music

Something I've been thinking a lot about recently myself, but you have to understand Kanye is not just another hugely popular artist but possibly the most influential hip-hop artist of the past 20 years, and I've seen some (myself included) rank him as one of the greatest hip-hop producers of all time, up there with the likes of Pete Rock, Preemo and J Dilla.

You also have to understand hip-hop and where Kanye is coming from. Listen to pretty much any hip-hop song from the 90s (esp. from NYC) and it'll be littered with five percenter slang, which itself comes out of the NOI. I mean the five percenters were there from the start, at the Kool Herc parties. Both groups are...not the best when it comes to Jews. This is how you get Chuck D praising Farrakhan in multiple songs, Ice Cube going on antisemitic rants on twitter, and Jay-Z having a ton of really sus lines about Jews in a bunch of songs, just to name a few things off the top of my head. The Five percenter slang was so intertwined with hip-hop in the 90s that people were unknowingly using the slang w/o being five percent themselves. You probably know some terms yourself (cypher, word is bond, droppin science). Kanye's not a five-percenter (he's very serious about his christianity), but he started his career in the mid-90s when this stuff was unavoidable. He also jumpstarted his career with rocafella - I don't think Jay-z is five percent (though he's worn a five percenter chain, though I think that's more a nod to the culture than anything), but I know Beanie Sigel is some type of muslim, not sure about Memphis Bleek though I know Sean Price (his cousin) was definitely on some five percent shit, Freeway was five percent I think? - I'm not gonna analyze everyone in the rocafella camp, my point is five percent stuff was extremely prevalent in hip-hop in the era Kanye was coming up, and although its influence sorta started to die as Kanye's career progressed, he was undoubtedly exposed to the five percent stuff and therefore a lot of antisemitism.

Another way antisemitism found its way into hip-hop is the fact that it was created by Black communities in NYC - where there were some very real tensions between Black and Jewish communities, esp. in Brooklyn.

So I hope this doesn't come off as excusing Kanye, but I think it's important to note that Kanye's antisemitism can't be explained away by saying "Kanye's an idiot" or "Kanye's an asshole" because it does come from somewhere as hip-hop has had an antisemitism problem for a long time, and Kanye is an extension of that. Kanye's antisemitism is notable though because instead of staying as just basic hip-hop antisemitism, it got mixed with and amplified by the new right who want to parade Kanye around as a sort of darling of the right. So you have Kanye going on Alex Jones and meeting with Nick Fuentes - parading around the token Black man to support their views, not new on the right.

So anyway, the reason he hasn't been canceled is probably some combination of 1) a lot of his fans are extremely apolitical (or worse, 4chan nazis - MBDTF, Yeezus and TLOP are loved by /mu/), 2) antisemitism was a part of hip-hop before Kanye, and a lot of old heads really do have extremely sus opinions on the Jews that make Kanye's beliefs...not that notable (what's notable is Kanye's antisemitism being lifted out of the hip-hop landscape and mixed up with the Nick Fuentes/Alex Jones/neo-nazi right), and 3) it's extremely difficult to extricate Kanye from the modern day hip-hop landscape - as I say above, his impact cannot be understated. He not only fundamentally changed the trajectory of hip-hop, but, in terms of production, he's also one of the best to ever do it.