Kanye (now legally known as "Ye") West's 2004 album College Dropout rose to number 2 on the Billboard 200 at about the same time my feet were leaving earth and my mind entering the stratosphere of manic-psychosis. That I remember adopting West's Jesus Walks track on that album and playing it over and over in my apartment during that time is telling--there was something about 'Ye' that seemed to "get it." He saw things no one else saw. I didn't even know he was bi-polar until years later. I just knew it was a great album. Not genius as he claims, but really good.
That manic trip that led to my hospitalization was a wild ride--exciting, euphoric, unnerving, and eventually out of control. I never forgot that time in my life, and I also never want to relive it. As it stands now, a little blue pill (thanks "Big Pharma") keeps me in the mental black and allows me to live a more-or-less normal life. Normal is not bad. Normal is perfectly acceptable. I'm grateful for being on solid ground, mentally speaking, for over twelve years now.
Which is why watching the Kanye interview with Lex Fridman was so difficult--triggering if you will--for me (admittedly, I couldn't make it through more than five minutes of it). Because it was all so familiar.
For those unfamiliar with him, Lex Fridman is a young Russian-American, Artificial Intelligence researcher at M.I.T who also happens to have a pretty popular podcast in the vein of the Joe Rogan Experiece. He's a little on the cerebral dry side personality wise, but he's patient, non-judgmental, a good listener, and engages his guests thoughtfully--which is a good recipe for skillful interviews. Those skills would be put to the test when he had Kanye on his podcast recently.
Not to judge by appearances, but Kanye came on looking (deliberately, I would wager) like he just got off a house-painting job--ball cap, rough beard, dirty-looking hoodie. He did not seem well, mentally speaking; it was all too familiar for me, personally. The thing about being "crazy" (I prefer the term "mentally ill") is it's very hard for anyone to break through to you in those moments. You are 100% convinced you are right, your judgment is sound, you are seeing clearly.
I remember in the height of my mania, when my family and friends started to get the feeling that something wasn't right, sitting in a psychiatrists office talking about the CIA and how they were on to me, how no doctor or friend should attempt to derail me from my "mission," and why couldn't they "wake up" to what was "really going on?" I still remember the psychiatrist nodding and looking slightly tired and annoyed at the same time. For him, it was just another day at work having to deal with a delusional patient in the throws of mania. For me, it was the first day of the rest of my life. Everything was new. Everything was enlightenment.
I never felt Kanye was a genius by any stretch. I kind of saw him as a more arrogant, less jovial brother-from-another-mother whom I shared a diagnosis with who just happened to be rich and famous. His wasn't a shtick--he really believed in himself first and foremost, and everything he purported as gospel. Nothing really that original, just recycled ideas with a new stamp.
Unfortuantely, Kanye in his interview with Lex doesn't do the pro-life movement any favors. Yes, he bluntly forces the points that "50% of black deaths a year is actually abortion ... The most dangerous place for a black person in America is in their mother's stomach." Which is true. "It is factual that the CIA removed the leaders from the black community, put crack in the communities, put guns in the communities, and locked up all the leaders ... Locked up all the leaders, locked up all the fathers. Now, 72% of black mothers are raising children by themselves. This is an agenda, like a Tuskegee experiment, set on my people." I don't know about the CIA stuff, completely possible, but the statistic of 72% I had seen before.
He also goes on fairly early in the interview--again, somewhat out of left field and without context--"We are still in the Holocaust. A Jewish friend of mine said, 'Go visit the Holocaust Museum,' and my response was, let's visit our Holocaust Museum: Planned Parenthood," not realizing that Lex himself is Jewish. Would that/should that change how Kanye makes this point? Perhaps.
My point is that he "spits this truth" inoganically, as if just spent a night googling "Conservative...Black....Abortion...Stats...Jews...Reddit" and made some mental notes before going on air. Or maybe his association with Candace Owens is rubbing off on him more lately?
Again, these inconvenient facts are not untrue. But in the context of the rambling, tangent-heavy monlogues in which he does not appear to be listening (unlike the interview with hip-hop producer Rick Rubin, who was completely thoughtful and articulate with Lex)--coupled with his remarks about "the Jews," the optics are horrible. Lex pushes back gently but forcefully, while still being respectful and desirous to salvage something of value for the audience in trying to tease out Kanye's humanness. I'm sure it was a tenuous and emotionally taxing thing for Lex to land that plane but he did it deftly as an interviewer, from the limited time I spent watching.
I remember not that long ago when the professional provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was in the news all the time. Same for Ann Coultier. Now, you hardly hear about them. It's a short half life for these types of celebs. In the wake when people start to yawn at their verbal antics and they find themselves alone wondering what it is they actually believe and stand for when they are no longer in the spotlight, you would hope they grow, mature, and mellow out maybe.
Mental illness is expensive. Kanye is already being dropped (or, if you like, "canceled") like a bad habit from sponsor after sponsor, bleeding out over a billion dollars reportedly from lost contracts, all over his white Yeezy sneakers. I can't say if I was Adidas I would necessarily want that look either.
The thing is, I used to be in Kanye's shoes...without the fame and riches, and without the ethnic tyrades...but ill none the less. I lost friends on it's account. I lost loves. I lost jobs. I made a fool of myself, and was the last to know. Now I take a pill a day and it keeps me on the mental straight and narrow. It took years to find the right combination, and it took persistence to advocate for myself to tirate down from seven medications to just one eventually. Even that one pill, in terms of dosage, was a bit of a goldilocks scenario--too high a dose left me lethargic, too low a dose left me prone to mania. I've been on a "just right" dosage for twelve years now, and so far so good.
I don't know if Kanye is on medication, but he should give it a try maybe. Anything's better than what we got on Lex's podcast. It's a real cross, mental illness. But there is hope. There is healing. There is redemption. It is possible.
But you have to have the humility to hit that shameful bottom and say "enough." Maybe I'm not the genius I thought I was. Maybe I'm not the Christian I thought I was. Maybe this life of fame is overrated. My life is a mess and I need professional help. The truth is not in the delusions of grandeur. It's not in the provocation and cliche fact-spitting. It's not in being a contrarian for the sake of contrarianism.
In fact, the truth may not be in you at all. "For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he is deluding himself" (Gal 6:3).
Take care of yourself, Ye! Trust in the Lord, your deliverer, and let Him be the savior of the world.
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