models,” and alluding to specific supermodels such as Kerry

Washington and Naomi Campbell. Additionally, he using shocking verb phrases to describe sex, 109 including “hit it raw,” “lose my mind in it,” and “bag the boss up.” For the sole purpose of producing a blasphemous narrative of a manic episode, Ye’s language succeeds in articulating the extremity of his condition.

Production Value

The primary value in the quality of “Yikes” (2018) comes from its alternating beat, as discussed in Persona and Purpose sections. Additionally, Audience discusses that polarity of the beat switches and Ye’s final declarations in the outro may constitute a purposive performance of the bipolar identity.

110

EXTRINSIC CRITICISM

Mental Health

“All Mine” (2018) epitomizes an extrinsic track that explains away the antecedent biographical conditions of ye (2018). Ye spends the majority of the track speaking in a seeming- mania, rapping lyrics such as “Yeah you supermodel thick / Damn that ass bustin’ out the bottom.” If the women West refers to is his wife, a listener would think West would refer to her by her name - after all, Kim Kardashian West is one of the most famous celebrities in the world with over 100 million followers on Instagram (“Kim Kardashian”). Ty Dolla $ign later explains that this woman in question (or several women) “done [made him fall] in love.” Further lyrics and overt references to other members of the Kardashian clique - Tristan Thompson particularly

- suggest the woman in question is not Kim Kardashian West. Rather, the lyrics and biographical antecedents to “All Mine” (2018) suggest the woman the song refers to is not real, but rather, an idealized or romanticized version of a dream or mania West experiences.112

The official lyric video for “All Mine” (2018) supports the belief that West wrote the song as an ode to his heightening mental states and manias. The video begins focusing on the grounded landscape of the Wyoming Rocky Mountains, and the camera angle gradually rises and rescinds away from the range to reveal a full-range view of the mountains. The content of the music video supports a critical interpretation that “All Mine” (2018) exemplifies West’s ascension from the depths of a darker mental state to the clouds of a sex, drug, and fame fueled mania. The last lyrics of the song - “get to rubbin’ on my lamp / get the genie out the bottle” -

112 Several textual examples support this assertion. For example, West raps: “time is extremely valuable / and I prefer to waste it on girls that’s basic / that’s just some Ye shit.” Furthermore, nothing of West’s biographical record suggests West sees other women or even publicly idolizes or sexualizes them. 111 beam across the screen as the Rocky Mountains dissipate into the background of the video.

These lyrics seem to compare West to the genie who leaves the bottle - through an appeal to sex, drugs, and fame, West leaves the bottle and transcends the “ground state” of his peers.

Simply put, “All Mine” (2018) provides little to no non-manic themes for its audience.

Between boasts of reckless behavior, West seems to avoid speaking overtly or covertly to the biographical conditions of his bipolar disorder, or comment on the current conditions of his life.

Relationships

Perhaps “All Mine” (2018) speaks distinctively to relationships more than any other theme. West speaks to his relationship with behaviors exemplifying mania while ignoring the real, biographical conditions of his marriage and the societal norms that govern the monogamous relationship. By writing a song devoted to indulgence, West side-steps his marriage to create a confusing track juxtaposed with his ode to his wife, “Wouldn’t Leave” (2018).

Despite writing an entire track dedicated to the incredible patience and resolve of his wife

Kim Kardashian West, “All Mine” (2018) details behaviors completely contradictory to the normative conduct of a married man. For example, the song’s two features - Ant Clemons and

Ty Dolla $ign - speak to a specific woman:

Yeah, you supermodel thick Damn that ass bustin’ out the bottom I’ma lose my mind in it Crazy that medulla oblongata Get to rubbin’ on my lamp, Get the genie out the bottle [Bridge: Ty Dolla $ign and Ant Clemons] Fuck it up, fuck it up Pussy good, go ‘n back it up Pipe her up, I’ma pipe her up Make her mind, I done fell in love. (“All Mine”, 2018) 112

Ant Clemon’s reference to a singular you and Ty Dolla $ign’s mention of a single “it” and “her” seem to imply there is a singular woman in question. Conversely, the due could be referring to an imagined state of woman generally - referring to “you,” “it,” and “her” as any woman interchangeably. Regardless, West - a married man - has no problem adopted the attitudes espoused by this duo, rapping “time is extremely valuable / and I prefer to waste it on girls that’s basic / that’s just some Ye shit” and “let me hit it raw like fuck the outcome.” Additionally, he admits to “want[ing] me a Stormy Daniels.” In the absence of any clear reference to Kardashian

West, it seems West altogether ignores both the feelings and presence of his wife, who detailed in the public record she was “surprised” to hear “Wouldn’t Leave” (2018) and that many of the tracks in ye (2018) she “had not heard” prior to its release (France, 2018).

Further, West references several destructive relationships between his family members and outside influences. For example, West raps in the first verse:

If I pull up with a Kerry Washington That’s gon’ be an enormous scandal I could have Naomi Campbell And still might want me a Stormy Daniels Sometimes you gotta bag the boss up I call that takin’ Corey Gambles.... All these thots on Christian Mingle Almost what got Tristan single If you don’t ball like him or Kobe Guarantee that bitch gonna leave you. (“All Mine”, 2018)

The first lyric seems to be a reference to Chris Rock cheating on his wife for several months with Kerry Washington, the star of the show Scandal (Minn, 2017). His clever wordplay seems to insinuate his demonstrable feelings of invincibility. Even though pulling up with Kerry 113

Washington would cause “an enormous scandal,”113 he boasts that he could still be with another comparably-famous celebrity, Naomi Campbell, and still want himself another even more recognizable and promiscuous public figure, Stormy Daniels. In this sense, West implicitly invokes a comparison between himself, Chris Rock, and the president, all of whom had one type of unfaithful relationship or another with some of the women named. West - in his mania - can navigate between the experiences of a rap superstar, accomplished comedian, and world leader, all while degrading the women who he brags about being able to “bag.”

Furthermore, West makes an explicit reference to the relationships of his sister-in-law’s ex-boyfriend, Tristan Thompson, who notoriously cheated on Khloé Kardashian multiple times

(Bonner & Lundgren, 2019). He describes women on Christian Mingle as “thot[s]” - an acronym for “that hoe over there” (“All Mine”) - who get men like Tristan single. Thompson cheated multiple times on Kardashian West while she was pregnant - and yet, as of February 2019, the two still considered themselves partners (Bailey, 2019).

West’s lyrics seem to provide a commentary that only rich men can survive these major obstacles in relationships. West rebukes that “if you don’t ball like [Tristan Thompson] or Kobe / guarantee that bitch gonna leave you,” which implies in its inverse that rich, powerful, and status-oriented men will be able to retain their sexual habits so long as they retain their wealth.

West qualifies in this group of men, estimated to be worth at least $250 million dollars (Olya,

2019). He affirms this critical reading by elaborating that he can do just that - sexually violate the societal norms of the committed relationship - and speaking perversely in the second verse.

113 Additionally, one of the main plot lines of Scandal involves Kerry Washington’s character Olivia Pope having an affair with the president (“All Mine”, Genius.com). 114

“Wouldn’t Leave” (2018) provides an important context and juxtaposition to consider when interpreting West’s message examining the complexity of relationships. “Wouldn’t Leave”

(2018) celebrates Kim Kardashian West remaining loyal and true to West in the wake of his public controversy. Interestingly, the first lyric of the track exclaims “I don’t feel that she’s mine enough!” This lyric gleefully and purposefully juxtaposes the title of the prior track, All Mine, demonstrating the polarity of West’s attitudes and emotions in his relationship and reinforcing the bipolar theme.114 However, West’s brazen arrogance in his public recklessness towards that relationship (as demonstrated in the prior track) seems to reflect his true expectations of romantic relationships - that women are subservient to men. This message permeates throughout his messaging in “All Mine” (2018) - in a world characterized by his mania, West views “los[ing] his mind” in “that ass bustin’ out the bottom” as an involuntary exercise outside of his control.115

Perhaps “All Mine” (2018) better characterizes West’s views on relationships better than

“Wouldn’t Leave” (2018). While a listener may initially be compelled to assign West’s true views to the values espoused in “Wouldn’t Leave” (2018) due to the ordering of the track’s and an overreliance on West’s public record of not cheating on his wife, “All Mine” (2018) embraces those very themes when West operates in his mania - what he’s previously dubbed his

“superpower.” If West’s “superpower” involves gleefully bragging about powerful men’s wealth

114 These emotions are later explored in “Violent Nights” (2018), where West muses his guilt for feeling these emotions: “Father forgive me, I’m scared of the karma / because now I see women as somethin’ to nurture, not something to conquer .... I pray your body’s draped more like mine and not like your mommy’s / just being salty, but n****s is nuts / and I am a n**** I know what they want … she can’t comprehend the danger she’s in … yesterday is dead, yeah / moment of silence.” 115 As implied by the lyrics: “I’ma lost my mind in it / Crazy, that medulla oblongata.” The medulla oblongata - located in the brainstem - regulates involuntary bodily functions such as breathing or heart rate. This lyric - placed directly after a demeaning description of the woman in question - functions to characterize West’s desire or affinity for infidelity as an involuntary or “naturalistic” function outside of his control. Prior to the album’s release, West tweeted a photo with the original title of this track as “Medulla Oblongata,” placing an increased emphasis on this theme (“All Mine”, Genius.com). 115 emboldening them to cheat without consequence, then woefully apologizing in the wake of his come down that he’s “sensitive” and “has a gentle mental” (“Wouldn’t Leave”, 2018), a consumer of ye (2018) may reasonably conclude that West’s attitudes on relationships are both patriarchal and egocentric.

Intertextuality

As mentioned in footnote 106, one of the main plot lines of Scandal involves Kerry

Washington’s character Olivia Pope having an affair with the president (“All Mine”,

Genius.com). This allusion is accompanied by another reference to a pop culture artifact, one of

West’s previous verses in a 2009 song with Kid Cudi, “Make Her Say (I Poke Her Face)”:

“Getting brain in the library cause I love knowledge / When you use your medulla oblongata.” In this context, the medulla oblongata reference seems to imply that the woman’s swallowing is an involuntary action - the reference shifts from woman to man from “Make Her Say (I Poke Her

Face)” (2009) to “All Mine” (2018).

Outside of these overt allusions, West seems to avoid intertwining additional decodings from his other popular tracks with “All Mine” (2018). The track operates in its own world, secluding itself from the boundaries and realities of West’s biographical conditions and honoring, lauding, and expressing the conditions of the socially damned - cheaters.

Identity

Similar to “Yikes” (2018), “All Mine” (2018) prioritizes the further characterization of

West’s identity as the machismo hero, beholden only to himself and his own impulses. More so than other tracks, “Yikes” (2018) expresses a more implicit egocentrism - though West does brag that he doesn’t use condoms or could “make you [his] bitch,” the song pales in comparison to

“Yikes” (2018) more explicit boasts, including: “Russell Simmons wanna pray for me too,” 116

“Guess I turned the clout game up a notch / You know how many girls I took to the titty shop,”

“We could be in North Korea / I could smoke with Wiz Khalifa,” “this is why your bitches fuck with me, huh,” and “I think Prince and Mike was tryna warn me.” In “Yikes” (2018), West’s forthright arrogance almost catches consumers by surprise when he screams “I’m a superhero!

I’m a superhero!” In many respects, “Yikes” (2018) assertions function mostly to project of the severity of West’s emotions, and not as a reflection of some true and unique reality West experiences.

For example, the biographical record clearly states the deceased Michael Jackson and

Prince wanted nothing to do with West, as the public record reflects little dialogue or influence between West, Prince, and Jackson while the latter were alive. However, West still asserts a relationship between the parties - prescribing his own narrative onto those legends who passed before him. This explicit comparison is not based in reality, but rather, the legacy West desires to achieve. Through many of his lyrics, West spends much of “Yikes” (2018) building this narrative. As I noted in the Oppositional Codes section of “Yikes” (2018), many of the biographical conditions of West disagree with his narrative in the track. However, West’s biographical antecedents fairly clearly support the implicit themes of “All Mine” (2018).

Certainly West is no stranger to lust or sex - in “Real Friends” (2016), West raps while married to Kardashian West: “My cousin stole the laptop that I was fuckin’ bitches on / paid that n****

$250,000, just to get it from him.”

“All Mine” (2018) describes West’s more realistic and less mania-influenced view of his life - that despite being married, his identity is grounded in a core belief that the cheating of successful and powerful men like Chris Rock and Tristan Thompson is “involuntary” like involuntary body functions. Simultaneously, West believes (or espouses so) that women should 117 stand by their man - and that Kim acted nobly in doing so. The biographical record supports this

- West explained to Jon Caramanica of the New York Times in an interview after the release of ye (2018), “There was a moment where I felt like after TMZ, maybe a week after that, I felt like the energy levels were low, and I called different family members and was asking, you know,

‘Was Kim thinking about leaving me after TMZ?’” When she didn’t, West then wrote “Wouldn’t

Leave” (2018) - West started rewriting the entire album just eight days prior to its release, which would have been several weeks after asking his family if Kim Kardashian West might leave him

(Maine, 2018).

How can a consumer negotiate such polar opposite opinions - West expecting Kardashian

West to “[be] mine enough,” and West’s manic impulse to have a woman “[rub] on my lap” and

“get the genie out the bottle?” They don’t have to - West can “think like George Jetson / But

[sound] like George Jefferson” (“Wouldn’t Leave”, 2018). West’s identity is not only defined by his bipolar disorder, but born out of its condition - a common theme in the album. For example, the album art on ye (2018) reads: “I hate being Bi-Polar / it’s awesome.” The cover should be read as two opposite statements contradicting each other - it should be read as two contradictory statements married as one explanation of the album. To West, opposite extremes alone do not define the bipolar condition - rather, these extremes are the symptoms. The marriage of such intense emotions into one mind, one entity, birth the symptoms - what it means to be bipolar is to experience such intensity simultaneously. Using this perspective, the audience can begin to understand that West’s machismo complex contrasted with his empathy when he writes

“Butterfly in my wrist / You make pretty women out of my skin.”116 “Wouldn’t Leave” (2018) is

116 West tattooed the birth days of his daughter and North and his deceased mother Donda on his skin in late 2015 (“Wouldn’t Leave”, 2018). This reality demonstrates a very real and lived empathy he feels for these women, and 118 both simultaneously contradictory and authentically experienced. Through his “superpower” disorder, West enjoys the luxury of both - his identity symphonizes concurrent and intense catharses of conflicting emotions and manifests as distinct and separate symptoms of those catharses. To the non-bipolar observer, these expressions may not be immediately clear - but through a close and critical examination of the music and West’s biographical antecedents,

West’s identity becomes clearer and less nonsensical.

Viability/Truth

Though perhaps unexpected for a married man, the general contents of “All Mine” (2018) are relatively attainable and realistic for West. Though boasting frequently, “All Mine” (2018) deviates from the pattern of declarative statements characterizing “Yikes” (2018). While many of the assertions in “Yikes” (2018) can be materially disproved,117 the statements in “All Mine”

(2018) structurally indicate a more hypothetical than literal intent. For example, West raps “I could have Naomi Campbell,” qualifies “Sometimes you have to bag the boss up,” and asks “let me hit it raw like fuck the outcome” (“All Mine”, 2018). The simple assertions here are that

West is capable of having unprotected sex, or express contempt against somebody who wears

Nike’s Dri-Fit brand.118 Otherwise, “All Mine” (2018) only disagrees with societal norms and assumptions - not the possibility of West’s imagination or lived experiences.

that he doesn’t always view and treat women with such reckless disregard. This dichotomy is further explored in “Violent Crimes” (2018), when West laments about the prospective treatment of his daughter by men, and how raising his daughter showed him “[women] are something to nurture, not something to conquer.” 117 These over-the-edge assertions include: “We could be in North Korea, I could smoke with Wiz Khalifa, uh” (to which neither have shown interest); “Devil been tryna make an army / they been strategizin’ to harm me” (to be fair, West may be implying a metaphor here); and “You know how many girls I took to the titty shop?” (to which a quick google search reveals no women have yet come forward to express their gratitude to Mr. West). 118 Derived from the lyric: “Ayy, if you drivin’ round in some Dri-Fit / Ayy, I’ma think that you the type to dry snitch” (“All Mine”, 2018). 119

Oppositional Codes

The accessibility of my extrinsic critique of “All Mine” (2018) is questionable. Certainly most consumers will understand the overt allusions to celebrities such as Khloé Kardashian,

Tristan Thompson, Naomi Campbell, or Stormy Daniels - however, the more telling biographical antecedents are harder to detect. For example, many consumers of West’s music may not know the album was rewritten just eight days prior to its release (Maine, 2018). These same listeners may lack knowledge of West’s New York Times interview, Into the Wild with Kanye West, where he documented his concern that Kardashian West may divorce him. Particularly, only the most informed consumers would likely know about Chris Rock’s his cheating scandal with a co- star of a movie he filmed and subsequent divorce (“All Mine”, Genius.com), or West’s tattoos of

North and Donda West’s birthdays on each of his wrists. While a closer review of Genius.com’s lyrics page for “All Mine” (2018) can provide many of the biographical antecedents necessary for an enriched decoding of the track, many of the biographical subtleties fueling the complexity of the track may go unnoticed by a majority of listeners.

Work-Pleasure in Interpretation

“All Mine” (2018) presents a relatively straightforward narrative, straying from the deeper allusions and interpretations present in other tracks including “I Thought About Killing

You” (2018), “Wouldn’t Leave” (2018), “Ghost Town” (2018), and “Violent Crimes” (2018).

However, the more insightful - and difficult to detect - interpretations of the West’s relationships and identity emerge alongside rarely-discovered biographical antecedents, as highlighted in the

Oppositional Codes section above. The work-pleasure ratio in diving deeper into “All Mine”

(2018) rests as close to a one-to-one ratio as any other track. The song - characterized by its heavy beat and catchy lyrics - is enjoyable and well-liked by most West fans. At the time of this 120 thesis’ publication, critical reception of the song varied, with Christopher Hooten (2018) of The

Independent claiming “Kanye West flew too close to the sun, then directly into it,” and Spencer

Kornhaber (2018) of The Atlantic calls “Yikes” (2018) “the main attractions [of ye] are its peaks and valleys...[All Mine is] a continued career-long meltdown about monogamy.” But the deeper one digs into the biographical antecedents of “All Mine” (2018), the more quickly the track evolves from a simple-minded swagger into a gripping commentary on the complexity of living honestly and openly with bipolar disorder.

Politics

“All Mine” (2018) strays completely clear of politics minus a singular reference to

Stormy Daniels: “I could have Naomi Campbell / and still might want me a Stormy Daniels.”

This lyric, at best, provokes its audience – and at worst, it induces an eye-roll.

121

Chapter 7

DISCUSSION

Writing as a medium fundamentally pales in comparison to an audio or otherwise visually expressive critique of ye (2018). Modern critics often turn to visual or audio platforms such as YouTube or iTunes to critique hip-hop albums. For example, Anthony Fantano’s

YouTube account’s (theneedledrop) 15-minute review of ye (2018) received over 1.6 million views, arguably more than all of the think-pieces from formerly reputable textual sources like

Pitchfork and Forbes combined. Watching the Throne, the self-proclaimed #1 Kanye West podcast, boasts on their Twitter that they already have and will continue to analyze West’s entire discography. The episodes are also extremely in-depth - for example, the duo’s episode analyzing “All Mine” (2018) totals one hour and twenty two minutes of content. (“All Mine: A

Wish You Regret”). Dialogue - no matter the medium - certainly is better-equipped for any analysis of music than the written word. The grim reality is this - it is more difficult to articulate the subtle or overt differences between two given critical cultural approaches through writing, especially when those differences exist in a non-literary artifact. My frustration, though masked in fulfillment of the academic requirements of my program, is as real as the biographical antecedents to ye (2018).

Perhaps a formal critique of the remainder of the album and its contexts – “Wouldn’t

Leave” (2018), “No Mistakes” (2018), “Ghost Town” (2018), and “Violent Crimes” (2018) - would better answer the research question posed. I think not. If this research project concerned itself with the thematic outcomes of the critiques alone, an intrinsic or extrinsic criticism would suffice. However, the project’s primary concern asked how hip-hop and rap music should ideally 122 be criticized, and which types of critical cultural approaches (or fundamental, individual attributes derived from them) best serve a general population consuming West’s music. Such is the purpose of Chapter 8 - to conclude this project by identifying the value of each critical cultural approach, and perhaps orient and root the genre and its interpretive norms in a useful framework for future criticism.

At the outset of this paper, I sought to answer three questions: first, which critical approaches prove most useful to the hip-hop consumer listening to the music; second, how can and should the listener construct meaning from the music; and third, whether there any improper ways in which to critique and interpret the music. This chapter carefully weighs the answers to each of these questions.

THE MORE USEFUL FORM OF CRITICISM

Black and white constructions of criticism yield little practical application for the actual consumers of music - rather, more greyed constructions of critical cultural approaches prove most realistic and useful. For example, Barthes explains in The Death of the Author (1967):

Once the Author is gone, the claim to “decipher” a text becomes quite useless...to give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing...this conception perfectly suits criticism, which can then take as its major task the discovery of the Author beneath the work; once the Author is discovered, the text is “explained”...the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author. (p. 6)

In this sense, Barthes’ words proved very true. Naive and idealistic intrinsic criticisms of

“I Thought About Killing You” (2019) and “Yikes” (2018) provided entirely new decodings of an authorial persona that surprised myself, a veteran critic of West’s music and devoted fan of ye 123

(2018). This principle is best exemplified through Wests’ use of the pronouns. Interpreting Ye, you, and they in “I Thought About Killing You” (2018) as a divergence of West’s competing personalities virtually escaped my extrinsic criticism. The biographical antecedent of the conflict between West and Jay-Z so markedly distracted my critique from the textual/lyrical evidence that without an intrinsic criticism, this decoding would have escaped any meaningful examination. Barthes (1967) certainly refers to such an instance when he claims that once an

Author is “discovered,” the text is “explained” (p. 6) - preconceived notions and prejudices about the author and their lived conditions can cloud a critic’s judgement and interpretation.

However, Barthes (1967) stopped short of requiring the death of the author - he merely suggests that the author’s death may liberate and birth the meaningful criticism of the reader. He explains his intent:

...the unity of a text is not in its origin, it is in its destination; but this destination can no longer be personal; the reader is a man without history, without biography, without psychology; he is only someone who holds gathered into a single field all the paths of which the text is constituted. (p. 6)

In entirely extrinsic criticism, our biases urge our destination to be personal - whether to prescribe a nonexistent narrative onto the artifact out of our own desire to see what our eyes must, or to lean towards a realistic explanation for the artifact. What is the point of an artistic or fictional artifact but to blur the line between what is real and what is not?

However, in today’s era more than ever, Barthes (1967) errs in assuming the reader first

“a man,” but more importantly “without history, biography, [and] psychology” (p. 6). Websites like Genius.com enables consumers to understand the entire history and biography of an artist in the context of a song. Social media services like Instagram and Twitter provide platforms for artists to continue changing the meaning and contexts of their artifacts and blur the fundamental 124 line between artifact and reality. For example, J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-hit Harry Potter series, continues to blur this line through her continued public commentary on the series and her blogging platform to add to the series, Pottermore. Richard Morgan (2019) of The Washington

Post scorches Rowling’s post-publication assertions that the eldest main character, Headmaster

Albus Dumbledore, is gay:

Seemingly unsatisfied with the shock value of making the characters in her Harry Potter franchise racially ambiguous, [Rowling] has decided to double-down on her 2007 assertion that Albus Dumbledore, a beloved elderly male character, is gay...She wrote [all of the] Harry Potter books before she outed Dumbledore, which she only did after the final novel was published. Just like this time, that revolution came not in the text, but in a 2007 question-and-answer session with fans...If Rowling thinks - in a fantasy world of magic and possibility and polyjuice potion and metamorphmagus - that Easter-egging a character as ex-post-facto closeted is in any way helpful to anyone wondering what to do with gay thoughts and gay feelings [in our society], she’s wrong. (para. 2-37)

Over-reliance on authorial intent - especially in a world of Pottermore and desperate authors willing to insist their stories say and mean things they do not, and did not, at their inception119 - breeds and coddles a generation of readers blinded by their will to see what they want and not what the reality of the text.

I need not reference the over fifty-five pages of data contrasting the viability of intrinsic and extrinsic criticism to explain the most useful critique of an artifact is the most (1) readily available and (2) textually supported. As Barthes explains, the birth of the reader must by ransomed by the death of the author. The visual and audio mediums in which the hip-hop music

119 For example, Rowling gleefully admitted at this same event that if she had known audiences would have received the news of Dumbledore’s homosexuality well, she would have revealed his homosexuality earlier. Without a shred of textual evidence to support such an assertion, should a reader not question the out-of-text motives of such an assertion? Or should the reader be expected to believe any authorial assertion to be true and made with good will? Would those ready to defend Rowling’s characterization of Dumbledore be so willing to defend the authorial impositions of an outspoken conservative like Kanye West? 125 genre is performed and criticized demands better of modern critical cultural theorists - as does the platforms in which they operate and sometimes demand their voices be heard. When West declares his Twitter account a book, the reader cannot ignore him. When he declares slavery a choice - and directly references that declaration in his music - the reader cannot ignore him. And when entire websites and YouTube channels begin to monetize and build a substantial consumer base compiling the historical, biographical, and psychological facts Barthes assumed the readers lacked prior to the internet age - literary theory and critical cultural approaches must change.

Chapter 8 discusses the exact logistics of a customized, useful approach to criticizing hip- hop music, but a clear and evident trend emerges from my parallel criticisms of West’s music - the rapid technological enablement of consumers (“readers”) to access the realities in which authors’ artifacts are born out of suggests extrinsic critiques are becoming increasingly more useful than purely intrinsic critiques. The authorial context demands attention - consumers effectively have access to a hip-hop artists’ biography willingly or unwillingly through media coverage and websites like Genius.com. Specifically within the hip-hop genre, consumers must still heed Barthes’ warning - “the unity of a text is not in its origin, it is in its destination; but this destination can no longer be personal” (p. 6) - but too understand that they are equipped with, or with access to, biographical antecedents providing reasonable and valid decodings of their favorite artistic artifacts, notwithstanding polysemic limitations (Condit, 1989) suggestive of interpretive error. 126

HOW TO CONSTRUCT MEANING FROM THE MUSIC

The major differences between the intrinsic and extrinsic criticisms of West’s music lie on the context of the criticism itself and the danger of affording an author the ability to change the conditions of their impositions. Each will be discussed in its capacity to form meaning in the intrinsic and extrinsic criticisms of West’s musical artifacts.

The most significant contextual difference between the intrinsic and extrinsic criticisms of each piece involves the ability of the critic to characterize ambiguous characters more readily, armed with the knowledge of biographical cues and antecedents. Olauluwa (2007) makes a strong point to this end that I found true in my paper:

Therefore, whether in the peculiar fascination with aesthetic/structural analysis, or the historical consciousness of a literary text, such tutelary efforts as Barthes’ which recommend an interdiction of the filiations of the author to history and all the other considerations its mention suggests cannot hold water...the place of the author in literary analysis will thus remain inalienable just as history will remain tied to literature...to aver the contrary in the postcolonial world is to strip literature of its human pivot and by implication its signage of credibility, which is why authors will always remain alive and kicking. (para. 34)

Without historical and biographical context, making sense of the ambiguous pronoun characters in West’s music becomes a futile exercise in academic emetics. Of particular importance to this fact is that the credibility and characterization of West’s characters in the music is only furthered and emboldened by his biographical conditions. Certainly the consumer can still negotiate

Barthes’ warning of overreliance without completely abandoning the perfectly good context informing who “you” and “they” are in “I Thought About Killing You” (2018). And perhaps I can reasonably declare it absolutely and positively essential to a proper critique of “All Mine”

(2018) that the consumer understand the simple factoid that the album’s authorial voice and 127 protagonist married one of the wealthiest and most famous women on the planet, publicly beefs with other billionaires, and was placed in a mental institution to treat his bipolar disorder - which his album cover overtly mentions. Unlike Salinger, not only can West not run from the fame and triumph that both characterizes and curses him, he willfully chooses to embrace it. The context of the criticism is not only unavoidable, but useful - and though such a concession is warranted, it does not necessitate an improper over-reliance on his biography to decode the art he produces.

Art can remain art, and decoding can remain decoding without fear of taint. Such comfort in the grey precursors what I hope to be a new generation of critical cultural theorists willing to embrace the changes our technology obliges.

For the latter difference, a conscious consumer must make a very important decision - should I bind myself by way of authorial intent (or lean towards trusting such intent, a bias in of itself), or allow myself to explore alternative decodings the author may not want me to see at first sight? I answer with more questions - what benefit does the reader derive from the artifact whose only goal is to impose authorial intent? For what pleasure can the reader gather of their own? To that end, what’s to distinguish the historically “fiction” piece from non-fiction?

Even contained in the era of information-overload, the free will of the reader relies on their ability to construct meaning from art without the unrestricted impediment of outside opinion. Jayson Green (2018) explained of West: “elevating geniuses automatically subjugates the rest of us. At what point do we cease recognizing genius and start diagnosing it?” (para. 7-9).

Perhaps the same can be said of Genius.com - at one point do we cease to recognize the decodings Genius.com presents by a measly upvote system as “genius” and start accusing the site of inhibiting our own genius and interpretive freedom? As Emerson (1841) explained in Self- 128

Reliance, genius requires conformity from an audience, and that baptism comes only through an individual's overreliance for the genius to speak for them, not to them.

This conformity proves dangerous to an audience of Kanye West fans. For example,

West - after apparently writing ye (and I, apparently criticizing and devoting a thesis to the topic)

- claimed in October 2018 that doctors misdiagnosed him with bipolar disorder (Leipholtz,

2018). After writing an entire album centered on this theme, West went ahead and said he didn’t have the disorder. And, he did so while having a conversation with the president of the United

States, viewable for consumers on YouTube. The worst part is he may actually be right. West sought treatment from a neuropsychologist working with athletes in the NBA and NFL, and brain scans from that doctor indicated that the source of West’s erratic symptoms stemmed from sleep deprivation rather than the disorder (Leipholtz, 2018). If an entire fan-base fell privy to

West’s seven-song album asserting and celebrating his bipolar condition - and even I wrote an entire thesis assuming its truth - and we still wish to celebrate this man as a genius...then genius has become a saturated and flippant term.

As a matter of “how” to criticize the music, I conclude by dodging the question. The art of critique requires juggling several competing but similar goals. The desire to trust an author must be balanced with the pre-endowed duty to understand art on one’s own terms. The reliance on the rhetorical situation (Bitzer, 1968) of a discourse cannot necessarily supersede the decoding of the individual. The range and sheer possibility of meanings cannot ignore well- understood and pragmatic polysemic limitations. But in general, no critique should stop short of turning to any biographical antecedents, nor should any critique lack the textual brawn to withstand any criticism of its own. Where the fulcrum is placed, then, will be debated and settled 129 upon by individuals far smarter than me with aspirations of influencing and documenting the intricacies of the hip-hop genre.

IMPROPER WAYS TO CONSIDER THE MUSIC

The most improper way to criticize the music is without textual backing. Any critique lacking textual substance, as Barthes suggests, employs the “stop” button he so aptly criticizes

(pp. 4-6). However, just as Chapter 2 predicts, any critique or decoding that cannot square with biographical conditions too seems faulty. For example, my analysis of “Yikes” (2018) determined that several of the assertions made by the persona, whom the text seems to indicate is

Kanye West, though unable to be disproven, are almost certainly false. Only a fool, then, would believe these claims as presented. However, reframing the issues to ask why the author might lie

- as Yann Martel (2001) does in Life of Pi - marks the beginning of a new and worthwhile exploration of the art and why it was written in such a way.

The last noteworthy difference between intrinsic and extrinsic criticism in hip-hop music versus traditional literary mediums is just that - the possibilities of each medium. For thousands of years, books have presented linear, front-to-back narratives with which the author is clearly severable from the work itself and altogether forgettable without effort. Today, artists in the hip- hop genre place themselves on their own album covers, beaming through the iPhone a consumer uses to listen to music, all the while scrolling through their Instagram feed and seeing exactly what that artist is doing. While Chapter 8 proposes a more specific framework for filtering the useful information when architecting a critique, and though this thesis did not intend to observe 130 anything to this effect, it is altogether improper to ignore how the physical mediums in which the art is consumed influence how exactly the artifact should be considered by its audience. 131

Chapter 8

SUPPORTING FRAMEWORK AND CONCLUSION

Proposed Framework

The extremity of a neo-Aristotelian critical cultural approach and a cruelly-extrinsic critical cultural approach never intended to produce a dichotomous “winner-takes-all” solution to musical criticism. Rather, the process of contrasting such extremes aimed to isolate the most useful considerations when critiquing hip-hop music. In my analysis, several broader criteria immediately emerged as important, and some thematic approaches to extrinsic criticism likely warrant further investigation in other albums within the genre. My summary findings are included in Table 3 on the next page, and the rationale for each is provided in subsequent sections.

132

Table 3. Appropriate Criteria for Critical Cultural Examination of Hip-Hop Artifacts

Approach/Theme: Content:

Textual Persona Who is the speaker in this song?

Relationships How do West’s relationships with friends, family, and other rappers define and/or dictate an interpretation of his music? Are any of the artifacts a response to relational concerns he may have?

Intertextuality How is the music a demonstration or performance of intertextuality? How can certain lines, samples, and sounds be decoded?

Authorial Identity120 How is West’s music a demonstration of persona? How is West’s identity performed through the artifacts?

Viability/Truth Is the narrative believable? Does the content of the artifact square with biographical conditions?

Oppositional Codes What sort of oppositional codes exist for the ordinary consumer of this music? Are the interpretations presented in a biographical critical approach accessible to the individual in the audience?

Work-Pleasure in Interpretation Does the work involved for the ordinary individual consumer outweigh the pleasure?

The Occasion Why is the song written?

Arrangement Is the order and structure effective? How does the plot appear?

120 Note the specific change in language from Table 2 to Table 3 - on a part of several contrasts between West’s projected persona in ye (2018) and his actual authorial identity as the rapper and producer on each song, I distinguish these terms from each other. The contrast of an actual author’s conditions and the conditions of their persona reveals gravely interesting insights and themes of their music. This contrast is essentially ethos as understood in Table 1. 133

The Missing Sections

Several criteria from Table 1 did not survive strict scrutiny. For example, the style of a hip-hop song - its language, tone, and word choice - matters significantly less than those same elements in literature. As explained in Chapter 7, this is largely due to the physical differences between how hip-hop music and literature are consumed. For example, a hip-hop song is delivered to its consumer through an audio file, most often on a cell phone. Several other variables besides text influence the communicative effect of the song - most consumers rarely read the lyrics as they follow along. Factors such as the beat, instrumentals, pitch, and timbre achieve a comparable effect as style in literature.

Delivery, invention, logos, and ethos also fail to remain relevant enough for consumers to consider on a strict basis when evaluating hip-hop music. Intrinsic content analyses of “I

Thought About Killing You” (2018) and “All Mine” (2018) provided relatively insignificant results that tended to over-rely on frivolous textual analysis. My analysis of “I Thought About

Killing You” (2018) failed to identify who you could reasonably be, and focused on the more potent lyrics within the track. While as a matter of practice this seems reasonable, over-relying on the neo-Aristotelian conception of logos forgoes more reasonable alternatives analyzing themes of relationships and identity. Similarly, the effects of delivery, invention, and ethos can all be assessed more proper weights through the criteria in Table 3. Given each criteria its own stage over inflates the value of each - in my criticism, I could only articulate no more than three paragraphs for any given analysis. For example, ethos (consistency) essentially over-examines 134 the conflict between the authorial identity and textual persona,121 while delivery and invention essentially over-inflate the meaning of non-explicit messaging in the music.122

Finally, the audience remains surprisingly less relevant than I originally anticipated.

While audience traditionally defines so much of the purpose of rhetorical critiques, hip-hop artifacts do not necessarily set out to convince their listeners of a particular agenda. While artists must certainly adhere to their audience on some grounds - they do still have to sell music - rarely do the celebrated artifacts in hip-hop respond only to an audience’s preferences. For example, “I

Thought About Killing You” (2018) likely resonates with a very narrow audience. However, the broader point of the song is to do just that - resonate with a small audience and signal to its larger audience of Kanye fans that they should not conform to the larger subsets of society imposing social norms upon them. This is clear through West’s lyric: “Just say it loud to see how it feels /

People say, ‘Don’t say this, don’t say that’” and “See, if I was trying to relate it to more people /

I’d probably say I’m struggling with loving myself / because that seems like a common theme.”

Perhaps one of hip-hop’s greatest gifts is the unrelenting change within the genre, and artists like

Kanye West’s continual reinvention of the genre - accordingly, its largely irrelevant to consider the context of the audience when criticizing meaningful hip-hop music.

Condit’s (1989) Polysemic Limitations

Condit’s (1989) polysemic limitations of Viability/Truth, Work-Pleasure Ratio, and

Oppositional Codes largely survived strict scrutiny not only on account of the data they filtered

121 As outlined in Footnote 114. 122 Delivery (production value) and invention (design) as criteria yielded few significant results on their own. Taken in the context of other criteria, such as the occasion of the song, these criteria can complement particular decodings of the artifact. However, on their own, no unique decodings can be derived from these individual criteria. These criteria are most comparable to the literary elements of tone and style - while tone and style can support certain readings of a story, they seldom can tell a story by themselves. 135 in each extrinsic criticism, but too the foundational logic that informs their consideration in the first place. For example, oppositional codes largely depend on the tendency to weigh and balance the “grey area” between decodings, as discussed in Chapter 7. Not only is such consideration logically appropriate (as discussed in Chapters 2 and 7), but practical. For example, in “I

Thought About Killing You” (2018), oppositional codes did not limit any interpretations of the song because no particular narrative stuck out as entirely right - at the generalizable level, the song’s lyrics fit into a non-dispute fact pattern of West’s life immediately preceding ye (2018).123

Conversely, a close evaluation of oppositional codes in “Yikes” (2018) immediately precluded certain decodings from being reasonable, as well as a subtler understanding of “All Mine” (2018) of West boasting about the luxuries of fidelity rich men enjoy and the complexity of his relationship with women - particularly his daughters and wife.

Viability/Truth survives as a criteria for largely similar reasons as oppositional codes.

Even if the codes presented are accessible to the consumer, if those codes are largely fictitious, then they need not be considered by that consumer. “Yikes” (2018) most notably contained several improvable statements of an outlandish nature, which when considered as factually false

(as this criteria would have a consumer do), provided valuable insights as to why the textual persona would lie. As Condit (1989) highlights in The Rhetorical Limits of Polysemy, a critic cannot be lost in their own individual interpretations or subordinate realities - the weaker and more singular the interpretation, and the lesser it squares with a known biographical antecedent, the less useful and powerful the interpretation becomes (pp. 108-110).

123 See; footnote 61. 136

Finally, the work-pleasure ratio self-evidently becomes of particular interest for hip-hip consumers. Though no track on ye (2018) returns a negative verdict for being worth the effort, this is largely due to the physical features of the hip-hop artifact and the readily-available services for lyrical accessibility. For example, the work-pleasure evaluations for “Yikes” (2018) and “All Mine” (2018) concretely mention that though some of the allusions are relatively uncommon or unfamiliar to an ordinary audience, the allusions themselves are easily retrievable via an online website like Genius.com or through critics and accounts on YouTube. Accordingly, the work-pleasure ratio stays relevant - without a payoff for seeking to understand the music, no one can be expected to dive deeper into the artifacts.

Relationships and Authorial Identity

Relationships and authorial identity proved most valuable of the topical/thematic considerations because the genre of hip-hop concerns itself so often with relationships between the authors and the world, and the identity of the author within the genre. By a pure page count, relationships comprised at least two pages in each critique except one. Those insights were also of substantial value - relationships between West and the world, West and his wife, and West and his former friends provided crucial interpretations supplementing other major themes in each track. Additionally, West’s relationships and identity comprised almost the entire analysis of

“All Mine” (2019), and supplement what I believe to be the most accurate interpretations of the album’s most significant theme - West’s expression of bipolar symptoms. Understanding West apparently believes himself to have been misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder as of October 16,

2018 (Leipholtz, 2018), “All Mine” (2018) demonstrates West - regardless of his belief about a diagnosis - experiences very powerful and contradictory emotions simultaneously, such as a 137 gleeful indulgence and celebration cheating in the mania of “All Mine” (2018) while woefully apologizing in the wake of a come-down in “Wouldn’t Leave” (2018).

Intertextuality

My analysis of ye (2018) did not yield particularly interesting results by way of intertextual instances explicitly and intentionally imposing meaning. However, I maintain that intertextual instances remain significant in hip-hop music, and that ye (2018) is a simply a less fitting artifact to prove this point. For example - another album in West’s discography, My

Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010), utilizes over 30 different samples (“My Beautiful Dark

Twisted Fantasy”). Several themes of race relations occur in the album, and most of these artists sampled are famous black artists. Similarly, The Life of Pablo (2016) largely included samples from gospel and soul artists, and even very deliberately sampled a popular vine with a religious context (“The Life of Pablo”). Examining the intertextual relationships and functionalities of sampling music - and the contexts they carry from song to song - deserves a thesis in its own right. Accordingly, I believe intertextual relationships through sampling warrant the attention of hip-hop critics to further uncover their possible meanings. Though not popularized presently, I believe a greater dialogue about the power of sampling has and will continue to infiltrate hip-hop communities, particularly on YouTube where many popular channels already document and regard samples as meaningful and symbolic nodes of communication.

The Occasion

Understanding why a song is written is quintessential to its interpretation. While the relationship and identity theme of a hip-hop artifact provide two starting points for understanding the themes of an artifact, examining exactly why a song is written discovers the other most meaningful decodings. In conjunction with considering oppositional codes and 138 relationship/identity themes, asking “why was this song written?” provides a starting point for discovering the most significant themes from an artifact.

Conclusion

Table 3 provides an orienting framework for criticizing musical artifacts in the hip-hop genre. The nine criteria for consideration function mostly as guiding points to consider when evaluating the significance or feasibility of a particular interpretation of music. Critiques conducted in accordance with the criteria should prove useful and proper in evaluating the music for its meaning. Additionally, the framework should provide grounds for comparing different hip-hop artifacts against one another based on their merits. Though the list is relatively exhaustive and informed by literary theory, by no means will the list apply to every artifact.

However, through resolving differences between the criteria124 and closely interrogating the intrinsic and extrinsic components of the artifact, consumers of hip-hop music arrive at a more robust and comprehensive understanding of the artifact situated appropriately within the bounds of existing literary and rhetorical frameworks and theories.

124 Such as differences between the textual persona and authorial identity. 139

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west-beef-has-been-squashed-its-all-love-news.51854.html CORY STEINLE

[email protected] | (724).709.4957

+ EDUCATION The Pennsylvania State University | The Schreyer Honors College Class of 2020 The College of the Liberal Arts | The Paterno Fellows Honors Liberal Arts Program Human Resources and Employment Relations (M.S.) Labor and Employment Relations (B.S.), Communication Arts and Sciences (B.S.) Minors: Business & the Liberal Arts, English, Leadership & Ethics (Cert.), Organizational Leadership (Conc.) EMPLOYMENT EXPERIENCE The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA Incoming School of Labor and Employment Relations Graduate Teaching Assistant Aug 2019 – May 2020 Deloitte LLP Harrisburg, PA Incoming Government and Public Services Human Capital Summer Scholar May 2019 – Aug 2019 Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. Fort Worth, TX Global HR Intern May 2018 – Aug 2018 • Accelerated global mobility strategy of employees in India and China by reducing H3 immigration internal process by 3-4 months and improving petition quality affecting 10-15 employees per year • Led cross-functional team of 5 members across 4 business units analyzing role of the Employee Value Proposition and formulating implementation plan to retain high-performing professionals • Documented 750+ employment agreements, invitation letters, and sponsor letters for traveling employees to ensure compliance with immigration regulations in over 30 countries • Modernized internal document retention practices for over 200 employees via Microsoft SharePoint The Schreyer Honors College University Park, PA Scholar Assistant in Admissions & Diversity Mar 2017 – Jan 2018 • Advanced holistic admissions strategy by traveling to low-income areas for 2 application workshops, inputting 140+ high school profiles into a database, and speaking at prospective student events • Furthered diversity strategic initiatives through programming recommendations including 13 event Social Inclusion Luncheon Series, high-school event modifications, and strategic funds allocation The Sustainability Institute University Park, PA Sustainability Coordinator Intern, Co-Director of the Council of Sustainable Leaders Mar 2017 – Sep 2017 • Executed Penn State’s sustainability outreach initiatives by pitching and organizing 13 Sustainability Showcases within a $13,000 budget resulting in 60-100+ in attendance each week • Developed net-zero waste consulting solutions for event programming by partnering with groups such as IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon (THON), Lion Ambassadors, and EcoAction • Strengthened current Penn State initiatives through revitalizing 7-member Council of Sustainable Leaders, designing new website, and leveraging cross-organizational fund usage for $5,000+ events LEADERSHIP F.O.R.M. (Future Opportunities Reached by Mentorship) Consulting University Park, PA Founder, President (Aug 2016 – Jan 2018), Member Aug 2016 – Jan 2019 • Partnered with four high schools to create collegiate mentoring program helping low-income, first generation, and underrepresented minority students gain admission to college and receive scholarships • Defined organization’s structure, constitution, mission, and values to ensure long-term viability • Created database of 30 former applicants’ essays to facilitate data-driven mentoring for 60-70 students • Individually mentored student to $1 million in merit awards and Robertson Scholarship at Duke • Reviewed application essays and resumes, interviewing ability, and extra-curricular involvement to assess suitable universities, honors programs, and scholarship opportunities for new mentees The Presidential Leadership Academy University Park, PA Member, Intern (May 2017 – Aug 2017) Apr 2017 – May 2020 • Sharpened management strategies through 78-page policy paper, classroom instruction, and a 7-credit leadership curriculum taught by Dean of the Schreyer Honors College and the President of Penn State • Interacted with regional leaders throughout 3 to 6 leadership expeditions in Baltimore, Chicago, etc. • Cultivated advisory skillset throughout 5-7 policy debates moderated by the President of Penn State Schreyer Consulting University Park, PA Member, Chair of Case Preparation Aug 2018 – Present • Documented 5-10 unique case studies and prepared 35-page Interviewing with Consulting Firms

CORY STEINLE

[email protected] | (724).709.4957

guide to prepare underclassman members for networking, case interviews, and behavioral interviews • Provided underclassman mentorship and served on panels to help students receive consulting jobs Penn State Learning – Wage Position University Park, PA Incoming Administrative Coordinator Apr 2019 – May 2020 Workshops Coordinator Apr 2018 – Apr 2019 • Co-managed 75 writing tutors with 5 other coordinators to complete schedules and develop policies • Developed 5-10 unique classroom lessons lasting 50 – 75 minutes with over 90% positive feedback • Emailed over 400 professors and staffed 40-50 classroom visits and workshops to promote the Writing Center’s missions and services, helping to increase tuttee visits • Pioneered implementation of performance reports for 33 employees detailing tuttee feedback from post-interaction surveys to promote continuous learning and professional development Writing Tutor, Public Speaking Tutor Jan 2017 – May 2020 • Worked 15-20 hours per week while maintaining full academic schedule to finance room and board • Facilitated 275+ unique tutorials in writing and speaking with a 9.3 out of 10 average tuttee rating • Trained and observed 3-4 prospective hires throughout 15-20 sessions to improve tutoring ability

Penn State Mock Trial Association University Park, PA Witness, ‘A’ Team (Oct 2017 – Dec 2018) Aug 2016 – Sep 2018 • Refined trial advocacy skills through arguing 150+ page cases and participating in 40+ mock trials • Supported individual law school applications and shared best practices with new members to further mission of educational equity, resulting in members’ admissions to Drexel & Harvard Law School(s) RESEARCH

The Schreyer Honors College University Park, PA Academic Thesis: Comparing Biographical and Neo-Aristotelian Criticism in Hip-Hop Jan 2018 – May 2019 • Completed 160-page academic thesis comparing the utility of intrinsic and extrinsic methods of criticism for a modern hip-hop music audience, using ye (2018) as a case study • Provided a comprehensive literature review of over 10 landmark academic essays/papers • Analyzed and interpreted decodings of 3 songs from Kanye West’s ye, ultimately recommending a preferred framework balancing extrinsic and intrinsic forms of criticism Department of Communication Arts & Sciences University Park, PA Communication About Recurring Arguments: Lab Assistant Sep 2018 – Apr 2019 • Conducted 60+ one-hour human subject lab observations to study goal-switching in serial arguments • Explained study, administered consent forms, led guided discussion, and conducted video analyses Digital Communication via Social Media: Lab Assistant Jan 2019 – Apr 2019 • Codified five social support focus groups transcripts and critiqued graduate students’ methodology INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE

Millennium Campus Conference Rabat, Morocco Attendee November 2017 • Shared experience founding F.O.R.M. Consulting and discussed possible global implementation of the model with attendees from 15+ countries to further United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals Schreyer Honors College Education Abroad Tanzania & Kenya SEGA All-Girls School (Tanzania), Hekima Place Home and Orphanage (Kenya) May 2019 • Observed operations at Hekima Place, a home for disadvantaged female youth, to understand how fundraising infrastructure in the United States affects girls’ educations in Kenyan communities • Visited an all-girls boarding school in Tanzania to study how elite education affects girls’ life outcomes FORMER ADVISORY

First Generation Advocates………………………………………………………………………………………... Mentor ‘Kalliope’ Literary Magazine……………………………………………….…Non-Fiction & Fiction Review Committee Paterno Fellows Honors Liberal Arts Program……...... ……Paterno Fellows Coach, Student Advisory Board Member Schreyer Honors College……………………………………………...…. Diversity Task Force Member, Success Coach La Salle College………………………………………………………………………………….3-Year Mock Trial Judge AWARDS

Awards: Academic Excellence Scholarship, Benjamin Cantwell Memorial Scholarship, Harold J. Pat O’Brien Memorial Award, Milton B. Dolinger Award, PLA Grant Awards [3], Schreyer Grant Awards [2], William Trout & William H. Kreider Scholarship