While Kanye West has been visibly involved in the protests that have occurred in the wake of George Floyd’s death (in addition to donating two million dollars toward a college fund for Floyd’s daughter, Gianna), the haunting “press conference” about, ultimately, nothing that he had with a certain Orange One remains fresh in one’s mind from 2018. Proudly wearing the mark of white hate–the red Make America “Great” Again hat–Kanye gushed to Trump at the time, “You know people expect that if you’re black you have to be Democrat… They tried to scare me to not wear this hat, my own friends. But this hat, it gives me power in a way.” Of course, Kanye isn’t wrong in balking at the racial stereotyping of automatically assuming a black person should be a Democrat (the way Joe Biden embarrassingly insisted that if you vote for Trump as a black person then you “ain’t black”). And yet, where was this openness to Republicanism (all Carlton Banks-like) when Kanye was on the increasing rise in 2005, calling out George W. Bush and his administration for the handling of Hurricane Katrina during a fundraiser?
He began with, “I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they’re looting, if you see a white family, it says they’re looking for food.” Rightly going on several seconds longer as Mike Meyers, standing next to him to read his own lines from the teleprompter, looks increasingly uncomfortable, West simply shut everything down with, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” It’s slightly insane, therefore, that Kanye could believe Trump does. Or that his views could remain committed to him even this late in the game, after implying his loyalties still rested with a “businessman” like himself as he commented to GQ, “No, I’m definitely voting this time. And we know who I’m voting on. And I’m not going to be told by the people around me and the people that have their agenda that my career is going to be over.”
His message, though tending to skew over the years, has always gone back to what he said regarding the theme of College Dropout: “make your own decisions. Don’t let society tell you, ‘This is what you have to do.’” West seems to have applied this to his political stance over the past four years, in addition to commenting while on an interview for TMZ, “When you hear about slavery for 400 years … For 400 years? That sounds like a choice.” Which is why it’s almost shocking that he would come out of the woodwork with a single like “Wash Us in the Blood.” In support of a forthcoming album called God’s Country (a reference to Wyoming, one imagines), the track is rife with themes that were more prevalent in Kayne’s earlier work, including the likes of “Jesus Walks” and “Power.”
Opening with a reference to the First Epistle of Peter, Kanye warns, “A roaring lion, walketh about, seekin’ whom he may devour.” In truth, it already sounds like he should be talking about Trump, the police and “White Power” in general. Yet with Kanye, things are never necessarily that straightforward, for he still wants to appeal to the very people who have oppressed his own since 1619 when the first ship filled with slaves landed in the cruelly named within this context Point Comfort. And there can be no denying that Kanye has, more than a few times in his career, been a puppet of the white man as he’s kowtowed to both Trump and fashion–and each entity’s racist practices. At the same time, to add to the dichotomy that is Kanye, racism prevailed against him at the outset of his career when he was expected to be more “gangsta,” “blacker” (or at least the white person’s stereotype of blackness) the way his counterparts of the early 00s were, including Jay-Z, whose career was revitalized by Kanye’s production on The Blueprint.
While some are still waiting for the moment when the real Kanye pops out again from inside of this one and announces he’s successfully been fucking shit up from the inside this entire time, which surely has to be the reason why he’s partnering Yeezy with Gap (the whitest boy you know) for a ten-year contract, it doesn’t seem likely. With regard to the Yeezy deal, having talked often about his desire to bring production back to America, this could be the beginning of a trend that has long been put off as jobs have increasingly fled overseas in favor of cheaper labor. That the U.S.’ relationship with China (and just about everyone else) has all but disintegrated in the wake of COVID-19 could mean West’s shift toward localized manufacturing might blaze a trail. Which would, of course, be a boon to his ego and his concern for further bolstering his status as an entrepreneur.
The announcement, therefore, is conveniently timed with “Wash Us in the Blood” featuring Kylie Jenner’s baby daddy, Travis Scott–for it seems to speak to Ye wanting to get black people back on “his side” in time for them to be his consumers again. While a biblical allusion to salvation, the song speaks to the blood on all white people’s hands for America having been built on the lashed backs of slaves. A slavery that continued even after “emancipation,” leading to unavoidable life choices that Kanye speaks about as he raps, “Whole life bein’ thugs [a favorite word of Trump’s]/No choice, sellin’ drugs/Southside, what it does? (God)/Rain down on us/Genocide what it does/Slavery what it does.” The accompanying video features the timely images of police protests, as well as a black woman on a respirator as she battles corona, which directly highlight and attack all of the matters Trump has been negligent on. But still, you don’t see Kanye including any slanderous images of the Orange One in this opus on the sins of whites committed upon their fellow human being. He has to remain himself, after all, remarking, “They don’t want me to Kanye/They don’t want Kanye to be Kanye/They wanna sign a fake Kanye/They tryna sign a calm Ye.”
But regardless of how many songs of black empowerment Kanye might release in subsequent years, it can’t undo his grotesque, well-documented alliance with Trump, unless, maybe he can get his “dear friend” to listen to this song and understand what it actually means (one can picture him playing it on a boombox John Cusack-style in Say Anything in front of the White House). And while Karen Del Rey is just as blonde and gone as she deemed Kanye on her last record, she wasn’t wrong when she called him out in 2018 with, “I can only assume you relate to [Trump’s] personality on some level. Delusions of grandeur, extreme issues with narcissism. None of which would be a talking point if we weren’t speaking about the man leading our country. If you think it’s alright to support someone who believes it’s okay to grab a woman… just because he’s famous, then you need an intervention just as much as he does. Message sent with concern that will never be addressed.” Much like people no longer addressing Kanye’s long-standing support for Trump now that this antithetical to the Orange One’s “ideals” song is out.
