Kanye West: The Tom Cruise Of Music

"Remember in high school when there was that kid who would go on about his latest hobbies for hours if you gave him the chance so you kept away from him and would hate those awkard moments in-between classes where you were stuck with him? Remember as well the kid who was too cool for school, who’d always be keeping up the latest trends and know the good bands and who taught you that saying ‘sharp’ was cool and then when it wasn’t? How is it that Kanye West is both of these kids at once?

It’s kind of ironic that one of Kanye West’s best known songs has the lyrics ‘that that don’t kill me/ can only make me stronger’ when Mr. West has been through so many controversies and doesn’t seem that much weaker. He has been the routine crasher the MTV music awards, a gay fish, a black Jesus on Rolling Stone’s Magazine, a really really sore loser and, of course, the destroyer of that blond singer girl’s moment of glory. He made auto-tune popular. Even Obama has called him a jackass and Pink “the biggest piece of sh-t on earth."

By all rights he should be a well known nobody by now, a Tom Cruise of the music scene, trying to scrape some public dignity back by being ‘self-depicrating’ (read: I’m so awesome I can pretend I’m not) or by leaching off younger blood. But even if nobody takes Kanye seriously and he’s midly to strongly disliked by many, he’s still kicking his presence. All the bad press hasn’t yet killed him.

Part of it is that it’s amusing to watch an idiot be an idiot. Take a recent example: his Twitter feed. Not only does it include gems like "I ordered the salmon medium instead of medium-well. I didn’t want to ruin the magic" or “sometimes I push the door close button on people running towards the elevator. I just need my own elevator sometimes, my 7 floor sanctuary”, but it has been ‘reimagined’ as a series of New York cartoons (if you haven’t already checked them out you should). And his obnoxious tweets make for surprisingly good cartoon material although the real joke is that Kanye wouldn’t get it.

But in a strange way there’s something endearing about how much of a clueless douche he can be. Egomanic definitely, but earnest egomaniac, egomaniac who’s actually in it for the music, not uniquely the money or the fame. I’d like to believe that Kanye is some off beat idealist who genuinely is that passionate that he crashes parties in a HULK SMASH way (you won’t award me? You won’t like me when I haven’t been awarded!), only realising afterwards that maybe that was a mistake. One of the more loveable parts of Kanye is that he seems genuinely confused by the music world he finds himself in and keeps tripping over these rules and people. He’s genuine despite the layers of fakeness and among the perfect smiles and outfits and personalities it’s refreshing to see someone freak out in an uncalculated way, even if the freaking out is cringeworthy and painful to watch.

Besides, it’s fun to watch someone driven insane with fame. And I know that I would like to be able to crash the MTV Music Awards on some idiotic pretext."