BULLY BOY

“The bullied become the bully.” - Anonymous

Sometimes, I ask myself—if a rock 'n' roll star isn’t throwing televisions out of hotel rooms, threatening to kill himself, or expressing his admiration for Adolf Hitler, is he even a rock 'n' roll star? In an age where we’re subjected to both grisly-looking geriatrics gyrating like sagging flesh puppets on stage and IKEA-pop types like Coldplay performing sub-AI music in sold-out stadiums, I find it refreshing that (Kan)Ye West—the world’s most divisive musical figure—can still fuck things up and consistently upset nearly everyone on the planet. It’s quite a feat, if I’m honest.

As we live in a world that has become increasingly zombified, anyone shattering the inertia of our Truman Show iPhone lives with shock-and-awe tactics is, in my mind, welcome to keep going. After all, it won’t be long before the robots are fully in charge, and our cultural diets become nothing more than a perpetual digital slop wheel—like one of those sushi conveyor belts you see in restaurants. Of course, since his 2008 autotune masterpiece 808s & Heartbreak, (Kan)Ye has proven to have cyborg instincts of his own through his art—but somehow, that seems fitting for a self-professed glitch in the matrix.

Watching the gothic carnival of (Kan)Ye unfold over the past five weeks on X, I’m amazed that he’s managed to drop a new 'album'—almost as an afterthought—amidst the whirlwind of controversy he’s been stirring online. It’s ironic, perhaps, that an album titled Bully is, musically and lyrically, surprisingly human and vulnerable. Referencing The Supremes’You Can’t Hurry Love and The Carpenters’ (They Long to Be) Close to You amongst many other classic tracks, the album flies in the face of the artist's recent aggressive onslaught on X. It’s a brilliant rope-a-dope tactic and only heightens the paradox of the man with the art.

Though it’s nearly impossible to separate (Kan)Ye from his art—his 12-album run playing out like an audio mega-diary—it’s also true that he reveals much more of his humanity through his music. His albums often function as public/private confessions that slip beneath the rage and thunder of his online rants. Tracks like Beauty and the Beast and Close to You, though heavily auto-tuned and AI-inflected in places, remind us of the human being still breathing beneath the monster’s facade—much like Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi, when Luke Skywalker lifts his father's mask to reveal his all-too-human face. From Jedi to Sith Lord, (Kan)Ye is certainly completing his hero to villain arc in spectacular fashion.

Musically, there’s no doubt that (Kan)Ye still delivers beats and tracks that far surpass most of the dross available today. At 47, he’s still proving himself to be miles ahead of both his peers and the younger challengers snapping at his heels.

Who knows—perhaps there’s method to his madness.

The bully in the playground is still making the most noise and until he gets taken out, he's clearly not going anywhere.