Kanye West is a gifted showman, a provocateur of the first order, and an irrepressible jackass. And yet the elites of our age can learn something from him. The Chicago-raised rap artist made news on April 25 when he tweeted a curt defense of his support for an unpopular president and insisted on the value of “independent thought.”
West has long been known to offer impulsive and, if we may say so, idiotic political commentary. In a 2013 interview he suggested that President Barack Obama wasn’t succeeding because “black people don’t have the same level of connections as Jewish people.” More memorable is his remark made at a hurricane relief concert in 2005: “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
Since 2015, West has hinted at his sympathies for Donald Trump, but on Wednesday he made it plain on Twitter: “You don’t have to agree with trump but the mob can’t make me not love him. We are both dragon energy. He is my brother. I love everyone. I don’t agree with everything anyone does. That’s what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.”
He followed that tweet up with this: “my wife just called me and she wanted me to make this clear to everyone. I don’t agree with everything Trump does. I don’t agree 100% with anyone but myself.” And another: “I love when people have their own ideas. You don’t have to be allowed anymore. Just be. Love who you want to love. That’s free thought. I’m not even political. I’m not a democrat or a republican.”
These three tweets—together with Chance the Rapper’s “black people don’t have to be democrats”—were enough to send the nation’s political commentariat into a faint. The immediate reaction among left-of-center observers was one of disbelief and outrage. Some questioned Kanye’s mental health; others called his statements a betrayal; still others accused him of perpetrating a vile publicity stunt.
We find the reactions amusing. As conservatives, we are long accustomed to admiring the work of artists whose views we dislike. Most musicians, novelists, poets, playwrights, and painters—certainly most great ones—are on the left. Some radically so. We hardly think about it anymore. Yet when a popular rapper veers from the de rigueur politics of the day, liberal and progressive commentators find themselves at a loss to explain what’s happened.
We are no fans of Kanye West. Indeed we thought his comment about Bush in 2005 was slanderous—though, to his credit, he walked it back in 2010. Still, Americans can surely find something to admire in a musician who openly voices opinions that people of his description are not supposed to voice. West is an African-American celebrity entertainer from Chicago—he’s got to be a progressive Democrat, right? And yet racial and social and demographic categories, it turns out, don’t dictate political views.
It’s remarkable, too, that Kanye West—not a man history will remember for nuanced expressions of thought—is a more articulate proponent of free speech and open inquiry than such strongholds of high-minded liberalism as the New York Times and the Atlantic. At the Times, the mere presence of conservatives on the hallowed pages of New York’s newspaper of record—we’re thinking of our friends Bari Weiss and Bret Stephens—is cause for wrath and resentment on the part of the paper’s staffers and readers. The Atlantic, meanwhile, hires fiery conservative Kevin Williamson because he’s a fiery conservative then fires him because progressive agitators accuse him of being a fiery conservative. Ours is an age of formulaic thinking and thoughtless slander, and each day brings statements far dumber than those of Kanye West. We love when people have their own ideas. You don’t have to be allowed anymore. Just be.
