Kanye vs. Ye? Which one wins the mental battle in this great Artist’s head? Photo courtesy of  junior Oscar Fenton

 Recording artist Kanye West is an extremely controversial person among San Luis Obispo High School students and people around the world. Kanye’s musical genius is undeniable with a discography that rivals generations of artists but his public persona and image under the alias Ye has somewhat tarnished his reputation after a spree of antisemitic remarks following a Divorce with wife and baby mama Kim Kardashian. Expressions decided to take a look at students’ ideas on Kanye’s story and the new page he is trying to flip.

 Two decades ago Kanye was known among the rap scene as an up and coming Chicago producer working with artists such as Jay Z, Alicia Keys, and Ludacris bringing his style of sped up soul samples to the mainstream. His name was littered all over the credits of Jay Z’s critically acclaimed masterpiece “The Blueprint” really highlighting his talents. The release of his debut album “The College Dropout” and the following “Late Registration” brought Kanye to the center of hip-hop both drawing critical acclaim from critics across many genres. The albums consisted of hip hop classics “Gold Digger”, “Slow Jamz”, “All Falls Down”, and “Touch the Sky” which individually probably the best Curtis Mayfield soul funk sample sense the conception of hip-hop. This determination and creative innovation was something that hip-hop had never seen before. 

  “He was about as big as music gets. Everybody was listening to ‘Gold Digger,’ every basketball game the warm ups, pumping everybody up. I remember getting Jay Z’s blueprint album and looking at the liner notes, and just seeing Kanye, Kanye, and Kanye producing all the greatest songs,” said math teacher Scott Rosenblum.

 Following these releases were two albums that destroyed the former boundaries of hip-hip, “Graduation” and “808s and Heartbreak” both invented a sound that can be heard in rap music to this day. Graduation is a sampling masterclass completing the university Trilogy (college dropout, late registration, and graduation) including Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlamagne”, Michael Jackson’s “P.Y.T”, Elton’s John’s “Someone Saved my Life Tonight”, and Daft Punks “Harder, Faster, Stronger” just to name a few. The album was a massive success and brought Kanye further into fame which only grew following the release of “808s and Heartbreak” an album that genuinely revolutionized hip-hop. Kanye ditched the sampling game that brought him fame, and replaced it with his new thanos gauntlet The Roland TR-808 Drum machine to create electronic style beats. The weight of this innovation cannot be further stressed as it is possibly the single handed most influential thing to 2010s hip-hops beats, electronic focused beats layered with powerful synths became hip hop all due to Kanye. Paired with this musical switch was a lyrical/vocal change to more melodic songs that showed vulnerability and emotions far different from the normal narratives hip hop followed. The effect of this album is seen in the sounds of “Drake”, “Travis Scott”, “The Weekend” and literally all artists after it, truly timeless.

 At this point Kanye apart from his music had developed an extremely brash personality publicly which especially when he took over the stage to discredit Taylor Swift’s MTV musical video award for “You Belong With Me”. Many fans, friends, and critics blame Kanye’s bi-polar disorder as the reason for these many brash actions, but as many fans know Kanye credits this disorder to much of creative ability and felt his prescribed medicine dulled his creative side. Often Kanye was labeled a crazy genius as an excuse for these public crashouts.

 The 2010s for Kanye was in the eyes of many a perfect recipe of mental illness and creative drive that led to the conception of Kanye’s most creative sonic albums, this decade resulted in most complete stand alone work merging hip-hop with copious other genres. Many say Kanye started the decade with his masterpiece, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”, this album was released alongside a R rated movie “Runway” that used the narrative of the songs to reflect a truly dark twisted fantasy that consisted of intercourse with a half breed and synchronized dancing. Every track on this album was widely acclaimed by the community but opened the window into the corruption that riddles Kanye’s mind. The second album Yeezus (Yeezy+jesus) was a narcissistic anthem where Kanye’s simple lyrics shined over his most complex electronic music to date, this album again pushed the limits of rap and was an extreme artistic statement in the rap industry. Kanye rapped in a narcissistic yet self aware way that was the embodiment of him during this era, the beats sounded like Kanye was trying to show off why he is the YEEZUS, and frankly he did.  Following Yeezus was “The Life Of Pablo” which showed Kanye regress in a sense to a more modern sound but executed so excellently it again garnered critical acclaim as Kanye again showed that anything he touches can be gold. “Ye” the second to last album of the decade named after Kanye who recently changed his name to Ye was a vulnerable piece of work that saw a Kanye who for the first time in his career seemed lost mentally. The album was fantastic but did not carry itself like past kanye projects and many see now how it foreshadowed what was brewing inside Kanye.

“I mean generational, of course. I think it goes without saying. it’s one of the best I think, I think it’s one of the best hip hop runs we’ve seen, especially the twenty ten. I think a lot of what’s good about it is you could hear first thing the production was great lyricism. Great Kanye is working with a lot of people. And I think another thing is you could really tell, at least from like at least looking back at it now, there was a lot of tension, especially like my beautiful ‘Dark Twisted  Fantasy,’ there was a lot of tension within, he was writing about,” said junior Santiago Baltodano.

 Ye made an extreme creative switch in 2019 after finding himself both through his marriage with super model and tv star Kim Kardashian and the word of god starting weekly “Sunday Services” where Ye performed music with a large choir in front of a huge crowd. The album that followed “Jesus is King” was a somewhat lackluster attempt at gospel rap and at times felt directionless but did show Ye’s diversity again to shift sounds and his fearlessness to do so. “Donda” named after Ye’s late mother came out during a time of extreme controversy involving a failed presidential attempt, and his social media presence which was more public than ever due to quarantine brought his personality to the screen of many. During this time his once loving and supportive wife filed for divorce as Kanye’s mental health was obviously going off the deep end. Of course, Donda was fantastic and rivaled all the other hip-hop albums of the year with songs blowing up across social media. Many would never realize that this would most likely be Ye’s final great project.

 Around a year after the release of Donda Ye began to preach anti-semitic narratives on every platform that would have him. He adamantly praised Hitler and his music which was extremely lackluster at the time ( vultures 1 and 2) reflected these views. He lost brand deals with all his former partners, in particular Yeezy which was shocking as Ye was the largest American athlete or celebrity Adidas had at the time. This spree of anti-semitism was often apologized for but every time it seemed he would soon top the previous heinous ideas often directing it at the music industries executives. By 2025 Ye was fully canceled and no longer seen as the driven, funny, and lovable icon known prior.

“Yeah, it was definitely a hard thing to see as a fan, because grew up liking kanye’s music, his persona, it was all very entertaining, and then you kind of saw this side of him that was very negative and hateful, and he was just saying a lot of nonsense that he normally seemed like he wouldn’t say, and it kind of made you think, like, what went wrong? What happened could have been due to his marriage, but, yeah, I don’t know it was sucks to see,” said junior Beau Crew.

  But 2026 saw Kanye West revoke the actions of Ye and revoked the name via social media and condemned his statements of anti semitism whilst trying to offer reason to his ways. Kanye who has been banned by all major concert promoters in the U.S has performed concerts overseas with a setlist consisting of the old nostalgic classics that Kanye made it on. The question that needs to be answered is where do we stand with Kanye. Kanye is the beatles of the turn of the century, the most or if not close to the most innovative and driven single force in music history and easily of the last 20 years. Yet his views are awful and hateful and are tied in my eyes with the growth of antisemitism that has riddled the 2020’s. It’s as if one were to try to rationalize enjoying Bill Cosby comedy because of its content yet separating it from the artist who is an awful person, or enjoying a film produced by Harvey Weinstein staring OJ Simpson, when it came out you may have loved but now it makes you cringe to enjoy their art. Or maybe you’re a martian who knows nothing of their wrong doing and finds it beautiful, because frankly it is. This is the decision that many around the world including San Luis Obispo High School Students have to make, at one point does the stand alone beauty, the creative drive, the artistic mastery, and the raw emotion that art brings you outshine the demons of the artist. Great artists always deal with demons and most times these extreme emotional depths whether fueled by drugs, depression, or in Kanye’s position mental illness invoke the most raw beautiful art so it is up to individuals to take a stance on what they see as the right thing to do.