Kanye, Your Music Can’t Save You This Time.

By this juncture in the pop cultural zeitgeist, Kanye West as an industry enigma and political provacateur is quite common knowledge. The 44-year-old rapper and producer has seamlessly cemented his position as our notoriously problematic fave, forging a modern-day terrain littered with controversy, while left in the shadows lies a rich musical legacy. But West's long-standing rivalry with fellow rapper Drake is hitting new heights and seemingly giving the general public an even deeper, (some may say justifiable) desire to dethrone the self-proclaimed monarch.

The two extensively decorated Hip Hop behemoths released their much anticipated albums, Donda and Certified Lover Boy, within days of each other—and at the apex of yet another stop in the cyclical feud, it was game time for the inevitable comparisons.

Some critics called Kanye's maternally-titled opus, complete with dark instrumentation and genre-bending themes, sentimental but veering heavily on the melodramatic.

While Drake's more internally-reflective record, though more commercially successful than its competitor, also received mixed reviews for the rapper's habitually narcissistic love letters to himself masked as clap-backs to haters and disgraced ex's.

Many noted the irony of the competing albums sharing an unlikely similar consensus: vibey but forgettable.

Now, I could bore you with an overview of the chronology of this already well-documented beef, but what's more important here is the reality that there is one to begin with.

Perhaps my most conclusive takeaway from the rehashing of "Drake vs. Kanye "through these album releases is knowing that Degrassi's Jimmy Brooks could loftily emerge from his wheelchair, and in just a few years amass an army of late-millenial superfans, and actually stand on equal footing with Kanye West—someone who for a majority of his career, as an artist and producer, was considered one of the industry's foremost musical virtuosos. One who Complex Magazine's Dave Bry once referred to as the "most important artist of any art form, of any genre."

...This while Drake was allegedly reading a pre-written "freestyle" on Funkmaster Flex.

But what's more dismaying is that though the Drake/Kanye feud at its early origins remained mainly internal amongst Hip Hop heads, (the stan wars surrounding various lyrical shots here and there) it was perhaps Kanye's eventual public image that would cement him as the primary aggressor in something now universally magnified.

After consistently self-sabotaging through his damaging remarks directed toward and in categorization of his own race (and others), his metaphorically sacrilegious lyrical content, and his deeply perplexing political affiliations—Mr. West has, needless to say, lost a few supporters. And things seem to just keep getting worse. His most recent charade involved him removing almost all of his featured acts from Donda without giving the artists any advance notice. (Yes, the man literally dropped the album without their already-submitted verses on it). This form of Trumpian axing naturally led to a more personal severance of West's industry ties, sending him deeper into the realm of public isolation.

But the "Frankenstein's Monster" of it all is that his unapologetic ways are actually what we liked about him early on. Mainly through instances like 2009's VMAs debacle where he boldly stood up for a Black woman whom he believed was treated unjustly -- a welcome act based on Black women historically falling lowest on society's intersectional totem pole of race and gender. There was also the infamous "George Bush doesn't care about Black people" statement in 2005 -- during a time where many of the actions of the nation's leader disproportionately harmed people of color both nationally and globally. In short, West was a Black man who, while at the top of the mainstream, was not afraid to speak his mind -- a trope often historically associated with heroism. But as of late, his antics have raised just one too many eyebrows—and not just from white people.

"Drake vs. Kanye" spans over a decade; but a beef that could have initially been seen as one-sided, leaning in the favor of the legendary “Through The Wire" rapper, now holds a bit more precarity. The task is no longer "watching the throne," but reclaiming it. Over the years, Drake has indeed managed to garner his fair share of respect within Hip Hop—whether it was his mainstream prominence -- smashing records and residing at the top of multiple charts, or by creating a few memorable bars (ghostwriter drama aside) to add to the musical canon of a deeply treasured culture. But I can't help but believe a large portion of today's "Team Drake" consists of supporters who don't necessarily prioritize the art, but do just need a figurehead to represent an antithesis to someone else who they already didn't like.

And is that fair? Maybe not, but Kanye just makes it way too easy. His incessant desire to be the "bad guy" inadvertently legitimizes every critique about him—whether valid or not. And now many of his die-hards are getting tired of defending him—of trying to disassociate Kanye, the musical vanguard from Kanye, the controversial celebrity. I can only hope that through lower album sales, an increasingly tarnished public image, and widespread rejection from his once beloved community, he’s now realizing that at some point we all have to be accountable for our actions—your product can’t always be the thing to save you.

As the societal tumults of the past year (COVID-19 pandemic, ending of a tyrannical presidency, and amplification of racial and social injustices) have depleted my faith in the moral conscience of the masses, seeing an increasing effort to bring an antagonist to his knees, or at the very least under a microscope of public ridicule, gives me a glimmer of hope after all.