Kanye has done it once again. Recently, he went on a mini rant during one of his European tour shows about brands and the media called him out on it. How could someone covered in named brand designers and whose shows are sponsored by major corporations give a rant against them? Isn’t that a little hypocritical?
Those were the sentiments of many people as news of this incident broke. However, could Kanye have a point? I asked a couple of Georgia State students and here’s what they had to say:
He said…
“He is highly egotistical,” said Carter Bates, a sophomore Georgia State student. “It’s very hypocritical. He is the main one supplying those brands with revenue. [However], I think it is true to some extent.”
But she said…
“I think that it’s expected of him to do that, he’s rich. People shouldn’t be that mad about it,” said Jodene Jackson, a freshman here at Georgia State. “I think that brands are taking over. People pay too much attention to it. They make their lives revolve around it.”
And then I said…
Honestly, I feel like Kanye is one of those people who have really good intentions and whose thoughts make complete sense in their minds, but when the say it out loud it just comes out all wrong.
After watching the video of the rant, I did understand where he was coming from when he spoke about brands and how they are “fighting for [our] soul.” However, I think his overall message was overshadowed by the fact that he does spend thousands of dollars on designer brands, he does shout out designers in his music and his girlfriend, Kim Kardashian, is the queen of branding.
In the video of the rant, Kanye can be heard chanting, “Brands, brands, brands: fed to you by the man, man, man.”
However, I think the real key to this whole rant was when he said, “You see the problem is, they take all the best designers and put them in the most expensive spots possible, so you can’t touch great ideas. You can’t touch great ideas especially if you’re not financially well off, super famous, or you’re not a celebrity. You can’t touch the great ideas, and they say here it is, it’s all the way over here. It’s going to take you years, and what we want to do is take away your self-esteem when you are young and feed you back brands, brands, brands.”
Kanye is into art and he loves things that are visually captivating and unique, so I think it does make sense that he would spend a lot of money on designer brands. To him, it’s not just a material item that he can flaunt around… it’s art.
The fact that he has money enables Kanye to reach these “great ideas,” but I don’t think the material items that he posses define him. They just accent him.
In his rant, I don’t think Kanye dislikes brands themselves, but he dislikes the effect that they can have over a person. Often, people feel like they need a certain type of brand to feel validated or to feel like they are somebody. However, he was trying to reason that people don’t really need brands to feel important. So, in the end, I think Kanye’s rant was more of a motivational speech.
“Creativity it the key,” West said. “Creativity is key to a new world, to a new world, to a new world. Creativity is the key, so what do you really believe?”
