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Wesley Morris and
Elyssa Dudley, Hans Buetow and
“We’re in deeply vile territory, and I can’t make intellectual sense of that,” Wesley Morris says about the rapper Kanye West, who now goes by Ye.
In 2004, when Ye released his album “College Dropout,” he seemed to be challenging Black orthodoxy in ways that felt exciting and risky. But over the years, his expression of “freedom” has felt anything but free. His embrace of anti-Black, antisemitic and white supremacist language “comes at the expense of other people’s safety,” their humanity and their dignity, J Wortham says.
Today: The undoing of Kanye West — and what it means to divest from someone whose art, for two decades, had awed, challenged and excited you.
Additional resources:
In “The Long Emancipation,” Rinaldo Walcott distinguishes between emancipation and freedom, and argues that we are still living in a period of emancipation.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor explores the enduring power of “Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America,” Saidiya Hartman’s book from 1997.
In “Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination,” Robin D.G. Kelley examines how Black artists and activists of the 20th century turned to imagination to envision a better future.
Wesley and J previously discussed Ye and all his controversies in this episode from 2018.
Hosted by: Wesley Morris and J Wortham
Produced by: Elyssa Dudley, Hans Buetow and Christina Djossa
Edited by: Sara Sarasohn and Sasha Weiss
Engineered by: Marion Lozano
Executive Producer, Shows: Wendy Dorr
Special thanks: Paula Szuchman, Sam Dolnick, Mahima Chablani, Jeffrey Miranda, Eslah Attar and Julia Moburg.
Source: Music - nytimes.com
