The last week has many missing the old Kanye West and wondering where the new Kanye West came from.
The Kanye from years past criticized President George W. Bush and praised President Barack Obama. Present-day Kanye tweets his support for President Trump, models a signed MAGA hat, and raps in a new single about false binaries inherent in the current political order. So when did everything change?
Somewhere between a crazy Sam Nunberg and a savvy Kris Jenner, Kanye has been at times incomprehensible, somewhat sublime, and everywhere at once since embracing populism. Trump even tweeted, almost dad-like, that Kanye conservatism was “very cool!” and the press pool began falling over itself chasing rumors that the rapper might visit the White House.
Not everyone was so star-struck. Some conservatives like columnist Ben Shapiro at The Daily Wire expressed skepticism at the apparent ideological transformation. Plenty of liberals agreed, like Vann Newkirk II of The Atlantic, who best captured the phenomenon “of the grinning and grimacing acknowledgment of two self-promoters who can’t stop promoting themselves.”
The easy explanation then is that Kanye is punching his ticket on the Trump train, not for any principled reason, but for free advertising. He has two albums out soon anyway. Still, the new Kanye might be somewhat earnest. According to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, of all people, the dubious conversion might be real.
A HUD spokesman tells me the two spoke over the phone after Carson famously criticized Obama at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast and “just before” Carson launched his presidential campaign.
“Kanye requested the call, they chatted for about an hour,” HUD spokesman Raffi Williams tells me before adding that Carson doesn’t remember the exact date of the exchange. “The conversation was primarily about how Kanye has the capability to be a tremendous positive role model for young black men. Kanye seemed very receptive. It was a very friendly and positive call.”
And Carson didn’t hesitate to reference the call during a recent interview with the Daily Signal. The secretary said he was “pleased to see Kanye West come out” and casually mentioned that he found Kanye to be “a very thoughtful person.”
Carson slammed as racist the idea that “a black person has to think a certain way” and criticized what he described as “a herd mentality” among Democrat voters. Changing that mindset though, he acknowledged, doesn’t occur overnight.
“You tend to think long and hard before you can come up with something. And maybe it’s time to make people compete for my loyalty, and compete for my vote, and maybe I’ll do a lot better,” Carson concluded. “And I think a lot of people are starting to understand that now.”
While there are plenty of reasons to doubt the politics of the new Kanye, if Carson is right, the Kanye conversion may have started as long as three years ago.
