CHAMPION

Let's have a toast for the douche bags
Let's have a toast for the assholes
Let's have a toast for the scumbags
Every one of them that I know
Let's have a toast for the jerk offs
That'll never take work off
Baby, I got a plan
Run away fast as you can

Watching Ye live in Istanbul at the Atatürk Stadium a week ago with 120,000 others, it was quite evident just how cool most of his fans are (like a diverse group of non-conformist Ferris Buellers), unified in their love of an artist that appears to incur as much hate across the globe as he does love.

I met a charming Welsh guy with his Ukrainian girlfriend travelling for just 48 hours to catch their hero, a cool Iraqi guy called Mohammed who had driven to the concert from his home country to Turkey like a form of pilgrimage, serious-minded Russians who weighed up the moral paradox of supporting an artist as if he were the human form of a Dostoevsky novel (the sinner/saint duality especially), and Turks who just vibed to the music without the angst of any moral purity dilemmas.

What was most notable was the unifying effect across so many cultures gathered in the Tintin cartoon-like chaos of Istanbul, a city where there seem to be (at least during my time here) as many cats as cool cats,. ^^

And I always find
Yeah, I always find
Yeah, I always find somethin' wrong
You been puttin' up wit' my shit just way too long
I'm so gifted at findin' what I don't like the most
So I think it's time (so I think it's time)
For us to have a toast

And reflecting on today, the birthday of an artist whom I've followed since his debut album, The College Dropout, first released in 2004 and who has been the most fascinating, controversial, and ever-evolving artist of my generation, I can only feel a sense of gratitude for this mad genius.

No one said great art was going to come easy, and we Ye fans sure receive a tonne of flak for putting up with his manic highs and crater lows in order to simply love his art.

Nevertheless, I wouldn't change my devotion to the artist formerly known as Kanye West for a moment.

In this digital age, we need as many flaws as we can find to disrupt the algorithms and the Globalist/Silicon Valley utopianism that seeks to airbrush the flaws of humanity in order to achieve a communist, machine-like efficiency of existence that would have no place for a rogue comma or a rogue mortal like Ye.

Anyway, Happy Birthday, Ye!

You keep smashing that glass ceiling all the way to heaven.