“No one knows what it means, but it’s provocative”
The quote from the infamous interlude Kanye West samples from the movie Blades of Glory for Niggas In Paris, off his Watch The Throne album with Jay Z has become more than just a pop culture euphemism, these days, even fans are curious if Kanye West had subtly included the skit as an ingenious way of trolling the implied artistic importance of his own career. And going by the self acclaimed most important living artiste’s, release of the video for Famous , they may not be too far from that innocuous conclusion.
The controversial video features an NSFW depiction of West’s wife, Kim Kardashian and wax doubles of famous public figures including Taylor Swift, Donald Trump, Bill Cosby, RayJ, Rihanna and Chris Brown amongst others, asleep in a post-coital afterglow.
Immediately, critics who already had their eyebrows raised at the $25 cost of viewing the video at its Los Angeles premiere, had another bone to pick with the actual content of the video. This, of course, is not Kanye’s first attempt at channelling his innate weirdness or artsy abstraction into his music, but now more than ever, he appears to have mastered the conversion of his flare for controversy into high value content in today’s high tension information world.
Post-release debates of the video opened grounds for discussions about the rightness of Kanye West’s brazen depiction of naked bodies belonging to people who probably did not give their consent. This, against the backdrop of an unapologetic Kanye taunting the owners of the naked bodies he put on mass display with a now deleted tweet saying “I’ll wait” encouraging them to come after him with the full force of lawsuits and legal jagbajantis.
Further digging however revealed Kanye West had been inspired by a 2008 painting by artist, Vincent Desideri, which still leaves the biggest question unanswered; does this video make Kanye an artist?
Kanye took Vincent Desiderio's "Sleep" & brought it to life with a modern twist.. if that isn't genius idk what is. pic.twitter.com/bSDddfQFNo
— RAY MUÑOZ (@raymunoz94) June 25, 2016
Gone are the days when art was valued at exclusive big money auctions then transferred from owner to owner over the years. These days, art is free for all to see and consume on the Internet and the difference between click bait and curated piece is nearly non-existent. But while only time will tell if Kanye’s work will ever be seen as more than the veiled pretensions of a man with an instinctive obsession with the limelight and all the perks and pricks that come with it, the rapper has at least succeeded in leveraging on our inner voyeur for we clearly looks like cheap amateur pornography presented as art to simply get the world talking. With the glory from the peak of his My Beautiful Twisted Fantasy album already behind him, there are very few ways to look at the video for Famous except as a gimmick to elevate his self-proclaimed artistic genius status using nudity.
Nonetheless, A great cue for all to take from Kanye is that sometimes intent is almost irrelevant if the task is well executed with a perfectly suited big-bang effect. Between haphazard PR and damage control with plot holes, Nigerian artistes, seem to be overly fixated on seemingly solid means with ends that fall flat. Publicity stunts can be creative and you can get away with literally anything in the creative world if you seek inspiration from a solid premise that will defend itself like Kanye West has done with his music.
Most importantly, artistes must ensure they can smile to the bank at the end of the day because coupled with global access to the Internet, the culture now evolves way too quickly for cheap publicity stunts. Kanye West did not only charge a staggering $25 (N6,250) for the premiere tickets for his music video — the average cost of watching a summer blockbuster in North America is $8 (N2,000), — he also had fans buy merchandise strictly made for the event at the venue for extra bucks. To further streamline the revenue, as of the time this post was published, the video is still exclusively available on his co-founded streaming service, Tidal. If we’re still debating Kanye’s artistic genius, we doubt he’d hear us over the sound of all the monies he’s currently cashing out.
Eventually, even aficionados may be forced to admit that the lines between insanity, art and publicity stunts are slowly being thinned out by the attention deficit caused by today’s information age. Is Kanye West an artist today? We may never know. But there will probably be another ‘artist’ on the internet with something more ‘controversial’ tomorrow and we’re sort of already looking forward to that.
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