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After almost three years Kanye West (or “Ye”) has released his latest album, Vultures 1, featuring Ty Dolla $ign as part of a planned trilogy. One might expect that, given the end of many business relationships due to his previous anti-Semitic statements, this album would underperform. But it has reached number one. place in at least 100 countries on Apple and iTunes charts, even though it was independently produced and initially unavailable on Spotify and YouTube.
The implication here is that West has gained a level of success and fandom that cannot be erased or reversed. Kanye is, so to speak, impossible to cancel. He still has tens of millions of daily listeners and streams on Spotify alone. And that was before her most recent album.
Vultures 1 is already proving controversial, with its original album artwork accused of having Nazi connotations. On the lyrical front, Kanye raps, in reference to artists convicted and accused of sexual abuse respectively, that “I’m the Ye-Kelly bitch… Now, I’m Puff Daddy rich (Ha), that’s ‘#MeToo me ‘rich (Ha).” And in a nod to accusations of anti-Semitism, another West lyric says: “I’m not anti-Semitic, I just fucked a Jewish bitch.”
While these lyrics aren’t the most impactful to come out of the rap genre, they do point to the level of confidence West has regarding his status in popular culture. In fact, because the rapper is so famous now, he can handle more shocks (and attempted cancellations) than most other artists. Take, for example, Azealia Banks, who had a promising start to her music career. She quickly generated controversy for wearing homophobic insults, lashing out trans women, endorsing Donald Trump and his erratic social media posts that affected his reputation and career prospects. Ultimately, Banks was banned from major shows and festivals, resulting in declining sales. The same cannot be said for West, as demonstrated by the success of his latest album.
More broadly, however, Kanye’s relative success can be attributed to the death of the monoculture. Before, most of the general public listened to the radio, watched the same television stations, read the same newspapers, and consumed the same news sources. But the growth of the Internet starting in the 2010s gradually segmented this culture. Today, more and more people consume news, media and music from more specific and targeted sources. This means that a song could be a big hit among an online community, while the majority of the offline audience wouldn’t know about it and might never hear it in their lives.
Therefore, those who are not chronically online or deeply into social media may not care much, even if they are aware of his scandals, as they simply see him as a talented rapper. The fact is that Kanye is as “cancelled” as his next album. If his albums contain at least some high-quality music, they will be streamed and downloaded, talked about, and therefore more money will be made.
A true cancellation doesn’t come from the elites of the media, music, or fashion industry. Like it or not, it comes from below: West will only truly be “canceled” when people stop listening to his music and demand for it fades. Until then, Kanye isn’t going away anytime soon.