The Kanye Spectacle Ft. Prop: Part 1

if it could happen here. Here's the thing. When I used to teach high school, which believed it or not, I did, taught ninth graders. We was like maybe eight years apart at the time, and uh uh there was at one point and I taught Inner City and it was it was at one point, Um, I got this idea from one of my like uh like mentor teachers where I was like, okay, check this out. So I

made you remember overhead transparencies. Yeah, I do, So I made one of my check It was like I'm just gonna put this because I'm just gonna put this up here because like y'all can do your work or not, YO say, like I get paid either way. I care. That's why I show up and I try so hard, you know, but you're not hurting me by whatever rebellion you're practicing here like this, this is school ends at three o'clock. At three oh five, I forgot everything you

said to me, you know, so you're not hurting me. Now. If you want to make me earn this, then let's get busy, you know. And it was like, no, man, you're gonna earn this. I was like, all right, let's go to You know, I was a great teacher. I mean, I may have turned off a few people, but I don't know that. Do you know what does hurt me? Prop what hurt you? Oh? God, Garrett, the main streaming of it do semitic rhetoric. Um, so you did a good job there, Garrison. Great, you know what, you know

what put putting in for a commendation for you. You're gonna get a little trophy from the company for that one. Hey, homie, that was Garrison. That was yeah, So it's Varsity bro. That was Varsity fan. Unfortunately, today we're gonna be talking about Kanye West. There's a lot of elements to this topic of discussion between the media's coverage of what's happened,

isn't it ye? Now, Garrison, don't it's yeah? Okay, yeah, okay, you the thing is like and like at some point probably now I am I have refused to talk about the same yeah you know, uh and specifically even covering it, you know, on the pod, but it's definitely time to be like, you know, whose man's is this? Yeah? You know, like come on, somebody can get somebody, come get your

man's here. You know what I'm saying. Um, Yeah, There's a lot of different kind of parts of this between how the media has been covering it the past month, his own like history of like attention grabbing spectacle, the whole mental health side of things. There's religion has uptaking meta comments, and how the rights been co reacting. There's there's there's a lot a lot of stuff based on you know, a few a few not not great statements, and a lot of interesting things have revolved around him.

I'm just like, think you just pick your favorite subversive artists from fifteen years ago, and then picture that person doing this the guy just like, come on, come on. My favorite subversive artist from fifteen years ago might have been Dave Chappelle. You know my favorite subversive artist from fifte years ago, it was probably Steve from Blues Clues. Hey,

Steve remains remains solid. He's yeah, he's a hero. Wait no, I'm now seeing on Deadline that he has recently embraced white nationalism words tattooed on the back of his head next to the blue pop print. Oh dear, that's a joke. Steve is fine, he's kidding. That didn't happen. But yeah, absolutely, because you're like and knowing all of it's it is and I hope I'm not. I hope I'm not co

opting this whole show, but it's it is. The Tyra Banks clip from America's Top Model where it's like we we believe, we all believed in you, just furious, like we got damn it. We believed in you. You know. Yeah. Yeah. And as the perspective of like a younger person who wasn't really around for I guess when Kanye was better, this stuff has not been surprising to be because I've only been watching him the past decade, and that's kind

of what we're gonna talk about. I would it would probably be fair to call me like a casual knower of Kanye. But I'm I'm I'm much older than you, Garrison, and so I remember George Bush doesn't care about black people, which was like, that's the height of all that seems that seems accurate. That was the high water point when we were like, he's for the generation, this is this is a new breed because but what's what's what's ill is like it was obviously a sign of his manic nous.

In retrospect, it was like, oh, he was in a manic episode, I mean. And the other thing is that he really just has a history of basic contrarianism. So he'll he'll he'll oppose George W. Bush because that's the contrarian thing to do. At the moment post on eleven, everyone was very pro Obama. Some instead, he's gonna be pro Trump because he's gonna he's gonna try to be that subversive exactly, and that's definitely been a pattern throughout his Career's it just sucks to see it go ahead.

I'm not I'm not an expert on his music. I wasn't particularly a fan, but the thing I know that, like everyone talked about his motherfucker's sampled blood on the leaves, like and now that's a But also at the time, it was like, wow, this is you know, he's he's

he's he's trying to say something. And now there's a degree to which it's like, was that just the most contrarian that move he could be making, right, Yeah, and like what you said, prop But like initially when this when the when the T shirt and stuff was happening at Paris Fashion Week, I really did not want to talk about this because I thought it was just another one of Kanye's publicity stunts, kind of in line with his mega hat and Trump appearances from a few years ago,

and I didn't want to like play into the media cycle of just amplifying these stunts that Kanye does, which I think kind of feeds into and encourages this kind

of behavior. But then Kanye went on Tucker and started posting on the Internet, and things have gotten a lot worse since then, and now I feel like it actually is we should now actually talk about this because there's some interesting things going on um and ideally we can talk about it in a way that's actually useful and that we can gain insights from and not just you know, highlighting the bigoted and unhinged things that a public figure

has said. So and I think kind of feigning with shock her surprisement at his recent actions and behavior and stay eatments is mostly not useful, like as opposed to just like clearly condemning bigotry and anti Semitism and doing like the platforming and also upon this, upon the news of the T shirt stunt and the pointless matter stuff and anti Semitism, I was not actually really surprised because I kind of saw this as a natural evolution of the logical progression of the type of bit that Kandie

has been doing, particularly for the past five years. And that's kind of the angle that we're going to approach this with. I think we should probably start by talking about, well, the types of alignments Kanye has had over the course of his career towards Christianity and how that kind of reached the peak in so you can see the kind of earliest tints of this type of thing. It's pretty dumb a song like Jesus Walks into Us and four um and then he kind of does some cool stuff.

We get to the album ease Us, which kind of revolves around self like deification. I never expected to hear you say Jesus awesome okay, which is which is a pretty good album, and it kind of it's it's it's before he gets actually into like Christ. It's it's more like God as like a spiritual force that you can interact with and you can like align can align yourself with um can I can I fill in the can

I fill in the walks area? Yeah? Like port important context about Kanye One is understanding how the South Side of Chicago is, you know, and what it's like to be black. There's like, you're not how do I say this church is as normal as dinner with in in our community, specifically in the South side of Chicago. Of course, of course your daddy's a deacon. Of course, your mom

teaches Sunday school. Of Course the most hardened of criminal will stop and talk to mother Johnson when they see her on the side of the road because she was your Sunday school teacher, you know, so and you still come every Sunday. Like it's just such a part so the Christian idea, it's such a part, an integral part of our of our community, and of course of his because he's just one of us. You know, um that of course he's gonna do a song called Jesus Walks,

you know, Um, of course. And of course he actually probably the whole time, believed he was a Christian, you know, because of because we all are Joe saying, like and unless you come from like the f o I or like Nation of Islam stuff situation like specifically just with black people, were just we just went to church, you know.

So in all of our all of our musicians, you take the greatest musicians of any of our times, they used to be choir singers, they used to be in the worship band, like we just it's just a part of our life, you know. So so for him to do that was not strange. Was strange was him thinking

it was unique. That was the part that was so weird about like why you think this is there's like, you know, there's the aspect of thinking that some of the gospel type of stuff he was doing was unique, which yeah, maybe it was unique for me on such

such a large platform, but it was not new. And then the the other thing that is different is that there is a difference between the type of the type of like um, black church that you're talking about and white Christian evangelical born again very different around conversion, which is what he starts getting into, and yeah, what he became, you know what I'm saying, But that's not that's why

I was like, let me give it. That's so that's why I like at first and I'm speaking as somebody who also came from like a very person of color experience and with Christianity, and then finding you know, sort of white evangelicalism and thinking because we're using the same words that we're talking about the same thing, and then about five minutes sitting at that table, you're just like, oh, oh, you just kind of like make the little piece outside

and let me slide out, because clearly we don't believe the same things. You know. I first found your music as I was kind of me and my family were exiting evangelicalism. Yeah, and that was a very useful kind of step that was still using some familiar language, but

it was like going in a better direction. Yeah yeah, yeah. Um. So I think that the next kind of notable thing is the more gospel esque album Life of Pablo, allegedly inspired by the life of the biblical Paul, and there's the song ultra ultra light Beam, which features contemporary gospel superstar Kirk Franklin and Chance the Rapper, who is also

a very open Christian. Yeah. Uh. Then he gany has a few years of dealing with mental health stuff, he gets hospitalized, he comes out of the hospital, and then in April he some somewhere around sixteen, he kind of endorses Trump kind of um. But then in but then in April, West sends out a series of tweets expressing admiration for Trump, including that he felt he was his

brother and they both have quote dragon energy. Um. People like Trance of Rapper initially came to west defense, saying that black people don't have to be Democrats, which he later apologized for, and a lot of tweets that were

up that are now gone Yes. And then one of the kind of worst inclinations of where things are kind of going was a fucking TMZ interview which was supposed it was which was supposed to be about Kanye's support of Trump, but then he went on to make some pretty gross comments about black people choosing to be enslaved. I don't think people necessarily understand what happened last week with the Great American making America great again? Hat what

are you trying to do with the message you're send me? Well, it was really just my subconscious It was a feeling I had, you know, like people were taught how to think, we're taught how to feel. We don't know how to think for ourselves. We don't know how to feel for ourselves. People say feel free, but they don't really want us to feel free. And uh, I felt a freedom and first of all, just doing something that everybody tells you not to do. I just loved Trump. Do you hear

about slavery for four hundred years? For four hundred years? That sounds like a choice, Like he was there for four hundred years, and it's all of y'all, you know, like it's like we're mentally in prison. I like the word prison because slavery goes to too direct to the idea of blacks. It's like slavery holocaust, Holocaust shues, slavery is blacks. So prison is something that unite says there's one race, blacks and whites being one race. Uh, that

we're one were the human race. And fun fact, like van who stood up to him, I think to this day, especially among like black media figures. He's, as far as I can remember, like one of the only that confronted him in the moment boldly didn't mince his words. You could tell he was like almost weeping, because I mean that's the way I felt watching it, where it was just like oh what do you what are you saying?

Like it's just it's just so hurtful because you're like you can't believe, Like come on, man, like drop the act, bro, Like now now we're all suffering. It's like it's almost like I get I get it. We get it. Looking back. Yeah, even college dropout, that record was just him being Now I we used to think it was like revolutionary. No, it's just him being a contrarian. I don't know, have to go to college. You know. Now I know, like, oh man, it wasn't as deep as I thought it was.

You know, so you're making it. Yeah at the moment you're liking genius, Like Dark Trusted Fantasy was like the most amazing album I had ever heard up to that point, brilliant and yeah, as you guys are talking, there's like sprinkles of religious stuff in that one, and then a lot of his stuff and he just takes it one step too far, because I just remember thinking like, oh, this guy's a musical genius, and then when you see that genius kind of turn on itself, it's just really disappointing.

But yeah, shout out Van for like confronting him and directly saying you're wrong. This hurts and I can't believe you say that, and you owe your community and apology. That was pretty dope. Yeah, So after that incident, he took to Twitter dot com to clarify, slash, defend, slash double down on his slavery comments, talking about being mentally enslaved and how it's we need to you know, this is just an example, like and how his comments were just an example of of free thought. It's an idea,

and once again I'm being attacked presenting new ideas. And then he ended this kind of tweet thread with a fake Harriet Tubman quote saying I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more. Officely they knew they were slaves, which is not not a real Harriet

Dubling quote. Now that that doesn't seem like a thing she would say at all, and all of all the tweets were lated deleted, but it was it was kind of doubling down on some of the same rhetoric and then allegedly, um some of the TMZ staffers have also now come out and said that he said some andy semitic things during during the interview that were cut out.

Now that's not verified and TMZ is obviously not a great source, but just an interesting note on him possibly saying some other things that people were thought were kind of weird. Just thought that we may as well just cut this out because it doesn't seem super relevant at the time anyway. So around the same time in eighteen, Kanye befriended someone named Candice Owens, who was at the time the communications director for the far right group Turning Point USA, led by man with face too small for

his head, Charlie kirk Um. Kanye tweeted quote that he loved the way Candice Owens thinks. Um candas Owens basically makes all of her money by being paid by rich conservative white men to say that racism isn't a problem anymore. Uh. Days after his Candace Owens tweet, when there was the mega hat wearing TMZ visit, he was accompanied by to

TMC by Candas Owens. Uh. That's something that a lot of people miss is that Owens is Owens is a is a core vector point for all of the stuff around Kanye UM and much of Kanye's rhetoric in this vein of like slavery being thought to control, a lot of that directly comes from Owens. That that that's the talking points that Yeah, all of those talking points come directly from Owens, which come from her being paid by

the Brothers UM. And then obviously, West solidified his position in the pro Trump camp with the heavily publicized Whitehouse visit in late October eighteen where Kanye give like a ten minute long monologue while wearing the Niga hat and I love this guy right here. Let me get this guy. I love this guy right here. That's really, that's really and that's from the heart. I didn't want to put

you in that position, but that's from the heart. These are like the intersections that are being vectored in this scenario in this thing is like like I said, like I I didn't, I did not want to cover this, but now that it's like it's clearly necessary to do just for even for this context, like there's a certain I save. I save the word coon, like con is not something you throw around like that's to me, it's

the yeah, it is. It's far as far as a black person or me as somebody who works in justice and stuff like that, it is the worst thing I can call you, you know what I'm saying, So like I save that term. And and it's because of the same reason why it's hard for the totality of our of the black community to ever really fully disavow somebody. It's because of our history of collective suffering, like are We've survived because of our communal protection of each other.

So even when somebody is losing it, it's just like baby, just come home, baby, Okay, listen, No, he hadn't a bad day, you know. I mean, you just you want so much to protect them because you understand how much internalized like self hate and racism, how much you internalize that stuff, you know, so you just want so bad, so bad to be like Okay, Candice, let's turn the cameras off, like you're getting your money, right, that's this,

this is what we're doing, right. You just come on, you can tell us, you just give you getting your money, just tell us, you know, it's like, you know, no, family,

don't really believe it's do you? You know? And and then we get to be like, baby, don't get your money like that, like, don't don't get your money based on our suffering like you, because you're thinking that there's no there's no way, there's no way this is really you, you know, and so so so when you put those two together, it's like, like, why did it take us so long to disavow R Kelly? Why did it take us so long that this Why is Chris Brown still

a star? You know what I'm saying, It's because it's it's because of that. It's just you don't ever want it, like you gotta save you gotta save coon. You gotta save that for when you really mean it, you know what I mean? Uh, For me personally, I'm like I just don't. I don't pull that word out off in And then there's moments when you're just like, I don't

know what else to call it. This, Like I just you if you if you are selling your own people out for the purpose of making money, that's cone that's conery, Like I don't, and it's it's just hard for me to say it, but anyway, go on, tell us more about Candice owns. The girl had suited the girl that suited her school suited her school board for racism, she sed, she did, Yeah, she sure did. We'll get back to

Owens in a bit. By the time nineteen started, uh, you know, this is when Kanye went public about his born again conversion to Christianity and kind of his full pivot towards the I guess mostly kind of untapped mainstream Christian rap market, which is kind of I'm going to try to frame some of his decisions here as being more monetarily driven then what a lot of people assume, because I can totally understand these as business choices, especially coming after the Trump visit, his his his State of

the him in with Trump and friendship with Candace Owens handed him a partially alieneded fan base, accompanied by a new wave of fans from right wing Christian evangelicals to all right, you know, turning point you with say, Daily Wire type supporters, and then by the beginning of twenty nineteen, West kind of tamped down on some of his explicit Trumpian political persona type stuff, and in its place came this weekly pseudo Christian gathering known as the Sunday Service,

just like a weekly mostly invite only, choir packed music gathering that changes locations every week. Sometimes that properties owned by Kanye, sometimes that churches outdoors all all around the country. Yes see, And this is this is where things get uncomfortably start to get uncomfortably culty. This is where things

get quite culty. And it's like and and and and don't get it, like, let me not, let me not cap they were objectively dope, like as as music concern Hey, these are objective and that's and that's the hard part about Kanye where it's just like just dope. Though, look, you go back, you go back a couple of decades. That was not untrue. If people's temple, they had great artists, they put on great music. That was a big part

of their appeal. And and and Kanye for Sunday's Service, I hired a lot of extremely talented people to lead up those programs back. Yeah, a lot of a lot of like legendary gospel singers, you know, and very recognizable names. And again giving that that his history and context and then the context is just black people in general. Part of it felt like at the time, Okay, he's trying to return to his roots. It's like this is what you grew up in and you realized like maybe you've

gone too far. Maybe it's like I'm so far into this Hollywood world, you know, I'm starting to like So I'm like, I'm gonna do my best to like like anyone does, like, let me return back to what I know was the safest moment in my life, and it was Sunday Services. So it's like I gave him the benefit I am. I gave him the benefit of the

doubt because it's like that's what we all do. You return home, you start praying again, you know what I'm saying, And just would I would totally believe that if it weren't for the fact that he tried to trademark the terms Sunday Services, right Like once you started doing that, you're like, huh, I wonder what's actually going on? Yeah, Like, performers and attendees had to sign in d A S

and adhere to a strict address code that changed every week. Um. The service featured gospel inspired remixes of classic songs from different genres, and also strike choir led gospel tunes with the occasional biblical servant, often often given by like a white guy in his thirties or sometimes Kanye Yeah, it's it's. It's probably mostly known for attracting celebrities to come and then also playing at Coachella in twenty Yeah. Well there's

nothing wrong with Acella. So yeah, nothing, nothing ever bad. Half of that couch there, and they're just normal booking promoters that are just looking at numbers and saying these people will buy tickets. So I know, I showed this to you, Garrison Prop. Have you ever seen the movie,

um Marjo, No, I have not. There's a couple of it's about the evangelical movement right at the start of the religious right okay, the fallwell days and everything, And there's a couple of moments that show an early megachurch with a majority black congregation and incredible singers and incredible music acts, and then a bunch of like old white people running things and taking all the money. Um, I don't know, Yeah, it makes me think about that. I

don't know entirely. Yeah, the the and the thing is like like I said, you know, uh obviously as a end of the show, you know, I'm familiar, you know, get the same with your your history, and even you describing your history of church is just like that, that's just not my experience. Like that wasn't the church we were in, because I was just in a whole different tradition, you know. So when you when you come across and

I like, I can't stress this enough. When you come across you know, the Nashville of it all, the like the CCM of it all, like and and and these bigger, you know, suburban, mega white churches like you again you think you're saying the same thing, like you you just it's this weird like and I know one of the things for me was like and then Oscar Grant happened, you know what I mean. And then Mike Brown happened. And then I'm like and then you realize like, oh yeah,

now we're not We're not. And then that begins. Then you start questioning your own background, like dude, well like, well what did we believe? And we was kids, you know what I'm saying. And then looking at this Sunday looking at this Sunday service, I was like, yo, this is this is youth group. That's we did in youth group. You just you know, you get a good singer and they remix a Jodacy song and just praise in it.

You know what I'm saying. I'm like, oh, this is You're just singing up a pop song and you're just giving it Christian words. This isn't clever, Like you know, we've we've been doing this, you know. And and but then like like yeah, like the same thing, like once you exit that like you know that subculture, and you start like breathing the air and you're just like, oh so you so you're telling me Muslims don't have horns, and aren't you know what I'm saying, going to immediately going, well,

it's not like that. It seems like it turns out there just wonderful human beings that believe beautiful things. Then you start looking back and you're going, damn, maybe I was kind of maybe I did kind of drink that cool aid, you know. But yeah, and we're talking about, you know, when we're talking about how kind of the white suburban church can be sometimes saying the same words

but also be very different. We'll be talking about Joel Osteen in a little bit oh yes, oh yes, yes, the smiling like I'm telling you dig like you just you just and then yeah, once you once, once the veil comes off and you realize like the way these people are talking to you. And for me, it was like, oh shit, you use the same the same words you're using about my experience, you're using about the queer community,

I'm using about the trans community. And then you start going, oh shit, oh okay, oh it's on now, you know what I'm saying. Now you're like, Okay, nah, I'm cool on all this. Let me let me go, let me go to Ethiopia, you know, let me see what y'all think about this, you know. But yeah, any anyway, yeah that that that that aspect. And then I mean, I'm I'm rambling because it's such it's so close to home.

This Kanye sid is so close to home that like, you're like, because I can see how you'd fall for it, is what I'm trying to see how he'd fall for it, you know, kind of at the height of his Sunday Service stuff in because when Kanye started openly talking about his born again conversion to Christianity, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna quote a Fox News article quote yea, you must be born again. Kanye West and Kim Kardashian shared their Christian faith in a big way over this weekend.

Adam Tyson, a pastor from southern California, told Fox News recently that he's been leading West in a Bible study for months now and would quote teach from God's Word about how salvation is only by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Great cutting edge journalism. I also reformed Calvinist talk. Yeah, this is always interesting and I guess

meaningless because they don't have to be consistent. But I can remember when Kanye said what he said about George Bush after Katrina and the degree to which Fox News treated him like a fucking ghoul, like like the incarnation of yea. Some of the cruelest and most racist ship I ever saw on Fox News was focused around that. But no, now he's now he's publicly praying, so like he's back on our side. We're all good. You know? That was that clip was It was around the time

of like ring tones. It was my ring tone. I'm saying George Bush doesn't care about black people. That was my ring tone. Because of those things. Fucking somebody needed to say it. Somebody needed to say it. Somebody needed to say it, yo. And then when you see like out of y'all remember this, but George George Bush did a post like presidential interview and they asked him like, what was your like lowest point in when your president?

He was like when Kanye said, didn't care about black people, Like not the multiple invasions, not the two times you invaded foreign country, none of that, none of the war crimes, none of that. Cool when you said you ain't care about black people, that is I I gotta say, though, that's also kind of because I remember when he said that, how happy everybody was, just because it was nice to see George Bush sad. But it's also kind of another harbinger of well, that's maybe too much cultural power for

one man should have all that. We got there because difference I knew how to make. Yes, it definitely added to Kanye's cash a because it was like, bro, you you did it. You took down a president. Yeah, you know the last rapper to takedown a president. Yes, the last rapper to takedown a president was easy. And I

iced tea like it took a long time. Well, we could get somebody lay Eazy, We're talking about, you know, the Jerry Curl juice dripping on the White House, like that's that's eat, that's easy, you know what I mean. And then you know with body counting cop killer from iced tea, like that was the last time anybody was able to take out a president, you know. So I'm like, you didn't you and the Annals of History, now, fam,

that's what we thought at least. Yeah, So I think I think stuff like that made him think he's like he transcended blackness the same way like j thinks he has, you know what I mean. I think that mentality plays, in my opinion, a lot into the Messiah complex that

he clearly has. Yeah. After the Kim Kardashian baptism and the Adam Tyson Bible study groups, Kanye started talking much more openly about the like the evangelical style born again conversion that he had in While at the biggest to make a church in the country based out of Houston, Texas, Kanye talked about his recent conversion to Christianity to the sixteen People President at the churches regular Sunday service, Kanye declared that he no longer cares for fame and money,

but it's only in the service of God. And in conversation with the celebrity pastor Joel Osteen at the church, Kanye said, quote, the only superstar is Jesus, and I know that God has been calling me for a long time and the devil has been distracting me for the long time. Here's a pro tip. The only time you'll ever hear someone say I no longer care for money, it's because their riches God right, as they have enough

of it. Yes, you have more than you could spend in a In a radio interview, Kanye into into more detail about his conversion, saying that he began reading the Bible during his hospitalization for mental health issues and started quote writing and copying out Bible verses, which is not listen ya, Like, I don't want to be just like blatantly anti Bible, but if you're in the hospital for mental issues, they should let people they should not let

you access any religious text at all, Like any religious text. This is but like like this whole the story is it is standard inner city church talk, Like this is par for the course. You're like, look, dude, you know you go up and you give you give your testimony and testimony service. You know, I was listen, I was outside, I was doing all the gangs. I was with all

the girls. And then one day I was high, you know, I was in nine gangs and I was and I was at a four day binger, and I just looked up and I said, God, if you could get me out of this, you know. And then over in the corner, I saw a Bible like it's it's standard, you know, Yeah, yeah,

it's there's so much about it that standard. Also, just to Evangela again, I brought up the whole I know, younger care about money, but every one of these rich megachurch pastors who is making hundreds of millions of dollars a year will have speeches where they're like, I don't care. The money means nothing to me. It's all for God everything, Like he's the only real star up here. Like it's it's it's all very again. If you're I think this hit people like a brick who aren't familiar having had

experienced particularly like strains of Southern Christianity. Yeah, but the way Kanye has been talking makes a lot of sense. But it's also I think that chunk of people were all flume mixed by the black Israelism stuff, which I'm guessing we're going to talk. Yeah, that that's more Northeastern Middle Yes, that the Hebrew is realized stuff. All right,

let's go, So stay there a lot of thoughts. So around this time in nineteen is when Kanye announced he's no longer making secular music, which is a term I heard a lot as a kid music. Absolutely not no, no way, that's worldly man worldly. When the last time I heard the phrase worldly? Yes, ye, worldly, I'm in the world. That's right, that's right. So this led to his late twenty nineteen album Jesus Is King. It's objectively it's a good alpul um it is it's also borderline

Christian diminionist in some themes. Um. The very first words in the album are God is King, we are the Soldiers um. And that song ends with the Army of God and we are the Truth um. So you know that that goes into the entire ideas about like the Kingdom of God where the soldiers. So in this idea there's there's like there's this battle between the antagonism against the godly community from the forces of spiritual darkness and

you know, shout out and woo woos in there. There's for every Christian rapper of the world who had this guy make one one record and then cover everybody's charts. So now no one cares about your how you've been serving at these like you know, camp cann of cooks, you know, wrap it in these twelve year old white kids and trying to get your trying to get your albums out, and then this Kanye just cleans up your whole ste genre. He had the pretty funny song, in

my opinion, closed on Sunday. You might check fil A, which I think is funny. Now that is that's actually pretty good. But the man is talented. No one's art. It's also probably sincere. That song ends with Jesus listen and obey, so like it's you know, um no, it's

it's it's a it's it's funny. It's like that. There's just there's this like with hip hop, you know, as a rapper, there's this like fine line between clever bars and dad jokes like you you you got a teeter on that and I was like, yo, you are dancing on that on that border with this one, you know,

so evangelicals kind of embraced Kanye in this period. Some were obviously skeptical based on him being a black person and his in his general past, but overall a lot a lot of people were happy to have kind of to use him as a token figure almost um in a in a in a Guardian piece titled Kanye West is Spreading the Gospel of White Evangelicals, Malika Havali writes, quote, like other black conservatives, the rapper and designer downplays racism

while promoting bootstrap virtue signaling while signifying Black cultural and religious traditions. His album is peppered with samples of Black church staples like James Cleveland's God Is West advances the gospel of white evangelicals. Although he has challenged convention nearly every aspect of his artistic life, Kanye West has been

born again as a conservative. And that whole article is a really good piece kind of going into how how specifically he's the type of thing he's engaging with is distinct from the Black church tradition, and it's just like Joel Osteen Ship absolutely and then the Hill song of it all exactly exactly do you cover Hill? Are we gonna talk about hill Song at all. I don't have anything of hill Song in this script. The script is already too long. It might it might need to be

a two parter at this point. Will probably do Hillsong on bTB at some point. Hill Song was a big part of my childhood. Yeah, is a big part of the whole fascism, Yeah, my child I really feel like I really feel like just as just secular, just just the idea of just like secular, like academia. Anybody who

studies culture. I feel like the effects of something like a hill Song is always siloed into this like study of religion, you know what I mean, this is just the state, but like really the cultural societal impact global like of something like a hill Song stretches so far past just a theological or religious thing. I think. I don't think people really understand like the influence something like

a hill Song would have. And just like any other thing, it's like you know, a squad in there, mess cool people there, you know what I'm saying, go on, go on, you know what I mean. There's some stuff that I was just like, all right, yeah, no, y'are weird those but you know, but generally it's like I mean, yeah, like you just be DMX went to Hillsong, New York, you know what I'm saying. Like, so this the type of influence over so much of the even just pop music.

It's like you understand, like like Top you know, number of Top forty pop songs were actually written by their worship band, Like just stuff like that. Like that the effects of something like a hill song, I feel like is grossly under under reported and underrated. Another interesting note UM the University of Virginia professor Ashton Crawley wrote for MPR and saying, quote, Kanye West has used the concept

of salvation to disallow thoughtful engagement with his politics. I think is an interesting sidebar to kind of everything we've talked about, especially with his with his more evangelical stuff

coming directly after his Trump stuff. UM. Now, obviously I don't know what's going on inside Kanye's head, nor can I judge his sincerity of faith, but I can certainly see the business aspect of brounding yourself as basically the first like extremely mainstream Christian rap artist in twenty nineteen, I can totally I can see from a business perspective what happened in eighteen with his politics, I can I can see how this may have been a gamble that

he took. UM. So throughout after his Sunday Service kind of era, Kanye was kind of running for president, but like not really. It mostly seems to be a publicity thing. UM. His campaign obviously did not result in him becoming naming president, but it did result in his wife divorcing him in

favor of Pete Davidson. UH. The most notable aspect of his campaign is in July, at a rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, Kanye broke in into here is as he as he claimed that him and his wife had discussed abording their first child. UM. This allegedly left his wife mortified and quote deeply worried over Kanye's mental state, which eventually led to their divorce. Kanye continued and continues to

focus on abortion. UM, but he continued to talk about that throughout his quote unquote campaign and in interviews UM. Later that September, he said that God revealed to him a quote the black genocide that is abortion. UM. God revealed that to him. Is this the same line? Yeah, I'll say this. I don't have a lot of nice things or a lot to say at all about Kim Kardashian.

But one of the first thing I thought back when he got institutionalized during his mental health outbreak is like, oh, people actually care about him, Like he actually has people in his life who love him and are making him seek help. Um, which a lot of very famous people who have you know, psychotic episodes and stuff don't don't have that, right, no one around them is willing to be critical enough to be like, you need help right now.

It does seem like she really tried to help. Yeah, it's crazy to think that, like like on on our like bingo card that the adult in the room was going to be Kim Kardashian. Yeah, like I her would have not predicted that, you know her, her actions in the marriage make sense to me. Yeah. So with all of that context, this finally leads us to our main topic of discussion. Haven't there yet recent actions coments leaked

to white supremacy and anti semitism. So this most recent circus started at the beginning of October during Paris Fashion Week, where Kanye literally hand in hand with far right media personality Kinda's Owen's debuted his new line of T shirts

while wearing a long sleeve that read white Lives Matter. Now, this is this The slogan is obviously in response to blm um, but the more formal like white Lives Matter movement is is like an explicitly neo Nazi group tied to the area in resistance society, the National Socialist movement and the loyal white knights of the Ku klux Kan. So it's like the actual group is explicitly like Nazis, but obviously the slogan is not. It's easy to come up with the slogan white Lives Matter, like it's not

like that's not like where did he get that from? Like? Come on? So Kanye's promotion of the slogan was obviously celebrated by many neo fascist online celebrities. Nick Fuentez of America first forwarded the post, saying that quote anti white racism and white Lives Matter are now mainstream. This is an unambiguous win um And then A. Tucker was very quick to do a segment on his show where he

wondered what the T shirt was really about. Days ago, during fashion week in Paris, West accompanied by his friend Candice Owens, unveiled a t shirt that read simply white Lives Matter. The response from the fashion industry in international media was instantaneous and uniform shock, horror, rage. There was no excuse for this, thundered The New York Times. West

is legitimizing extremism, shrieked Rolling Stone, etcetera, etcetera. What was strikingly missing from the coverage, whoever, was any explanation for why West did this? What was the T shirt about? No one seemed to think to ask him, much less to listen to what he had to say. Instead, the enemies of his ideas dismissed West, as they have for years, as mentally ill, too crazy to take seriously, Look away, ignore him. He's a mental patient. There's nothing to see here.

I don't know who's who's to say? Who who's to say? Really? How surprise all the all Lives Matter people weren't in such an uproar about that. Yeah, I wonder why. The next Monday, Kanye wrote on Instagram, quote, everyone knows that Black Lives Matter was a scam. Now it's over your welcome out. This is this is this is right. This is like direct Candace Owen's ship in a way that

will explain later. Um, but so, a few days after Kanye and models for his new Easy lineup don the White Lives Matter t shirts at Paris Fashion Week, he himself made an appearance um to quote Rolling Stone on the show Where White Lives Matter the Most, Tucker Carlson's Fox News show, Tuck across It Tonight. Honestly, solid, solid turn of phrase. Yeah, that's that's a good way to write that. Good. Thank thank you, comrade rolling Stone. So you made reference to the white Lives Matter T shirt

she brought out at Paris Fashion Week? Why did you do that? And what did it mean? You know? I did? I do certain things from a feeling I like, I just I just channeled the energy. It just feels right it using a gut instinct, a connection with God and just brilliance. You know, because if you ask, like Tanya Harding, how she did the triple flip or the triple spin, she was in so much practice that when it was time for her to skate in a in a kind

of competitive format, it just happened. Like it happened outside of practice, that happened in the real format. And that's what happened. That's what's happening is God is like preparing us for the real for the real battles, and we are we are in a battle with the media, like the majority of the media has a godless agenda. Oh that's brilliant. So um. In the cliff, he talks about this idea coming to him as like a feeling. Um, this is basically the same explanation that he gave for

wearing the mega hat. It's like a spontaneous not instinct or feeling, the spontaneous decision you make to make model and sell over priced printed T shirts. That about like wearing a kilt. I remember for one of the records, he said he had that feeling over that he was going to do it in Chicago because he wanted to set young black man free. So he's gonna wear a

cult uh. He also said when he was going to run for president that it just happened in the shower and he just started laughing and he was like, I'm gonna round for president. I'm gonna be the president. I don't like not believe him that these exact like come this way like exactly, Like yeah, that probably, but it's it's funny to frame the decision to like do these very planned out things as just a single, like gut gut moment of spontaneous instinct, because making and producing T

shirts takes like it's like a process. And he talked about this as if he decided to do this like right before going on stage at Paris Fashion Week, which like, no, like this was like a decision that you may aid and you then took steps to execute. Um. So in then in that section of the interview, Kanye did go on to dismiss the assertion that his behavior is the

result of any mental health issues. UM. Then, in a segment talking about Lizzo and body positivity, Tucker and Kanye had this exchange referencing body weight being demonic and a part of quote black genocide. It's actually clinically unhealthy and for people to owe to promote that. Um it's said it's demonic. You know what would I ask you? I've noticed this. Also, why do you think they would want to promote unhealthiness among the population. It's a genocide of

the black race. They want to kill us in any way they can. Kanye then goes on to talk about like abortion also being black genocide, which he has been talking a lot about in the past few weeks. Um, yeah, that Lizzo clip, Like, man, it's that was like just like I mean, like I can only wait, I can only think of like vulgar phrases to describe it, where it's just like just it just kicked me and my balls, dude,

like we're already on the ground. Just that's what if it's just felt like a ball stomp or it's just like you don't have to come on, man, you're a you're down bad bro, Like really, I got nothing, man, Like why are you going to I'm gonna like it's exhausting. Yeah,

that's what I'm trying to say. It's exhausting. We just like, yeah, all of all of the coverage is exhausting and feeding and like the feeding into it as media spectacle only encourages this type of like unhealthy behavior and it does not help, Like it it doesn't help to be a regular person on social media having like strangers interact with you in a weird way, let alone, if if you're one of the most famous people in the world, Like,

it's it's not it's not healthy. I'm going to quote from New Republic and this is kind of about his white Lives Matter shirt and his initial Tucker Carlson appearance quote little more than a troll, another tiresome and mediocre provocation to stir up attention by using a contrarian slogan that until now was mostly associated with far right white supremacists. West has in recent years made more waves with his efforts to trigger the Libs than he has with his

music White Lives Matters. It's still gonna associated with hate groups, but he got what he sought, attention and amplification from Republicans and right wing media. West earned to sit down with Fox News on Tucker Carlson Tonight to talk about his boy Trump and the response he has received to his overall magaification. Carlson was hardly alone and celebrating West for not only rejecting Black Lives Matter, but promoting the same sense of white grievance and victimization that he has

trumpeted on his Fox News program for years. The Republican House Judiciary Committee twitter account spent hours slobbering over the interview, taking a victory lap of sorts for It's a new generation of edge lords and the A tweet from the the Judiciary gop account is still up. That just reads Kanye period elon period Trump period, which my god, if that's the state of the of the Republican Party, like

this your king. Yah ah. So at first, Kanye appeared to relish in the T shirt controversy, writing on Instagram that my one T shirt took all the attention. After the T shirt incident, Adidas said that they were placing its lucrative sneaker deal under review. The previous month, Kanye

exited his deal with the Gap. And you know, several contemporaries of Kanye did push back on this ship that he was pulling um, including a rapper Sean Diddy Combs who Can, who condemned the design in a video on Instagram and said, don't wear the shirt, don't buy the shirt, don't play with the shirt. This is not a joke. Um. And what happened next took things to a new level

of grotesqueness. West spent the next few days spewing anti Semitic vitriol online, first on on Instagram, where Kanye posted screenshots from a private message exchange between him and Combs where he suggested that Combs was being controlled by Jewish people, saying I'm gonna use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me. So obviously not great playing at being influenced by yeah, yes, bye bye,

like by fossil fuel billionaires essentially. Um. But yeah, obviously not playing not great, playing right into the kind of ideas that Jewish people like control into the entertainment industry and like have direct influence on what people say, you know,

basic anti Semitism stuff. Um. So soon after this, his Instagram account was suspended, and then after he was locked out of his account, Kanye decided to re join Twitter dot com after a two year hiatus, and it was welcomed back by Elon Musk saying well, welcome back friend, um. Minutes minutes later, minutes after Elon's welcoming of Elon of of of minutes minutes later after after Elon's welcoming of of of Kanye West, Connie tweeted, I'm a bit sleepy tonight,

which is a weird way to open this tweet. By the way, I'm a sleepy tonight, Okay, but what but when I wake up, I'm going death con three on Jewish people Jewish jew Jewish people in all caps. The funny thing is is that I can't actually be anti Semitic because black people are actually jew. Also, you guys, I don't say the whole word jey. That was a

That was a TV joke. That wasn't Garrison being you guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone who are whoever opposes your agenda with the follow up tweet saying who do you think created cancel culture? Which, well, that's also okay. I I do want to stop at that. That is a much deeper Nazi reference than you might guess.

There's a called the Culture of Critique. There was a deep understanding among the o G Nazis back in the twenties and thirties that literary criticism that like the idea of sort of cultural criticism, that these were all Jewish plots in order to like, you know, it's actually similar to a a lot of what the rights is today in order to like make white people feel bad and shamed about their culture. Um Nazis today, there's a book called the culture of the Culture of Critique or a culture

of Critique that's about the same thing. This is actually a really deep idea. And Robert, are you saying that the cultural Marxists at the Frankfurt School invented political correctness to undermine Western civilization? Now I'm saying that, yes, But I'm also saying in a deeper sense that the Jews invented the concept of feeling bad about bad things in order to make white people feel bad about conquering the world,

which was the original. That's that's that's the o G ship, before we water this ship down, before before it becomes cultural Marxism, back when it's good old fashioned cultural Bolshevism. Yes, cultural, So that's the one version. Yeah, yeah, exactly, that's the that's the I don't know, iPhone, you know what I'm saying. You want you want a BlackBerry racism? Yeah, that's right.

So this is basically a lot of like textbook anti semitism um mixed in with some black Hebrew Israelite shit um about you know, being the true chosen people of God, kind of akin to like the if people listen to the show, they'll they might be familiar with like the Nazi Christian identity idea of white Christians being the real Israelites here. Yeah, it started, so we get the start

of Black Israelism in the Northeast into the Midwest. I think it's Kansas and New York City are two of the big early cities in the eighteen nineties, and it's like it's number one anti Semitic from the start. An awful lot of it is based around like a hatred

of Jewish people. Um, but it's also this like idea that there's x number thirteen lost tribes of Israel and then the black people are the lost tribes of Israel, and so there would be mixes of like taking actual elements of like Hebrew religious worship and uh mixing them in with kind of weirder stuff. Anyway, it's it's it's

has a long history. It is concentrated. Like the part of this like if you have ever spent time in like New York, like Philly or whatever, you will run in the Black israel Lites on the street like there. It's it's a thing that you will encounter. Um. There's not a ton of them, I think most essentates like twenty or thirty thousand, but they're they're very vocal. Yeah, the phrase now with like most of the Hebrew reals lights. It's like the two children in Israel are the black

Latino and this so called Native American or this. Yeah, so it's this, this idea and here's where. Here's where it gets tantalizing and complicated in I'm saying this as a black man. You know, is you open your Bible and at the back of every Bible got a map, and you're looking at it and you're going, well, is where the ship take place? Right? So you're like, well, how come y'all only teaching us about Europeans? You only

talking about every painting got these white people everybody. You're just like, no, this don't this ship don't make sense, This can't be it. And then I'm getting I'm getting deep cuts here. It's like you. And then you get into the Book of Acts, where it's supposed to be

the Bible, like where the Gospel spreads. And the first time they leave, the first time they leave Israel is Stephen meeting in Ethiopian, just meeting the Ethiopian Unich, and the Ethiopian goes to where where was Moses when Moses? Others back in the Exitus story, where was Moses? Where did Moses go when he fled? When he fled Egypt,

he went to Midian, he went to Ethiopia. So you're like, this ship took place in Africa, right, and at the time, we you still believe like the Sinai Peninsula that's North Africa, you know, so you're like, these are brown skin people. Why is your narrative and everything you tell me about

white people? So if you still believe, if you were still sort of like in all of the story and the person dilike this subversive you know, socialist, you know, anti imperialistic, ampi, anti empire character of Jesus that you know you're Arab and Muslim friends still understand as as you know, as he says like a person, then you're like, yo, we might be talking about the same man here and

he was as brown as us. So and if you're like and if you're like the God, you're like, dude, the gospel with South we hit, we hit in Ethiopia. There's accident the first Christian city, like at some point you like, the ship didn't go north until four years later. So you you just draw this conclusion that like, if you're gonna box me out, my only response, if you're gonna box me out, of all of the clear history

that took place among brown skinned people. Then I'm gonna be like, I have no choice but to be like, well, fuck y'all, not a true Israel over here. And if you read again, if you you can't not possibly be black, and read the book of Exodus and be like, well, ship, that's us. You know what I'm saying. You can't like,

how do you not see it? You know? So, so it's it's so alluring, especially again when you go to the when the white pastor talking about like, well, your poverty is your choice, and hey, well you know, and your reform Calvinist person was like, well that was the Lord's divine will. You were you know, you were divinely ordained, you know, to be suffering people. And at least at least you got the Gospel because you were a slave.

Maybe God was solving. You're like, fuck that that can't possibly be to God I'm reading about in this book. You know. So you're like, Okay, well, I guess you know what I'm saying. And then it's like I'm I'm ranting on this because I feel like like it's especially for this audience to really understand that context. You this this street in a lot of ways, like it became like this street religion. It gives these young men dignity,

you know what I'm saying. You're you're offering them a sense of history and importance and dignity and and and order that we you usually just get from the streets. You know what I'm saying. It's not happening a Sunday school because at church that's just oh black, that's just old women singing these hymns in the big hats. It's like I'm not getting that sort of like that that masculine hit, if you will, you know what I'm saying.

So like this a lot of this faith, like it really it attracts young men because it's like it's like we it's like we needed that order. We needed somebody to like come and like be a little more military about us, but then tied this longer history. Because if the only history you hear about yourself is your oppression for somebody to be like, no, you've chosen people to God, you're gonna be like, well hell yeah, you know. And

then again, I can't stress this enough. Part of this is in reaction to what white evangelical did by trying to erase brown people from the history. You know what I'm saying, It's like, um, I can't. I'm like, that's clear he clearly your picture is Michael Angelo's booth thing of of that's that's an Italian man like that can't

possibly be the dude in these books, you know. So you like, I mean he was, Jesus was black, Like I would like you just that's your only conclusion, and you like, and these people are saying, yeah, you're right, absolutely is, and you're like, well, we'll shoot I'll rock with y'all, you know, And it's it's it's definitely unclear what the extent of Kanye's belief and stuff around black

Hebrew Israelite type stuff is. He's still has a lot of the evangelical type of stuff going on and what he's saying, so he could have just picked up these type to things from cultural osmosis. We'll hear a little bit more about what he has to say about this in the next episode, but we're gonna have to I'm gonna have to call it there. That's going to be a day and join us after the weekend for a special special Part two on on on the feed talking about more of the same more of the same thing,

but getting slightly worse. Um And it turns out when you get kicked out Twitter, that doesn't stop you from saying bad things. You just start saying that other places. UM So anyway, Yeah, that's that. I very impressed, Garrison. It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash so versus Thanks for listening.