Separating Art from the Artist: Kanye

[dremolus - solarpunk]

Y'all probably know my stance at this and the whole "art from artist" debate but I'm curious for those people dead set on truly separating the art from the artist, if this is the line drawn or if they're firm in not thinking about what Kanye has said the past two months.

[gikem]

Since 2019, I have not bothered to listen to anything new from Kanye outside of a few choice tracks from Donda, and I intend to keep it that way should he choose to release new music.

[Relaxing Cup]

Haven’t paid attention since Flashing Lights lol

[312999]

Most of Kanye’s newer music has never really interested me, but I’ve always loved songs like Love Lockdown, Gold Digger, Through The Wire, etc for a long time and I can’t stop hating the songs because of how great they are.

[SabrinaFan]

I don't really like his music even outside of what a shitty person he is, so no lol.

[🇯🇲 lucy88 🇯🇲]

I only liked a few of his earlier singles like Jesus Walks, Golddigger, Stronger, Flashing Lights, Slow Jamz, Good Life, and All of the Lights. Never really cared too much for any of his output post Graduation.

[HamedM1 💔]

Lucky for me I:

A) Have not liked most music of his quality wise Yeezus save for some song off The Life of deleted.
B) As of last month, finally removed all lead credit Kanye songs from my library save for maybe a handful of Watch The Throne tracks to the point where I dropped his song from my recent Night Vibes RD.

Jesus Is King and Donda were almost entirely garbage so I'm probably not missing out on anything good from him nowadays.

[allow that]

I’ve deleted every trace of him. I can separate the art from the artist in many cases, but he’s crossed into the point if no return. BYE!

[jasper0102]

No, more because i have no interest on hearing new music from him than about how shitty of a human he is.

[JukeboxJacob]

it's really pushing it for me. I barely like anything he's made anyway

[Ernesto]

No. I only liked a few of his songs, anyway!

[dremolus - solarpunk]

Well I'm really glad even the "separate art from artist" people can draw the line at praising Hitler.

[Ling-Ling]

His music went to crap Post-Yeezy, so it's been increasingly easy to ignore him as his behavior got more histrionic. He gave us six great albums in a row, it was a good run. I have no desire to listen to anything else he ever puts out and this has definitely impacted how much I'll revisit his albums that I already own.

[Kelly's 10th Fan]

Not listening to new music is the easy part, It's whether or not someone would keep listening to his old music that's the bigger dilemma. It's hard not to feel like a stream even for old music indirectly 'validates' his place in music and society in general, and 2022 Kanye West doesn't deserve that validation. I haven't had the urge to revisit his old music in a long while now - even before this most recent fiasco, I saw it was time to get off the Kanye West bus years ago - so at the moment it's not a struggle. But it won't be long before his stuff is old enough to appear in 20-year anniversary lists and it's always been kind of a concession up to this point that his first five albums were all hip-hop classics (some might say six but I personally had zero use for Yeezus) no matter how much you disliked him as a person. Hell, that was 85% of his sales pitch. There's also the sticking point of his numerous production for and collabs with other artists.

Time and media have a way of making it easier to erase the memory of something or someone than one would think though, so maybe it will be just as easy in 2024 to say 'The Dropout? I don't think I know her' and shrug it off as just another forgotten chart hit. I can't see any major outlet ever acknowledging his place in music history again. It won't be refuted, it will simply be ignored.

[Eloqueen™]

I just wonder how much of this result is performative or genuine in nature. It is an interesting and thought-provoking question at its heart though. And where do we draw the line? If we are now to forever disregard Kanye's art due to crossed lines, do we do the same for inventors in other fields? What happens when you find out the man who invented the car you drive is a Nazi-sympathizer? Do you change cars and if not why? I mean this ideal has endless implications.

I'm personally still unsure where I stand on this matter across the board as I have conflicting feelings and can't seem to make up my mind. In the meantime I will say I am not listening to him and I know regardless I will not financially contribute to him personally in any way.

[mkarns]

Probably not anything new, in part because IMO he hasn't put out anything decent musically since at least The Life of deleted.

I'm not necessarily boycotting his old stuff, or things he collaborated on with others, but am not making any special effort to hear it outside of retro countdowns or some other type of show or playlist where he isn't the main attraction. And that was so before this latest implosion.

[.indulgecountry]

I didn't care for his music even before he went fully off the rails, and I've thought he was an obnoxious person for a long time (the Taylor Swift mic-snatching nonsense for instance was like 14 years ago, lol), so it makes it easy for me to continue to avoid his music now that he's officially dedicating his brand to being a complete POS.

[Willow Rinadoobee Breakfast]

TBH, he’s been kinda dying on me before this whole shit came up. Like I’m someone who will immediately drop an artist once they do scummy shit, and yeah, it felt kinda contradictory to me to keep listening to him. This was just the final nail for me, and I don’t think I’ll really miss him. Like there are a shit Tom of rappers out there.

If we mean about music, I haven’t kept up with him at all after Life of deleted. Like I don’t think I had any interest listening to DONDA. Now, yeah, his discography is over for me.

[🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾]

"Fade" was the last thing of his that I used and "W.T.P." for Teyana Taylor. Beyond that I cannot support him musically or as a person.

[Devil Marlena Nylund]

To answer the question, I haven't been invested in new music from Kanye since Yeezus. I thought that was an interesting album and not bad by any means, but the signs were there that he was venturing into making noise thinking it was innovative. After that, critics bent themselves out of shape so hard with everything he did that they must have needed surgery afterward. It was insane. Donda especially. I did listen to most of that and couldn't understand any appeal of it from any sort of musical or poetic perspective - and I generally am able to find redeeming qualities in everything, even if I myself don't like it. Donda was absolute trash.

The art vs. artist debate: I think it comes down to each individual person and what they value in the music they listen to. I don't think people who choose to listen to music by problematic artists are bad people. Some people genuinely care only about the song. If it sounds good to them, good enough. For me, I tend to have some investment in what I listen to, only because knowing a little about the artist helps me to understand the song better. So knowing an artist is trash in some way, that affects how I perceive a song. I'm sure there are songs I listen to by artists who are in some way trash that I may know about, but it doesn't affect the song to me, while others are harder to ignore. So much of Kanye rubs off in nearly all of his music because he's always been arrogant and self-centred.

And it's not even an idea limited to problematic artists. There have been artists who have rubbed me the wrong way in one way or another where that has affected my ability to enjoy their music. For some of us, we create this idea in our minds of the type of people our favs tend to be so if we come to find that they're unexpectedly different, it influences how we perceive them and the level to which we can enjoy their music/work. Similarly, we find out an artist we didn't care about is actually the greatest, nicest person and that opens us up to enjoy their work more than maybe we would have before.

The easy answer is that I could remove all songs by all known-trashbags like Kanye, but there's always going to be an exception, so where is the line? I can say I will choose not to support those artists. That's much easier. But to remove music I enjoy just because of the artist, that's a bit more of a blur. JK Rowling, for example, is trash, but I've established enough of a connection with Harry Potter that I can still enjoy the movies because for me there's a separation between her and the world in those stories. Will I support anything else she does? Not even. I'm sure there's other examples.

[M5AGTS]

I'm a firm believer in separating the art from the artist, but other than a few exceptions I think Kanye's songs are mid to really really bad. So it's not like it affects me that much, but since I separate from the art from the artist, I will still listen to Four Five Seconds and Stronger which are bangers.