The Old Kanye

Life during the first decade of the 2000’s was very strange. It was post 9/11 and we were right in the middle of a war nobody wanted. Yet we were told by our leader, over and over again, that it was necessary for survival. Although, we still don’t believe him or his Texas accent, do we?

We were at the beginning of the Mass Shooting era, and unfortunately we’re still not out of it. In fact, it’s actually gotten so much worse that we hardly even acknowledge all of them anymore, and it’s heartbreaking to admit that. So much death, so much destruction, and still we must carry on. But it’s okay cause Britney Spears came out with a new song.

And don’t get me wrong, we loved Britney, and the Backstreet Boys, and all that other TRL stuff, it was fun, but we were at a point where we needed more. We needed a response to the pain and suffering happening all around us. We needed our Art to reflect our life. And that’s when Kanye West arrived.

These days you think of Kanye and you get the image of ‘Ye’, the guy who started his own religion while dealing with his own insanity. Married Kim, became a billionaire, moved to Wyoming. Lost himself to the power, and money, and attention, and greed. It’s a story we’ve heard a million times, and yet, even with saying that, I still can’t deny, I miss what he was. I suppose I always will.

The first time I heard Kanye West was on 106th and Park one day after I got home from the local community college that was still called TVI back then. MTV had stopped playing videos all together, and VH1 was for old people. The only place to hear good music on the television was on BET, and my wife’s brother had it bumping all day every day.

Hip hop was going through a weird phase. We had nothing really to hang on to, or to believe in. It had been a few years since DMX released his albums, and nearly a decade since Tupac died. Sure, we had Jay Z, but it just wasn’t the same. He was a business man. Still is. We needed somebody whose words would inspire us. I needed that. That’s when I heard Kanye’s first album, ‘The College Dropout’.

He was different from the jump. His sound, his look, his words. They were just saying something else. He was focused on other things than the culture that was in place at the time. He saw ahead of us. Into the future. Into what we’d become. Do you think he’d know what he’d become, though?

From that first track he just ran with it. An intellectual still aware of the streets, he managed to do something very hard to do. He combined the sounds, and the world loved him immediately.

It’s tough to know he has since tried to claim it was just for show, because it felt so real, so genuine. He was rapping from a place we all lived, and yet he used the words we never could. It was clear he wasn’t just a one-hit wonder. As his albums continued to evolve.

By his second album, ‘Late Registration’, he wasn’t just focused on his own journey, but rather the one we were all on. Suddenly, as if completely expected without preparation, he became our voice, and I feel he used that power properly, for a bit.

We loved him and what he said. We loved that he was from Chicago, and that you could hear that in his music. We loved that he was already struggling with demons he is still struggling with now. He wasn’t perfect but we didn’t need him to be. It made it more real that way.

His third album, ‘Graduation’, was a turning point, and you could hear it. The struggle he preached about as a backpack hip hop kid was now long gone, and so were his worries. Or so he thought.

But you could hear the hope on this one. The belief he had that somehow this would all work out. Both for him and for us all. I loved his optimism even in the face of adversity. He always seemed good at that. And then things changed for him.

This was the moment where Kanye began to learn the lesson all artists everywhere must face. The better your art gets, the more it takes from you. It just keeps taking and taking, and you don’t mind, because you love what’s coming out of it, but there’s also an understanding that one day the price is gonna be far greater than your ready to pay, and still, you will have no choice.

You can hear that in his fourth album ‘808’s and Heartbreaks’, where he’s starting to pay the price in a way he never imagined with the loss of his long time love, and then finally, the passing of his mother; the support and inspiration he always had in his corner. You could see the pain he was in and yet just like the rest of us, he tried to tough it out. Tried to channel it through his art.

Still creating too. Still trying to evolve. Trying to understand. Trying to be better. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is admit that you’re not okay. Kanye was not okay, and still we expected the hits. Still, he was meant to carry on.

Then came his fifth album, which may always be considered his final masterpiece, ‘My beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.’ This one he managed to combine it all. Style, sound, substance. He had reached the top of the mountain. Now there was nothing left to do but climb back down. Which is easier said than done. And that’s when we lost the old Kanye. Forever.

After that he still made good music, I won’t deny that. Even now he still has flashes of greatness, but let’s agree, it’s just not the same. I tried hanging on. Tried staying behind him. Supporting him and his vision, but I, like so many other people, got off the ride when he started to support political figures I hated. What’s worse is he seemed to be saying hurtful things on purpose, just to get attention. A clear sign of insanity, and a trait I myself struggle with daily.

But then came his divorce from Kim, and I’m not her biggest fan, but nothing justifies having to see him harass her the way he did when she decided to divorce him.

Watching him spiral without shame or sympathy for her, the mother of his children, reminded me again, of how much we had really lost him. And this isn’t meant to be about his relationships, or his behavior, or even his sanity, but it is frustrating to admit that I hear more about that stuff now than I do his music.

To add on to that, he’s not very good at music anymore either. Granted, I’ll never be able to make the music he makes, but I can hold him to that standard, and in that sense, he has not reached it in years. In fact, I don’t know if he ever will again, and perhaps, maybe that’s a good thing.

For all the good music he made in the past, it doesn’t justify the madness now. Although, in Kanye I see an ultimate truth about art and life that we can’t deny.

We lost Kanye to greed, like we lost Tupac to violence and DMX to drugs. The bigger each of them got, the less we recognized them, and the less we felt that connection. Granted with Tupac, he was murdered and had no say, and with DMX, even until his dying day, we still loved him. We still struggled with him. We still do now.

With Kanye it’s different. We can never go back. And neither can he. He has been taught the ultimate lesson that in return for the art he made there is a price to be paid, and it’s not always going to be in gold.

To make the music he made from 2004-2011 Kanye lost himself, and by doing so, we lost him as well. So now I see him, and I wish him the best. I hope he gets help. I hope he faces his demons, and I hope he leaves Kim alone. She deserves it. But even if he releases something good, and true, and real again, I will still always be that guy who often says, Man, I miss the old Kanye.

Don’t you?

And,

Do you think he does too?