A KODAK MOMENT
Who knows what to think about (Kan)Ye anymore? The obvious reaction is scorn and derision. But the contrarian in me can't help but simply sit back with the proverbial box of popcorn and watch the (Kan)Ye nitrous-induced psychodrama/marketing strategy on X play out like a celebrity car crash in slow motion. It now appears to have (mostly) been a mad plan to outtrend the Super Bowl on Sunday—and it almost worked—though the madman claimed his metrics were being throttled by those controlling the algorithms.
Just as you could sense (Kan)Ye whipping up a tweet storm to an insane crescendo, he got distracted by an online video of Kodak Black (a fellow rapper) strung out in the streets of Atlanta (incidentally, where (Kan)Ye was born), eating chicken from a box while onlookers, phones in hand, filmed him like an animal in a zoo. Suddenly, setting aside his provocative tweets for a moment, (Kan)Ye made a video announcing that he was going to find Kodak and help him—especially after noticing the rapper wearing a Donda Dove chain in the video, which he took as some form of divine providence.
From the scandalously ridiculous and offensive to the comically sublime, the most controversial man in the world suddenly pivoted from biblical levels of offence causing to hopping on a jet to help his chicken-eating friend, Kodak who was clearly in the midst of a crisis or breakdown.
It was almost as if all that porn, Hitler, Puff Daddy stuff was just for shits and giggles and by fleeing into the night to help his friend, all prior sin could be absolved.
Where will this all end? Is (Kan)Ye the glitch in the matrix who manages to complete the game, regardless of all the seemingly insurmountable crises he manufactures to prove his exemption from accountability in a society that mostly sees him as a devil, a black Hitler?
What Super Bowl?
It's kind of diabolically impressive that (Kan)Ye almost stole the spotlight from Super Bowl 2025 simply by posting porn and offensive statements from his hotel room at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles, while the eyes of America were mostly set on the 'big game.' Still, Kendrick Lamar delivered a taut, professional, yet somewhat underpowered set at Caesars Superdome, with Sam L. Jackson dressed as Uncle Sam (all the symbolic subtlety of a sledgehammer), which ultimately made you realise that these types of events really need supreme ego monsters of (Kan)Ye proportions to ensure they're truly iconic.
"I spent all the money for the commercial on these new teeth, so once again, I had to shoot it on the iPhone."
But though he managed to plug his company Yeezy from a dental chair in a 30-second ad shot on his iPhone, which would have cost him $7-$8 million, (Kan)Ye's currently too persona non grata and risky a proposition to be given a stage of that magnitude.
Who knows what chaos would ensue? It would be wild to see, though.