Kanye West has been a huge influence on me for the last couple of years. Let’s take a trip back to 2013. I was 15 years old back then, and I was a depressed kid. I gave a brief history about myself in my last article. Basically, there was a time in my life when I thought about suicide everyday. The only things that motivated me to keep going was the love I have for my siblings – and music. My favorite artist of all time is Kid Cudi. I credit his second album, Man On the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager, with saving my life. I really connected with his music because he talked about night terrors and depression. Both things that I have experienced as well. I’ve had his lyrics tattooed into my flesh because his music holds a special place in my heart. After his music helped me out of that dark time in my life, I was able to start finding things I was interested in. Then it was time to start applying to colleges. When I was procrastinating and avoiding my essays is when Kanye’s music really started going on replay through my headphones. When I looked at the amount of assignments I had, there was nothing more motivating then listening to “Spaceship“, “All Falls Down“, “Can’t Tell Me Nothing“, “Black Skinhead“, and many, many more songs to help me stop being lazy.
After Cudi’s music helped me out of depression, Kanye’s music gave me motivation and self-confidence, which is exactly what Kanye lives for. He explained this in a 2013 BBC interview with Zane Lowe, “If you’re a Kanye West fan, you are not a fan of me. You’re a fan of yourself. You will believe in yourself. I’m just the espresso. I’m just the shot in the morning to get you going, to make you believe that you could overcome that situation that you are dealing with all the time.” Many people have called him egotistic and self-oriented, he has pointed this out and explained his real mission, “I just want to help, from day one, I just wanted to help.”
In “Dear Millenials, I Am Proud of You“, an Affinity article written by Kaliane, she mentions that our generation has “the highest rates of mental illnesses and clinical depression.” So many of us are depressed that we can make a joke about self-hate and we laugh because we all can relate. Hausa Guled talks about this in the article, “How Using Memes Helps Teens Cope with Mental Illness” Kanye also talked about the idea of Self-Hate in the 2013 interview when he talked about the song “I Am a God” off the Yeezus album. The song reflects on his past achievements. “But to say you are a god? Especially, when you got shipped over to the country that you’re in, and your last name is a slave owner’s. How could you say that? How could you have that mentality?” We have a tendency to feel worthless because of the things that we have been through in the past. Instead, we need to feel that we are amazing because we have survived everything that life has thrown at us and the generations before us. We are always tearing ourselves apart. We are always making ourselves too afraid to try anything. We don’t believe in ourselves. Kanye addressed this when he said, “That’s the main thing people are controlled by, thoughts, their perception of themselves. They’re slowed down by their perception of themselves. If you’re taught you can’t do anything you won’t do anything.”
Kanye is a believer in using his voice. He believes that everyone has a voice that deserves to be heard and everyone should fight for what they want. He believes that no one should be afraid to share how you feel. This is no surprise when you learn that his father was a Black Panther, and his mother was an English Professor and also protested. Kanye is aware of the influence he has and has never shied away from an opportunity to use his voice on huge platforms. The eleventh anniversary of “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” was just a couple of weeks ago. The entire Yeezus album was basically a protest against anyone telling him that he couldn’t achieve his dreams of creating all types of art.
While he has never been afraid to share his opinion, some of the things he’s done have been…controversial. “Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time *shrug*” His words once earned him mass scrutiny that forced him to leave the country. Then he created My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all-time, as an apology. The Yeezus era also provided several “I am a genius” statements that left a sour taste in the mouths of some people. Kanye hilariously admitted that he let his frustration get the best of him during that time in a 2015 interview with Zane Lowe.
“No you’re not perfect, but you’re not your mistakes.” – Kanye West (ft. Paul McCartney) – Only One
Kanye is also a futurist. He has expressed the importance of the new generation, our generation, the millennial, many times. When he accepted the 2015 Video Vanguard Award, his first words were, “Listen to the kids.” In “Saint Pablo”, a song off his latest album, The Life of Pablo, he says it again, “I believe in the children, listen to the kids, bro.” He regularly states that we live in a new age, the Information Age. We have new tools to share our ideas. This is what influenced me to write my last article, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, But It Will Go Viral.” He shares the same progressive ideas that we believe in, “We have to understand that we’re not each other’s enemy. We have to stop discriminating against each other due to class and due to race and due to location or financial position. We have to say ‘wow that is the best version, lets use it, lets bring it, lets bring it to light, lets move forward, lets push forward as a civilization'”, he dreams of unity, “we are so jacked up on our own egos and so misguided by mainstream marketing, we are pitted against each other, we are mentally not in a place to be accepting, to not be jealous”
Throughout his career, Kanye has worked to push civilization forward. He has made music to motivate us to chase their dreams, to love ourselves, and to inspire us. He is never afraid to speak to remind us that we have our own voices too. His “rants” at his concerts and his speeches are always full of reminders that we have more potential than we know. We just have to start believing in ourselves. Throughout history, transition has never been easy. Whether it be a transition to the Renaissance or the Age of Enlightenment. People bashed Galileo for saying that the Earth orbited the Sun. As a civilization we rarely take time to look at the world in a bigger picture and realize that the world is changing as we speak. One day we’ll look back and think about how the generation that loved themselves the least, ended up changing the world for the better, and how Kanye helped push us along the way.
“I am one with the people” – Kanye West (Ft. Sampha) – Saint Pablo
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