Kanye west

Is Candace Owens cashing in on Kanye West?

From our US edition

A great American poet once wrote: I went to the malls and I balled too hard/ “Oh my God, is that a black card?”/ I turned around and replied, “Why yes/ But I prefer the term 'African-American Express.’” How times change. Following a failed presidential run, a bitter divorce and two poorly reviewed records, for Kanye West, “balling too hard” now means buying a right-wing social media site from Candace Owens’s husband. It was announced today that Kanye, who now goes by Ye, is to buy the social media platform Parler, in a move the company characterized as “a bold stance against his recent censorship from Big Tech.

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We deserve better than Candace Owens

From our US edition

Candace Owens's latest foray into the sphere of defending antisemitism ought to be something everyone can easily condemn. Discussing rapper Kanye West's controversial post, which has gotten him locked out of his social media, Owens said Monday: "If you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was antisemitic. You did not think that he wrote this tweet because he hates or wants to genocide Jewish people. This is not the beginning of a Holocaust." https://twitter.

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Republicans endorse Kanye as everyone else slowly backs away

From our US edition

If there is one celeb to not rally behind right now, it’s Kanye West. Over the past few years, the rapper's mental health has steadily declined and his outbursts have become more regular. As he becomes more unhinged, friends who used to come to his defense have realized it’s in their best interest to quiet down. Yet in spite of all that, Cockburn can't help but notice that House Republicans have embraced Kanye. A tweet, which somehow has not been deleted, was posted on Thursday by the House Republicans Twitter account. It reads, "Kanye. Elon. Trump." Not only was the tweet ratio'd within minutes — with quote tweets such as "who are three people we really don’t need to hear from ever again?

Tucker Carlson grills Kanye West

From our US edition

Tucker Carlson has tackled a question that has long puzzled Cockburn: is Kanye West crazy? Ye has had his fair share of controversial moments: he appeared on a 2006 cover of Rolling Stone mimicking Jesus Christ with a crown of thorns. He infamously stormed the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards stage to tell Taylor Swift she didn’t deserve her award. For the past couple years, he's been battling ex-wife Kim Kardashian and her family, during which time he also became religious, started hosting Sunday Services and bought a ranch in Cody, Wyoming, which he tried to sell but then took off the market. Most recently, Ye incited establishment ire by wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt alongside conservative firebrand buddy Candace Owens at Paris Fashion Week.

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Kanye West is turning into Candace Owens

From our US edition

Cockburn misses the old Kanye, straight from the ’Go Kanye. The rapper, producer, designer and… (what’s the opposite of a mental health advocate?) plumbed new depths this week with his appearance at Paris Fashion Week. West showed up to the launch of his new sneaker line alongside friend and fellow former liberal Candace Owens. Both wore shirts adorned with the slogan “White Lives Matter.” https://twitter.com/RealCandaceO/status/1577000138131656704 “White Lives Matter,” of course, was a common retort to the “Black Lives Matter” maxim that emerged in 2013 after George Zimmerman’s acquittal for the shooting of Trayvon Martin.

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Kim Kardashian realizes the American Dream

From our US edition

Kim Kardashian’s behind is on the front page once again. This time, it’s being accused of disrespecting the great people of America. The forty-one-year-old and her bare buttocks grace the cover of Interview magazine's September edition, the "American Dream" special. https://twitter.com/kimkardashian/status/1567135904183250944 Cockburn must admit that the bleached eyebrows are lost on him. But he wonders how warranted the other criticisms of Kardashian are. Some people online were eager to compare Kim’s look to that of male make-up artist Jeffree Star. Journalist Piers Morgan quoted her tweet of the cover, saying, "You think the American Dream is about baring your ass in front of the flag?" (Nice American English, Piers!).

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Five other award show moments that needed a slap

From our US edition

Actor Will Smith delivered the slap heard 'round the world Sunday night at the 2022 Oscars ceremony, smacking comedian Chris Rock for a joke about his wife's bald head. Regardless of whether you think Smith overreacted or did the right thing, the slap was the highlight of the evening and one of the most exciting awards show moments in years. In honor of the "Smith Slap," Cockburn has compiled a list of five other award show moments featuring celebrities that deserved to be slapped. 1.

Will Smith (Getty Images)

Repetitive, spiritless, god-bothering music: Kanye West’s Donda reviewed

Grade: C– The nicest thing one can say is that this is a marginally better album than we would have got from either of the other two presidential candidates. Just about. But sheesh, it’s still nearly two hours of the most repetitive, spiritless, god-bothering music you will ever hear, full of portentousness and self-pity and utterly devoid of any insight or humour. Rap, trap, snap, all the tiresome bases covered. Decent tunes and memorable rhythms are few and far between. I like West, the man, for his stoic refusal to kowtow to the stupid liberal orthodoxies demanded by the music business. But his self-importance is now so bloated he resembles Mr Creosote from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, in those terrible few seconds before he eats a final wafer-thin mint.

The art of Dolly Parton’s bra

New York I hope this is my last week in the Bagel. I plan to fly first to Switzerland and then on to London. There’s the annual Pugs Club lunch I cannot afford to miss, but now that Boris is married I don’t suppose he gives a damn about the poor little Greek boy and his club lunches. Incidentally, the little bird has answered my last week’s query about The Spectator bash: the sainted editor is waiting to hear what, yes you guessed it, the new bridegroom premier will allow this summer. Boris doesn’t seem to be able to make up his mind whether the magazine he headed for close to eight years should go two years without a party. Oh boy, it’s getting very confusing, and I for one have lost the trust I once had in science.

Candace Owens’s book is a work of performance art

From our US edition

I doubt most of the belligerents associated with Turning Point USA, the Daily Wire and Blaze TV would know what to do if they were dropped into a combat situation. If you dropped Candace Owens behind enemy lines, she'd bite the throat out of an Isis fighter and stroll back to civilization without a scratch. Not to say Ms Owens is insightful or honest, or even that she means what she says. She means to succeed, and no one will stop her.Owens’s new book Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation is far more entertaining than the recent duds from Dave Rubin and Charlie Kirk. That doesn’t mean it's a good book. Intellectually it is completely incoherent.

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It’s all in a name: the stories behind book dedications

From our US edition

Don’t skip over the dedications in books. They can be as illuminating as the stories they precede and shine an intriguing light on the author’s private life and loves: Jane Austen and Edmund Spenser [caption id="attachment_9876775" align="alignnone" width="739"] Family portrait of Jane Austen[/caption] The dedication to Jane Austen’s Emma reads: ‘To His Royal Highness The Prince Regent, This Work Is By His Royal Highness’s Permission, Most Respectfully Dedicated, By His Royal Highness’s Dutiful And Obedient Humble Servant, The Author.’ The Prince Regent was George Augustus Frederick, uncle of Queen Victoria and the eldest of George III’s children. He was self-indulgent and excessive.

book dedications

Kanye West is the sanest presidential candidate

From our US edition

Kanye West has again proven his ability to draw the attention, fascination and ire of the public — this time with his outrageous antics in the launching of his 2020 presidential bid. Lost amid all the media focus on Kanye's wild behavior, however, is something that is demonstrably true — Kanye is the most sane candidate running for the office of president of the United States, for he is the only one who openly (and eloquently) acknowledges his mental illness.

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If only Kanye’s run were serious

From our US edition

It was June 2015. Bill Maher was holding court with assorted journalists to discuss the 2016 race. The Republican field back then was attracting all kinds of ridiculous monikers — it was apparently the most plausible, most qualified field in history. Maher asked Ann Coulter who had the best chance in the general election. She didn’t say John Kasich. She didn’t fancy Jeb’s chances. Three days earlier, Donald Trump had announced his candidacy in Manhattan, cutting the ribbon on a festival of media bafflement, disgust, and ridicule. Coulter made her prediction: 'Of the declared ones, right now, Donald Trump.' The studio audience hooted. The other panelists did a good impression of being horrified.

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Mary, Mary, quite contrary

From our US edition

Who knew that the most prominent NeverTrumper would be a member of the Trump family? Mary Trump is Donald's niece and bears the same name as his mother. She has a PhD in clinical psychology and is now the author of a book called Too Much and Never Enough, an unsparing look at her uncle that does not shrink, as it were, from putting him on the couch. The Amazon bestseller has spun up the president; he is getting his minions to denounce it and is promoting cancel culture by suing to prevent it from being read by the masses. White House spokesman Kayleigh McEnany noted that she had not seen it but went on to declare that Mary’s maiden effort was a 'book of falsehoods' brimming with 'absurd allegations'.

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Kanye West and the uncancelables

From our US edition

For better or worse, the rapper, producer and sneaker salesman Kanye West is almost certainly not running for president, as he has claimed. He is instead sidling into the mainstream consciousness just before he drops his latest album. Kanye has had an odd few years. He's come out in support of Donald Trump, made an impassioned religious album, and failed to build a complex of Star Wars-inspired domes for the homeless. A presidential run, then, feels like a natural next move. Ultimately, though, he does not seem to have even filed the necessary paperwork. This has not prevented progressives from being outraged by what they believe is an attempt to split the liberal vote and hand Trump another victory.

uncancelables

The mythic rise of the celebrity dissident

From our US edition

Celebrity is a remarkably enduring and powerful form of prestige. Who can imagine a world without it? Celebrities begin as people, become brands, then expand into empires. We have celebrity restaurateurs who become celebrity chefs and celebrity chefs who become restaurateurs. We have celebrity spin doctors and celebrity CIA analysts. We have celebrity comedians and celebrity revolutionaries; they’re often interviewed by celebrity journalists. We have celebrity architects, celebrity tycoons and celebrity statesmen. We have celebrity children of celebrities; celebrity ballerinas; celebrity vegans; celebrity plumbers; celebrity murderers. For decades celebrity told society stories about itself, some ennobling, some disgraceful.

celebrity

I’m a prisoner of Kanye West’s homeless camp

From our US edition

I hear the sound of chanting in the distance, grim and ominous. ‘Boom, boom, boom, boom ba boom, boom, boom...' Suddenly, voices cry out: ‘Je-sus walks!’ A white-robed Kanye West is surveying the geodesic dome structures that he has built across his lands. A MAGA hat is pulled over his brow and the sun glints off his oversized sneakers. Kim Kardashian stands beside him in a bodysuit that strains against her preternaturally tumid curves. Kanye announced that he was building the housing complex for the homeless in 2019.

kanye west

Will Trump declare war on Sweden?

From our US edition

The nation waits with bated breath for news of one of its favorite and most delicate sons, the ‘rap artist’ A$AP Rocky. Mr Rocky is held hostage by the military of the barbaric regime of an anti-Western failed state called Sweden. The Scandinavian rogue nation is widely suspected of having colluded with the military of another barbaric regime of another anti-Western failed state, Iran, which last week kidnapped an entire oil tanker under similar circumstances. Mr Rocky claims to have been minding his own business with two of his minders when they felt it necessary to kick an Afghan asylum seeker in the body and head while taking an early evening stroll in the rubble of Sweden’s Mogadishu-like capital, Stockholm.

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Kanye West is the gift that keeps giving

From our US edition

Kanye West is perfect. Every time I think he can’t go up in my estimation, he does something more magical. Last night, having established himself as the most important political figure in the free world, he decided the time had come to find new worlds to conquer. ‘I am distancing myself from politics and completely focusing on being creative !!!’ he tweeted, out of the blue. https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1057382916760707072 And this not three weeks from the Oval Office audience he gave President Donald Trump, an occasion at which he, brilliantly, chose to communicate only through free association – oscillating at a frequency barely within the realms of human comprehension.

kanye west candace owens

Kanye West is winning Trump over with flattery. Does that make him a ‘madman’?

From our US edition

Shortly after yesterday’s outlandish Oval Office episode, several national political reporters under age 40, such as the New York Times’s Jonathan Martin and the Washington Post’s Ashley Parker, claimed total ignorance of Kanye West’s discography — as though impressed with themselves for being oblivious to one of American pop culture’s most titanic figures of the past decade and a half. Maybe they’ve really somehow never heard ‘Jesus Walks,’ ‘Gold Digger,’ or ‘Power,’ which would cast slight doubt on their ability to gauge the political sentiments of the population they purport to cover. Or maybe they just feel compelled to throw Kanye down the memory hole now that he’s taken up with Donald Trump.

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