The Prosperity Gospels of Superstardom: Kanye's Philosophy

The Prosperity Gospels of

Superstardom: Kanye’s Philosophy

Catherine John, Leroy Myers, Jr., and Zachary Leacock

Journal of Hip Hop Studies, Special Issue I Gotta Testify:

Kanye West, Hip Hop, and the Church

Volume 6, Issue 1, Summer 2019, pp. 33–47

DOI: https://doi.org/10.34718/7fzq-sy81

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John et al.: The Prosperity Gospels of Superstardom: Kanye’s Philosophy

Published by VCU Scholars Compass, 2019

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The Prosperity Gospels of Superstardom: Kanye’s Philosophy

Catherine John, Leroy Myers, Jr. & Zachary Leacock

A little over a decade following the release of his debut album, The College Dropout,

Kanye West has continued his progression as an artist and a public figure. His pattern of

attention to detail, focus on innovation mixed with bravado overtones and stream-of-

consciousness lyrics fuel West’s constant evolution. This evolution from the backpack

wearing “college dropout” we met in 2003, to the critically acclaimed artist of Yeezus in

2013 portrays the new West as a demi-god, operating in a sovereign capacity, hoping to

obtain full Godhood through success and material gain. The transition from the 2003

lyrics, “God show me the way, because the devil’s tryna break me down” to the statement

“I am a god” in the 2013 song of the same name, suggest that West’s relationship with

God has changed from a commoner praying for guidance to direct conversations in the

most opulent settings.

His steady spiritual evolution throughout his career represents

the conflation of his material and spiritual pursuits.

West’s approach to the divine,

therefore, reflects Michael Eric Dyson’s discussion of rap artists’ God Complex. Rather

than “playing god,” the music of rappers like Kanye West and Jay-Z enable listeners to

recognize that we are “complex human beings who are centers of moral gravity around

which meaning and significance orbits, that, in one sense, we can control, or, at the least,

generate, meaning and significance.”

Yet, as we know with Kanye, nothing is that simple

or that straightforward.

If Kanye West’s Yeezus and The Life of Pablo suggest an emerging god-complex,

then the advent of the anonymously founded Church of Yeezus and the associated

dogma of “Yeezianity” can be seen as proof of his superstardom, influence and prosperity

all in one.

In this sense, Hip Hop acts as what Greg Dimitriadis’ describes as a

Kanye West, “Jesus Walks,” The College Dropout, (Def Jam 2004); West, “I Am a God,” Yeezus (Def

Jam 2013).

Julius Bailey, “Existentialist Transvaluation and Hip Hop’s Syncretic Religiosity” in Monica R.

Miller, Anthony B. Pinn, and Bernard “Bun B” Freeman eds., Religion in Hip Hop: Mapping the New Terrain

in the US (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 39.

Michael Eric Dyson, “God Complex, Complex Gods, or God’s Complex: Jay-Z, Poor Black Youth,

and Making ‘the Struggle’ Divine,” in Monica R. Miller, Anthony B. Pinn, and Bernard “Bun B” Freeman

eds., Religion in Hip Hop: Mapping the New Terrain in the US (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 61.

Eric Sundermann, “We Interviewed the Founder of Yeezianity, the First Religion Based on Kanye

West.” Vice, January 14, 2014, https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/yeezianity-kanye-west-religion-

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“transformative cultural force,” in which religious meanings are found in the “everyday”

thus stripping rappers like West of a “clear moral teleology.”

Possessing such an

approach to morality would downplay the fluid aspect of religion within West’s music.

This article will address the convergences and divergences between Kanye’s philosophy

and prosperity gospel ministry as well as his self-proclaimed god/hero status. We will

also examine his philosophy and its development over the years as it relates to notions of

bravado, revenge, and spiritual quest. Overall, Kanye West’s musical trajectory maintains

an aspirational ethos due to his discussion of wealth and status for the purpose of a self-

proclaimed higher calling.

Bravado & Wealth

Prosperity Theology is a Christian philosophy that claims that it is the will of God

for believers to be wealthy.

To receive affluence, one must adhere to certain guidelines

and practices that vary depending on the ideology espoused by a congregation's pastor.

Generally, however, these guidelines include faith, positive thoughts, and generous

tithing to the ministry to which the believer ascribes. Preachers use passages from the

Bible to support these claims while presenting their own lives as proof that allegiance to

these interpretations of the gospel will result in wealth for their followers. Immaculately

tailored suits, high-end cars, luxurious mansions, and even private jets are part of the

external trappings of these preachers’ prosperity. They often speak of having a direct

connection to God and talk about conversations with “Him” that makes them

intermediaries between the divinity and the common person. Their lavish lifestyles are

seen as manifestations of their divine truth and the implication is that the believer’s faith

will “turn the spoken word into reality.”

Stephanie Y. Mitchem, in her text Name it and Claim It? Prosperity Preaching in the

Black Church, speaks of several types of Prosperity Gospels. She distinguishes three

variations starting with the Black ministries of Charles Manuel “Sweet Daddy” Grace,

founder of The United House of Prayer in Massachusetts in 1919, and his contemporary

Father Divine who had an early 20

Century ministry and movement. Incidentally, both

Sweet Daddy Grace and Father Divine were accused of proclaiming themselves to be God

incarnate. The second school of thought comes from the post 1960s tele-evangelical white

ministries of Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland. The third school is a derivative of

interview.

Greg Dimitriadis, “Hip hop and Humanism: Thinking Against New (and old) Fundamentalisms”

in Monica R. Miller, Anthony B. Pinn, and Bernard “Bun B” Freeman eds., Religion in Hip Hop: Mapping the

New Terrain in the US (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 137-138.

Naomi Haynes, “’Zambia Shall Be Saved!: Prosperity Gospel Politics in a Self-Proclaimed

Christian Nation,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternate and Emerging Religions 19 (2015): 6; Kate Bowler and

Wen Reagan, “Bigger, Better, Louder: The Prosperity’s Gospel Impact On Contemporary Christian

Worship” Religion and Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 24 (2014): 189.

Catherine Bowler, “Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel” (PhD diss., Duke

University, 2010), 4. For more on the lavish lifestyles of Prosperity theologians see pgs. 4-5.

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the Science of Mind “New Thought” movements, rooted in affirmation-based spiritual

beliefs and teaching. The United States experienced an increase in Prosperity Gospel

churches during the first decade of the 2000s, according to scholar Catherine Bowler.

Moreover, for “Pentecostals [who] traditionally separated the sacred [from] the

[materially] secular,” these lines became blurred when the institution of the Black Church

was impacted by modern prosperity gospels and televangelism in the 1990s.

Kanye West’s rise coincides with the increase in this style of prosperity based

preaching while his music and public persona have evolved in ways that bear some

similarities to Prosperity Theology. By the mid-1990s, according to Erika Gault,

“televangelists embodied the culture of hip hop and rap music making its ethos of

consumerism acceptable among the black bourgeois.”

In West’s world, if one embraces

their creativity and acts as he does, one can live out one’s dreams. His lyrics separate him

from “commoners” and with the advent of Yeezus, they portray him as an intermediary

between humanity and a Hip Hop God. In the song “Gorgeous,” from his album My

Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, he states: “Is Hip Hop just a euphemism for a new

religion/The soul music for the slaves that the youth is missing/This is more than just

my road to redemption/Malcolm West had the whole nation standing at attention.”

Kanye as Malcolm West is a Hip Hop god then Hip Hop, as stated above is the new

religion, “the soul music for the slaves that the youth is missing.” The suggestion here is

that the music, the culture and the movement hold a sway in the lives of the youth that

may be more powerful than organized religion, and at its best, more compelling.

His

description of himself as Malcolm West with “the whole nation standing at attention,” is

given life by an online artistically constructed photo that combines half of Malcolm X’s

face with half of West’s. His role as prophet, if not god, is collapsed and emphasized in

this verse. His fans and followers fund his lavish lifestyle and ultimately elevate his brand

in the corporate world. Going even further than mere prosperity preacher and tapping

into the notion of himself as a healer, Kanye states, “My music isn’t just music – it’s

medicine. I want my songs to touch people, to give them what they need. Every time I

make an album, I’m trying to make a cure for cancer musically. That stresses me out!”

Jonathan L. Walton, Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism (New York: New

York University Press, 2009), 79; Adrienne Gaines, “Revive Us, Precious Lord,” Charisma Magazine¸ April

30, 2003, http://www.charismamag.com/site-archives/146-covers/cover-story/891-revive-us-precious-

lord; Stephanie Y. Mitchem, Name it and Claim It? Prosperity Preaching in the Black Church (Cleveland: The

Pilgrim Press, 2007), xi-xii; Bowler, “Blessed,” 21.

Erik D. Gault, “My Soul Knows How to Flow: A Critical Analysis of the History of Urban Black

Christian-Themed Rap” in Andre E. Johnson, Urban God Talk: Constructing a Hip Hop Spirituality (New York:

Lexington Books, 2013), 180.

West, “Gorgeous,” My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Def Jam 2010).

Tim Huffman and Amira De la Garza, “Rap with Soul and Pray with Flow: Youth on Hip Hop

Musicality and Catholic Spirituality” in Andre E. Johnson, Urban God Talk: Constructing a Hip Hop

Spirituality (New York: Lexington Books, 2013), 117.

Kevin Zimmerman, “For Kanye West, Music is Medicine” BMI, March 23, 2006, accessed

December 27, 2016, http://www.bmi.com/news/entry/for_kanye_west_music_is_medicine.

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He is able to instill a certain faith in himself, which appears to have influenced the zeal of

his fan base, creating a sense of followers rather than mere fans. Kanye’s self-proclaimed

status as a healer reflects tenets of prosperity gospel ideology. With health an element of

prosperity theology, followers of prosperity gospel embrace “positive confession” by

using one’s faith as an “instrument of Christian power.”

Through these “positive

confessions,” West forges a connection with his listeners by demonstrating the faith he

has in his aim for redemption. Kanye as a healer in this “new religion” (hip hop) with the

ability to heal through music, reflects Angela Nelson proclamation that hip hop centers

“on the ultimacy of human beings rather than God.”

But how are we to comprehend

the obsession with wealth in Hip Hop? Can it be explained exclusively with recourse to

prosperity gospel ideology or the greed of a capitalist society?

Tressie McMillan Cottom, in her 2013 social media article post, “Why do Poor

People ‘Waste’ Money on Luxury Goods?” argues that far from being frivolous

indulgences, luxury goods have historically functioned as forms of social access for

economically disadvantaged African Americans.

Using examples from her life

experiences, as well as those of her family members, she successfully demonstrates

instances in which a designer purse, the right shoes or a particular car opened doors of

opportunity that made the economic difference between having and not having basic

resources or employment. Cottom’s article suggests that excessive consumption is not

only an overcompensation for the anxiety of being made to feel less than, but in some

instances, it is also a strategy of survival.

This is supported by the trilogy of songs, “Crack Music,” “Gold Digger,” and

“Roses” on Kanye’s 2005 sophomore album Late Registration. The skits throughout this

album about the proverbial fraternity “Broke Phi Broke” whose motto is, “Got no money,

got no clothes, got no cars, can’t get no ‘hoes’,” sets the stage. The massively popular

“Gold Digger,” an interesting meditation on male and female dynamics as it relates to

the push and pull around materialistic desires and needs, is often underestimated for its

complexity. “I ain’t sayin’ she’s a gold digger, but she ain’t messin’ with no broke niggas.

Get down girl, go ‘head git down!”

Touching on three different scenarios, West’s

narrator first addresses a situation in which the man falls in love with a woman who is

Kate Bowler and Wen Reagan, “Bigger, Better, Louder: The Prosperity’s Gospel Impact On

Contemporary Christian Worship” Religion and Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 24 (2014): 189.

Angela M. Nelson, “’God’s Smiling on You and He’s Frowning Too’: Rap and the Problem of

Evil” in Michael J. Gilmour ed., Call Me the Seeker: Listening to Religion in Popular Music (New York:

Continuum, 2005), 177.

Tressie McMillan Cottom, “Why Do Poor People ‘Waste’ Money on Luxury Goods?,” Talking

Points Memo, accessed July 1, 2017, November 1, 2013, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/why-do-poor-

people-waste-money-on-luxury-goods.

Tressie McMillan Cottom, “Why Do Poor People ‘Waste’ Money on Luxury Goods?,” Talking

Points Memo, accessed July 1, 2017, November 1, 2013, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/why-do-poor-

people-waste-money-on-luxury-goods.

West, “Gold Digger,” Late Registration (Def Jam 2005).

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already notorious for only dating famous men. The second scenario functions as a

morality tale highlighting the dangers of being unwittingly exploited for child support.

The third and final scenario is one in which grudging respect and a hypothetical

backstory is given to the kind of (black) woman who may become the proverbial “gold

digger” – situations in which loyalty and fidelity through hard times is rewarded with

abandonment for a white woman once wealth and status are achieved. The applicability

of this last verse to Kanye’s real life is ironic, to say the least.

The notion of excess as part of the capitalist trappings of Hip Hop, internalized by

artists who live in a society in which money equals power and respect, is also explained

in a cultural sense by Zora Neale Hurston’s 1928 notion, “The Will to Adorn” from her

essay, “Characteristics of Negro Expression.” She states,

The will to adorn is the second most notable characteristic in Negro expression. Perhaps

his idea of ornament does not attempt to meet conventional standards, but it satisfies the

soul of its creator…Whatever the Negro does of his own volition he embellishes. His

religious service is for the great part excellent prose poetry. The prayer of the white man

is considered humorous in its bleakness.

If Hurston’s words have any relevance all these years later, then part of the excess of

opulence in Black life can be explained by a cultural love of adornment; stylization of

objects in a way that fits with one’s worldview and showmanship. West’s dramatic flair

in a range of areas can certainly be viewed from this perspective.

Revenge

The ideology of the song, “Crack Music” from Late Registration, the last of the three

songs that can be linked to Tressie Cottom’s notions about why “poor people waste

money on luxury items,” is suggestive because it extends Kanye’s philosophy on wealth

beyond need and desire to a kind of revenge fantasy that continues in different ways

throughout his career.

Describing a world in which drugs were put into Black

communities deliberately to stop revolutionary movements, West addresses the ways in

which some of the very youth who were the intended or unintended targets of the drug

war, invested in the very “rocks” and “powder” that created an epidemic of death and

destruction. “Crack raised the murder rate in DC and Maryland/We invested in that it’s

like we got Merrill-Lynched/And we been hanging from the same tree ever since.”

Destroyed by a drug strategy designed from above, he further states:

Sometimes I feel the music is the only medicine

So we cook it, cut it, measure it, bag it, sell it

The fiends cop it

Zora Neale Hurston, “Characteristics of Negro Expression,” Hurston: Folklore, Memoirs and Other

Writings (New York: Library of America Press, 1995), 830-46.

West, “Crack Music,” Late Registration (Def Jam 2005).

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Nowadays they can't tell if that's that good shit “We ain't sure man! Put the CD on your

tongue yeah, that's pure man!”

That's that crack music nigga

That real black music nigga.

Crack, the drug and the music in the streets, merge symbolically to create “crack music,”

the kind of music that you make when you’re forever surrounded by the breakdown of

the family, drug sales as a strategy for wealth and overdosing relatives. Now “we”

control this product that the dominant society consumes without being able to tell if the

product is pure; the exploitation appears to be working in a kind of reverse.

In a clever re-signification of the Lord’s Prayer, the speaker at the end of “Crack

Music” asks God for “daily bread” before the Feds give him days in prison and force him

to forfeit his livelihood, his bread.

Making money from a drug whose arrival in the

Black community devastated it, and then making money from what some would call

equally destructive music by selling it to the children and grandchildren of the former

plantation owners is a well-designed strategy of revenge; a fantasy that has become

reality. This is one in which the former system of exploitation and submission, “Our

mammas ain’t got to be they cooks and nannies” is reversed, “we gonna repo everything

they ever took from Grammy.” The final lines of the song complete the inversion of power,

“Now the former slaves trade hooks for Grammy’s/This dark diction has become

America’s addiction, those who ain’t even Black use it/We gon’ keep baggin up this here

crack music.”

If one thinks about Kanye’s statements here, the acquisition of wealth for the “boyz

in the hood,” moves outside of the realm of greed and competition as a drive purely

rooted in excess and becomes a way of evening the score and reversing the power

dynamic. West transcends any simplification of morality due to what Julius Bailey deems

as a “rejection of sin” in his music. Instead, Kanye’s moral compass “is not the automatic

embrace of hedonism, but the rejection of an abstract morality that purposefully

dismisses the concrete and embraces emotions, circumstances, accidents, struggles,

etc.”

While “Crack Music” is from Late Registration an album that is considered part of

the “conscious” early Kanye before the god-complex and braggadocio of the later albums,

the song “New Slaves” from Yeezus continues the thread of societal critique and revenge

narrative as a form of symbolic vindication for crimes perpetrated against Black people

historically and currently. Separating racism into the old and the new, the opening lines

of “New Slaves” cryptically signifies the old with references to “clean water” and

West, “Crack Music,” Late Registration (Def Jam 2005).

Julius Bailey, “Existentialist Transvaluation and Hip Hop’s Syncretic Religiosity” in Monica R.

Miller, Anthony B. Pinn, and Bernard “Bun B” Freeman eds., Religion in Hip Hop: Mapping the New Terrain

in the US (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 44-45

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“picking cotton,” things that will immediately conjure up slavery and Jim Crow for the

literate listener. The coding moves forward to the consumerist present with the

distinction now being made between “broke nigga racism” – “Don’t touch anything in

the store!” to “rich nigga racism” – “Come in, please buy [some] more.” Further stating

that now “err’ body” not just poor, people are “wasting their money on luxury items.”

West alludes to the fact that even in the world of the commodity, Black culture sets the

trends. Ultimately, the new slaves are the followers, (“You see it’s leaders and it’s

followers”) but also the Black contemporary class of “broke and rich niggas.”

He cuts

back against the grain of assumptions that wealthy Black people no longer experience

racism, the presumption being that if they do, it is both exceptional and petty.

Going “postal” in the second verse, West refers to the second line of Billie

Holiday’s song about lynching, “Strange Fruit” which states, “Blood on the leaves and

blood at the root.” The notion of Maybach Mercedes and the like being used to pacify the

“rich niggas” while there is still “blood on the leaves,” i.e., corporate violence and

exploitation in the music industry, all this is seen by Kanye as part and parcel of this “new

slave” system. Without some degree of cultural literacy, the coded nature of his statement

“we the new slaves” may seem like empty rebellion.

The verse is a barrage of challenges

that people like himself face in the corporate music prison, something that he juxtaposes

with the “DEA” and the “CCA;” the link between the Drug Enforcement Agency and the

biggest private prison company is a marriage that is literally creating new slaves of young

colored bodies. Using a gangster tone and fast-paced rapping in the second verse, West

becomes the proverbial “bad nigger” whose revenge fantasy, coded with specifically

heterosexual male aggression, is made manifest among other things, against the pawn in

the equation, “the Hampton wife.”

Wealth and power for West and his Hip Hop contemporaries function as a type of

reprisal against the dominant society for historic exploitation without reparations. The

game hasn’t changed; white power and black conditioned submission is referenced in

Kanye’s song “Gorgeous” when he refers to his bags being searched at the airport despite

being a superstar, similar to Mos Def’s Black on Both Sides “Mr. Nigga,” who goes overseas

and is “over-seized” in London’s Heathrow airport without apology. These are self-made

men; Ice Cube going from NWA to producing films and developing his brand; Jay-Z

going from selling drugs on the streets of New York to prime seats at the inauguration

ball for Barack and Michelle Obama; P-Diddy’s empire. “How we stop the Black

Panthers?/Ronald Reagan cooked up an answer.”

The Civil Rights movement’s

material gains did not trickle down for many. Instead the distribution of crack became

the entrepreneurial approach to our death. No reparations. So as Notorious B.I.G. says,

West, “New Slaves,” Yeezus (Def Jam 2013).

The concept of the “bad nigger” is explained nicely in Ronald Judy’s 1994 article, “On the

Question of Nigga Authenticity,” Boundary 2 21:3 (Fall 1994), pp. 211-230.

West, “Crack Music,” Late Registration (Def Jam 2005).

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“If I wasn’t in the rap game/I’d probably have a key knee deep in the crack

game/Because the streets is a short stop/Either you slinging crack rock or you got a

wicked jump shot.” Rap becomes the legal substitute for selling crack and Hip Hop

becomes the new hustle, exploited by the corporations but giving Black men from the

bottom the opportunity to feed their families “for generations,” as Kanye West asserts.

Spiritual Quest

Despite an underlying critique of racism, capitalist aggression and hypocrisy that

continuously runs through Kanye’s body of work, with the advent of Graduation and his

rise to superstardom, there was a shift in West’s style and brand. In his later music, as

sure as night follows day, the wasteland that accompanies the advent of fame – sexual

decadence, endless money, suicidal thoughts, drugs, objectification of women – are the

subject of his meditations. We are reminded of the phrase near the end of the song “Crack

Music,” “God how could you let this happen?” Indeed, this question recurs almost as a

cry for help and West responds rhetorically with both the notion of himself as a god as

well as the short film Runaway.

Yet there was a concrete incident that spawned the Kanye who would become

more than just another flash in the pan rapper. Kanye West’s life changed following his

nearly fatal car accident in 2002. Journalist Kimberly Davis, describing West’s post-

accident life, wrote: “It’s as if, given a second chance at life, he has to live it all out - at full

speed-- picking up success and holding onto it for all it’s worth.”

The accident ended

up being the most important element jumpstarting West’s career. He realized a calling

when it came to his music. Producer and mentor to West, No I.D., recalled in an interview:

“One key moment that I can pinpoint…when I felt like he had the idea that led to [College

Dropout] was the first time I talked to him after the accident. He was [previously] kind of

a gangsta rapper...” The nearly fatal accident made Kanye think. No I.D. went on to say:

He said, ‘I’m going to rap about this accident. I'm going to use a song and change the

direction. I'm going conscious with my music…’ I think from there the College Dropout

concept took [on]…form because he let go of the gangsta persona and formed a good

concept. Before that he would wrestle ideas, try to make it all line up but it wouldn't make

sense. I think that was the moment when he put all the pieces of the puzzle [together].

The Notorious B.I.G, “Things Done Changed,” Ready to Die (Bad Boy 1994).

Runaway downloads as part of the Yeezus album but in actuality, the songs and content are

actually taken from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

. Kimberly Davis, “The Many Faces of Kanye West,” Ebony 59 (2004): 93.

“Kanye West’s ‘The College Dropout’: an Oral History,” Billboard, February 5, 2014, accessed May

28, 2016, http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/the-juice/5893976/kanye-wests-the-college-

dropout-an-oral-history?page=0%2C1; psychologist Rachel Kitson describes West’s near-death experience

as Post Traumatic Growth, which for West “led to a revitalized and uncompromising pursuit of his goals;”

see Rachel Kitson, “A Psychologist’s Perspective on Kanye West” Shrink Tank, accessed December 29, 2016,

http://www.shrinktank.com/psychologists-perspective-kanye-west/.

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West had an epiphany. His brush with death enabled him to realize the fleeting

nature of his life and develop a more authentic musical persona, one that represented his

actual experiences. Years later, however, he needed a long-lasting concept to maintain his

fan base and he was also now a partial victim of the decadence of fame. He also wanted

“to feed his family for generations.” He experienced another rebirth. West’s compares his

feelings before releasing Yeezus to the time before he released The College Dropout, a period

of frustration and angst all while trying to gain approval from musical peers and the

world.

Similar to prosperity gospel, the spiritual calling in West’s music is often

interlaced with references to material wealth.

The idea that Kanye would characterize himself as a “god,” has evoked cries of

blasphemy and arrogance. “I am a god/Hurry up with my damn massage/Hurry up

with my damn ménage/Get the Porsche out the damn garage.” Hardly the mutterings of

humble deity, the in-your-face audacity of Kanye’s lyrics should at the very least provoke

thought from serious students of his music.

By way of explaining this audaciousness,

he states in an interview:

You don’t have to be a racist anymore, it’s called self-hate it works on itself. It’s like the

real estate of racism…someone comes up and says, “I am a god!” Everybody says, “Who

does he think he is?” I just told you who I thought I was, a god! I just told you – that’s who

I think I am. Would it have been better if I had a song that said, “I am a nigga?” or if I had

a song that said I am a gangster?” Or if I had a song that said, “I am a pimp!” All of those

colors and patinas fit better on a person like me right?

West is nothing, if not provocative. Exposing the average listener’s implicit bias, Kanye’s

comments here are effective simply because of the thousands of Hip Hop songs in which

artists claim the monikers “gangsta,” “pimp,” and “nigga,” all of which are often

assumed to be authentic representations of “hood” Blackness. Reinterpreting his lyrics

after his comments suggest more about the latter identities than his self-proclaimed “god-

hood.” Has the stereotype become reality? What does it mean to attempt a disruption of

the stereotype as Kanye does? The characteristics of “god-hood” for him are, ironically,

resisting external affirmation and flattery, “Soon as they like you, make em unlike

you/Cause kissing people ass is so unlike you,” and having “swagger” in the face of

“hater-ism” à la Muhammad Ali.

Linking his prosperity to his real life persona he

further claims that his goal is “feeding his family for generations” something few black

musicians have succeeded in doing.

What this means, in a sense, is that he is caught in

Jon Caramanica, “Behind Kanye’s Mask: Kanye West Talks About His Career and Album

‘Yeezus,’” New York Times, June 11, 2013, accessed August 15, 2016, http://nyti.ms/18utDjG.

West, “The Last Call,” College Dropout (Def Jam 2003); West, “I Am a God,” Yeezus (Def Jam 2013).

West, “I Am a God.”

This statement can be found in a clip at the end of a string of interview moments with Kanye at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U_qY0r8Cs8.

West, “I Am a God.”

This can be found in the same YouTube clip of various interview moments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U_qY0r8Cs8.

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a genuine bind. Elevating social consciousness is one thing; staying wealthy enough to

feed one’s family for generations is another. The industry is merciless; sex, drugs,

violence and misogyny sell. Still, the spiritual quest is real.

The short film Runaway is written and directed by Kanye West, and comes as a

download with the Yeezus album, despite the fact that the song “Runaway” and the

soundtrack for the film are from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. This may simply have

been a clever marketing strategy to get fans to purchase both albums. The quest for

identity amidst a range of contradictions appears to be a central theme in this movie. It

opens with the main character played by Kanye, speeding along a deserted road through

the woods in a luxury car. At the same time, a comet destined for earth coincidentally

explodes on the road in front of him, bringing with it a fallen angel, a kind of female bird

incarnate who is unconscious and wounded. She becomes the main character’s girlfriend,

although they are from two different worlds, but at some point she reveals that she has

to burn like a phoenix and rise from the ashes in order to return to the world she came

from. She says this after she realizes that the people in the human world she has entered

(who all appear to be wealthy African Americans with white servants) only eat chicken

and other birds. The film ends with her rising from the ashes of a flame and flying away

while the man she has left behind wakes up, as if from a dream, and takes to his heels

running through the woods in pursuit of her or his destiny. The film ends with Gil Scott

Heron’s spoken word poem, “Who Will Survive in America,” which is also one of the

tracks on the album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

The pursuit of destiny and identity that the protagonist chases in Runaway is

similar to West’s pursuit of affirmation as an African American male throughout much

of his career. Yet, his ascent from the world of “broke nigga” to “rich nigga” colors the

ideals he has strived for since his near-death accident. The “broke nigga racism” West

encounters before the release of College Dropout is a far cry from the issues he faced in

post-Graduation. Yet becoming rich, in certain ways, magnified the unfair social

institutions West failed to bypass with money and fame. Meanwhile, his breakout 808s

and Heartbreak album, according to writer Malcolm Musoni, is an album that attempts to

reconcile the contradictions of a life of luxury with his mother’s death from complications

connected to plastic surgery.

In other words, West becomes a victim of the fame that

essentially enabled him to transcend boundaries he, as a black man in America, was never

expected to break. Moreover, his pursuit of god-hood could be read as an allusion to

liberation from the fraught institutions that dampen black social mobility. Pursuing

destiny within “the woods” of oneself is purer than the manufactured institutions that

historically work against many.

West, Runaway¸ directed/performed by Kanye West (New York, NY: Roc-A-Fella Records, 2010),

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg5wkZ-dJXA.

Malcolm Musoni, “Kanye West’s ‘808’s and Heartbreak’ Took on a Whole New Meaning After

My Mom Died,” Complex, October 13, 2016, accessed May 30, 2016.

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The fallen angel in the film Runaway is represented as an innocent, despite the

biblical notion as stated in the Second Epistle of Peter that, “God did not spare angels

when they sinned but cast them into hell.”

West fuses the concept of the fallen angel

with the Greco-Egyptian idea of the phoenix who can rise from the ashes; one notion

represents loss and the other, rebirth. This could be interpreted as a metaphorical duality

that is symbolic of Kanye’s philosophical crisis, i.e., his pull between the world of the

flesh and that of the spirit. The female bird angel comes to earth, falls in love, sees the

cannibalism and violence and departs. The male character by the film’s end has

abandoned decadence and luxury and is running, as if for his life, through the woods in

hot pursuit of something with just the clothes on his back. The film’s title Runaway, with

the image of a black man running, suggests an escape from enslavement. Gil Scott

Heron’s “Who will Survive in America” is the vocal backdrop as the credits roll at the

end. If we add this strategic commentary to the film’s other themes then the critique of

opulence and excess as ends onto themselves seem to be the ultimate message. As Zora

Neale Hurston states in her essay, “High John de Conquer,”

Way over there, where the sun rises a day ahead of time, they say that Heaven arms with

love and laughter those it does not wish to see destroyed. He who carries his heart in his

sword must perish. So says the ultimate law. Moreover, John knew that it is written where

it cannot be erased, that nothing shall live on human flesh and prosper.

None of it will survive America or rather those who indulge in it will not survive

America. There may not be any survivors. But one must at least attempt escape. If the

phoenix rising at the film’s end is supposed to represent what’s possible then death and

rebirth in symbolic form or otherwise seem necessary for a new set of humane values to

emerge.

Can the music and the message both remain “pure” if one wants to feed one’s

family for generations in a system of capitalist domination and violence? The answer

appears to be “no.” West’s strategy for addressing the spiritual in his music differs from

Jamaican musician of old, Bob Marley whose notions of “the suffering duppy conqueror”

gives consistent voice to the oppressed masses on a world scale without recourse to

celebrating money and material as ends onto themselves. Kanye’s film Runaway

speculates about an alternative even as his lived reality manifests the contradictions that

Rodney speaks of. At the end of the day, however his philosophy, as made manifest over

the course of his musical career thus far, has left us with much food for thought.

Peter. 2: 4 English Standard Version.

Zora Neale Hurston, The Sanctified Church (New York: Marlowe & Company, 1981), 71.

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