Kanye West and his so called “Respect For Artistry” Supplemental Post

Why are we so forgiving of our favorite stars when they prove time and time again that they are arrogant, rude, and self entitled? Kanye West has created a successful career for himself from his first big hit ‘Gold Digger’ to his newest collaborations with Paul McCartney ‘Only One’ and ‘Four Five Seconds’. He’s best friends with power couple Jay Z and Beyoncé, and is married to reality star Kim Kardashian. He’ll always be surrounded by A-Listers and will always find a way to stay relevant, even if it’s not through his music. Kanye has become increasingly notorious for his unpredictable rants, stating his opinions as if they are scripture.  He says what he wants, when he wants, and he knows that he is right, even if he’s not. Last night Kanye showed his arrogance and naivety once again. It first started out as a joke, but when Beck beat Beyoncé for ‘Album of the Year’ at the Grammy's last night, Kanye West walked up to the stage to mock himself for his infamous show stealing moment with Taylor Swift in 2009. As you can see, Beyonce’s reactions for both instances are basically the same. “Kayne, don’t do it.”

 But, he quickly backed down assuring the audience that it was only a joke. Everything was fine and people thought it was funny. The show went on. But the real problem occurred during the post-Grammy interview where Kanye went on a rant about ‘respecting artistry’. He said “I just know that the Grammys, if they want real artists to keep coming back, they need to stop playing with us. We ain't gonna play with them no more. And Beck needs to respect artistry and he should've given his award to Beyoncé. Because when you keep on diminishing art and not respecting the craft and smacking people in their face after they deliver monumental feats of music, you're disrespectful to inspiration. And we as musicians have to inspire people who go to work every day, and they listen to that Beyoncé album and they feel like it takes them to another place."

There are many problems with his statement. Sure Beyoncé’s album was more popular in the mainstream this year and most people of our generation know don’t know who Beck is, however to say that Beck doesn’t respect artistry and isn’t an artist is flat out delusional and wrong. Beck was putting out platinum albums when Beyoncé was just starting out. People on the Internet pointed out that Kanye was naïve by defending a woman who needs four writers to write one song over a man who can play almost a dozen instruments.

I’m a huge fan of Beyoncé and think that she deserved a Grammy for her album. I also think most nominees did, but that’s not the point. The point is this unwarranted vicious attack on Beck, an artist that has been around for thirty years and was long overdue for a Grammy. To add even more to Kanye’s naïveté, in Kanye’s song 'Get Em High', he even QUOTES Beck by rapping "My teacher said I'se a loser, I told her why don't you kill me?" This line was taken from Beck’s 1994 hit ‘Loser.’

Variety wrote on opinion piece also suggesting that Kanye should respect artistry by adding “Most galling of all, West depicted his actions Sunday as some kind of admirable self-restraint he demonstrated on behalf of his child. “I’m not gonna do nothing to put my daughter at risk, but I am here to fight for creativity,” he noted at the post-show show press conference.” Kanye believes that he’s some sort of creative messiah that we are waiting for, however he is just an arrogant and delusional rapper that is not approaching his artistic beliefs with an open mind. Maybe it’s time that Kanye West started to respect artistry and realize that there are many different types of artists in this world with different talents and beliefs, and that he could learn a thing or two from them and how they approach their artistic vision. But first things first, he needs to respect the other artists in his industry.

Just because he’s achieved a level of star power doesn’t mean that we should allow this behavior to go on. If it was an up and coming artist who spoke out like this in such disrespectful ways, we would be quick to dismiss him. People might even claim that the young artist could ruin his career. We need to stop letting stars get away with everything just because they are stars and Kanye West needs to learn that he and Beyoncé are not the only worthy artists out there.