I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YE*

Where to start with Kanye West? Where else but suicide?

Kanye has talked about killing himself off and on throughout the entirety of his career. It’s just something he does. In lyrics, interviews, unreleased tracks, and on Twitter at least a few different times. The point is, it’s been on his mind. 

I don’t mean to be glib. I don’t mean to make light. I mean to make a point. 

Kanye is nothing if not honest. He has been telling us who he is from the very beginning. So maybe he’s been saying this for a reason. Who can know anything for sure, but maybe Kanye has always wanted to kill himself. 

Maybe he did kill himself. 

This is a post-mortem. And this is an apology. It is an attempt to understand my own feelings about Kanye, to pinpoint what made him so special to me in the first place. To figure out where he went wrong and why. 

The story of Kanye West is a rise and fall comprised of many rises and falls. For twenty years, he held our attention like no other. He invented the rapper as pop star that has since come to dominate the music industry with spectacular panache and a penchant for self-destruction. 

For so many people, Kanye has always been crazy. Or at least a jackass. They had no issue writing him off long before 2022. But for others like me, that year was the final straw. After seeing for so long just how much he could test the general public, Kanye finally went too far. He praised Adolf Hitler, denied the Holocaust, and identified as a Nazi.

Jesus. 

That’s copied straight from Wikipedia. I fully plagiarized it. We can quibble over whether it gets any worse than praising Hitler, denying the Holocaust, and identifying as a Nazi. Certainly there are no end of other insane celebrities with whom to compare. But I am not interested in weighing the scales, and I am certainly not interested in making an argument for why Kanye is still essential after he burned everything to the ground, alienating his fans and loved ones alike. 

But he was essential. He was special. He forever altered the course of popular music. This isn’t about that, though, so much as it is about what Kanye chose to communicate about himself at the height of his fame and prestige. A dozen idiotic soundbites might jump into your brain, but I’m not here to defend each and every thing that has ever come out of his mouth. 

Kanye has said countless things in and out of his music, and reconciling them all is impossible. There is a great deal I could analyze about his stardom and body of work, but so could any other asshole. I am not any other asshole. I am a very specific asshole. And I wouldn’t be writing about Kanye West if I didn’t have very specific reasons. 

I feel a need to explain what I saw in him. What I see in him still. I’m willing to try, because I think it was really there. And I know I’m not the only one who sees it. 

The purpose of this book is not to provide Genius-level lyrical interpretation or to Dissect musical concepts like interpolation. This is not a critical analysis. This is a narrative. 

Through 24 songs - a double album, if you will - I will retell the arc of his career before he committed career suicide, tracing a few threads from start to finish in order to provide insight into his mind and a window into his soul. Because if you really want to understand Kanye West, you really only need to know three things. 

He is a Christian. 

He is a mama’s boy. 

And he is an addict.