Hip hop

Amid the hullaballoo that surrounded Charlie Kirk’s memorial service last weekend, seemingly virtually every figure associated in any way with the MAGA movement appeared – yes, even Elon Musk, who was filmed shaking hands with President Trump in one of the more unexpected rapprochements of the year. But one man who many might have expected to be present was nowhere to be seen. The rapper, producer and professional controversialist Kanye “Ye” West, who might have added a certain grim luster to the predominantly Christian music played at the memorial, was absent, and so the potential for the carefully choreographed event being thrown into chaos was avoided. It might sound unlikely that West would ever have been invited, but a new documentary about him, In Whose Name?

In the end, the verdict in the most talked-about trial of the year, perhaps the decade, came in far quicker than most commentators had expected. Judge Arun Subramanian had wisely suggested that he wanted a unanimous verdict on the charges that Diddy had been arraigned on and that he wanted this verdict to come in before the 4th of July holiday. Many had assumed, given the sheer weight of evidence against Diddy (real name, as we were informed many times, Sean Combs), that it would take at least a week to sort through the often sordid and distressing material that the jury were presented with over the course of the seven-week trial. In the end, however, it took just over a day of deliberations.

Last May, a rapper who performs under the name Young Thug was arrested and named in a gang indictment in Atlanta. Right now, the trial relating to that arrest, the YSL RICO case, is underway. Fellow rapper Gunna and no less than twenty-six other young men associated with their Young Slime Life music collective, have been arrested and charged under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization, or RICO, statute for “alleged gang activity.” In the post-Black Lives Matter era, the case has become something of a cause célèbre, with prominent figures in the entertainment industry and beyond arguing that Young Thug and Gunna are essentially on trial because they are flashy young black men – who, in Thug’s case, may also be gay or bisexual.

Here are the facts: Kanye West should be in a psychiatric hospital. Instead, he’s speaking his mind, or what’s left of it. For what it’s worth, Kanye West should not be tweeting or going on podcasts. Unlike the side effects of a prescription drug, the results don’t vary. No, the outcome is usually the same, in one form or another: career suicide. Kanye West’s artistic legacy is undergoing seppuku. We've seen this movie before. Remember Roseanne? After a racist tweet in 2018, ABC immediately canceled her show (it was going to be her comeback). Hulu followed up by removing every season of Roseanne from their streaming service.

In New York in the 1980s, anyone could be anything. That’s how a punk group comprised of three Jewish kids was able to socially transition into hip-hop, team up with super-producer Rick Rubin and go on to release the first rap album to crack the Billboard 200. Beastie Boys, as they were known, consisted of Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Adam “MCA” Yauch. The Billboard-cracking album Licensed to Ill was an instant classic that launched the group into superstardom. Full of swagger and juvenile nonsense, as well as jabs at swagger and juvenile nonsense, the record was merely the beginning of a long and influential career, one that only ended when, in 2012, MCA died of cancer.

In June, a 20-year-old man called Jahseh Onfroy was murdered after leaving a motorcycle dealership in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Onfroy was a rapper, who recorded under the name XXXTentacion, and he had become extraordinarily successful — his two albums had reached No. 2 and No. 1 in the US, despite moderate sales, because of the amount of online plays they had received. The day after he died, my social-media timelines were full of music writers discussing his death, and the tenor — from those with kids, at least — was clear. Post after post noted that XXXTentacion was a nasty piece of work, and few should mourn him, yet the writer’s 13- or 14- or 15-year-old was devastated by his death. XXXTentacion was, it is true, a nasty piece of work.

Kanye West is more than halfway in to the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame — if his politics don’t block the way. This extraordinary rapper-producer first won over a worldwide audience with the 2004 anthem ‘Jesus Walks’, disrupted hip-hop’s bling-bling materialism with the us-vs-them challenge of his Jay-Z collaboration Watch the Throne, and then released the confounding My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which rightly became the most highly acclaimed hip-hop album this century. He went on to make controversial public art with his ‘New Slaves’ video, which was projected in 66 locations around the world (called Orwellian by admirers and dumbfounded detractors).

Grade: B+Another ex-Long Beach crip replanted in pleasant Orange County via the conduit of very large amounts of record company money and thus now able to draw on his time as a gangsta, while telling us all it was a very naughty thing to have done.The difference between Staples and much of the similarly uprooted West Coast hip-hop crew is twofold. First, off-stage the man is thoughtful, articulate and refuses to hunker down beneath the comfort blanket of black victimhood. Further, he eschews all drugs and alcohol and loathes the glorification of gang culture — something he calls coonery — and is a Christian. (Although it is hard to imagine Jesus Christ cheerfully singing along with this little number.) And second, he has words.