I can remember the first time I heard his voice as I walked along the gray concrete of Clark Atlanta University's Campus. I was passing Hale-Woodruff library (club Woody as we call it) when Kanye's voice and lyrics first found my ears. I remember hearing it blare out of one of those cars that had implications of an alternate economic reality (the drug game ya'll). And, I can remember wondering what was that? Who was this new voice who had interrupted our "Get Krunk with Sizzurp and Weed" manifesto in Hip-Hop? Who was this new voice whose lyrics said something about falling down, Versace, and freedom in the same breath?
It was Kanye West who spoke the language of every angsty Black male student who was sitting somewhere writing papers, and at the same time dreaming about the kind of lavish lifestyle we were promised for going to college, rather than running to the streets. Scratch that, Kanye West spoke to my spirit because I was one who was writing a thesis, going through hell, and shelving clothes at the local J.Crew. I know, I know...Kanye was at the Gap...but in Lenox Mall, J.Crew and the Gap are about a stones throw away from each other. But I digress, this Kanye seemed to put into words every thing a Black kid at CAU, "grinding" in grad school could think.
He rapped effortlessly as he explored conspicuous consumption in "All Falls Down," without sounding too preachy. He took me to church (even though we didn't stay there very long) and took me to the streets with "I'll Fly Away" & "Jesus Walks With Me." He gave us a song about the NPHC greeks and a bedroom mix to round the album out (sounds like college to me). And then, "Through The Wire" was as much a gospel song and testimony as it was anything else. Kanye rapped about his car accident and believing in himself, and I sat in my room in my fraternity's New Residence Commons (Room 101) and reflected on rising out of the ashes of child abuse, foster care, and a broken marriage. Kanye seemed to have more hope than I did. His "College Dropout" was literally a reprise of School Daze in musical form.
Kanye was smart, perceptive, hopeful, lavish, well-rounded, and most of all gifted! Kanye was me, and I was Kanye's dropout! And then something happened! Slowly and over time, this Kanye who once said what any young brash thinker would say when we all watched Black poor suffering people during the Katrina tragedy. Gathering his courage he said, "George Bush doesn't care about Black People." After which he was promptly sensored and called a "reverse" racist. These are definitely something to contend with. After all, I know a little something about both of those. But, the tragedy of his mother passing is quite another kind of life changing-experience.
There are a few interviews where Kanye blamed himself for his mother's passing, because celebrity is not something we can all handle without cracking. His intellectual mother was undergoing plastic surgery to fit in, in his world. But the world in which Kanye moves, has high costs, even for those who have read Angela Davis, DuBois, Morrison, Newton, and Hurston. Kanye lost his mother to the glamor of fame...and the kid who had made it through the "wire" began to implode.
It seems, that since her passing, Kanye's musical works have become dark and dank and a bit sad, albeit some of it is still good. But none of it captures what Kanye once could present so effortlessly. And this is so very sad for us, because Kanye's perceptive voice now seems to have drifted over the waterfall into the abyss of all that is normative in commercial Hip-Hop. Life seems to have knocked the wind out of Kanye.
Mainstream media would have us believe Kanye is an egomaniac, who can't really be trusted. But what I see, is the same thing I see with Chris Brown, Lauryn Hill, and many others who live in the spotlight. I see a brother who can't heal. After all, a grieving Black celebrity isn't afforded the opportunity to sit and be still...and be healed. They must keep going (less they face obscurity). And money covers a multitude of sins.
When I look at Kanye, when I hear Kanye, when I listen to him, I find myself whispering a strange thought: "You are better than this Kanye." I want this Kanye to not be our next Whitney or Michael or Chris Kelly. And actually, I'm tired of watching black people implode and/or explode across HDTV and Twitter. Iyanla may be trying to fix lives, but this world seems to be tearing them apart at a much faster rate.
Partly, its because we lack a culture and/or an ethos of Sabbath. My grandmama Lucy would tell us grand-kids when were doing too much, "sit yo' tail down somewhere!" This insight is actually helpful because sometimes we all need to go somewhere and sit down. We need to rest our bodies from stimulation (of all kinds). And, we need to reflect on what has happened like Abraham who built altars everywhere he went (as reminders for what had been done). We need to mourn, we need to laugh and we need to rest. Most of all, we need to resist the urge to be turned into a product as though we were something to be bought and sold - and thus not human.
We must also be careful, because rest is different from isolation. Rest can actually be done with others who know and love you...and want nothing from you. I can only imagine what it would be like to find people like that as a celebrity in a reality tv world. And, I imagine that many a celebrity has resorted to turning rest into isolation - the kind of isolation that had a crazy man wondering around tombs and cutting himself in the New Testament. I imagine when every one appears to be extractors of your product, and the one's you loved are buried amongst the tombs, that the cemetery can seem like a beautiful place to wander. It's quiet, and no one will bother you at night.
The only problem with this, of course, is that only dead things dwell in dead places. And sooner or later, if you stay there too long, you can begin to resemble the dead. This is what I think is happening with our beloved Kanye. I say, let the wandering Kanye, cry out "Yeezus," because uttering a close proximity isn't about ego. It's about trying to find a way out of death to grab hold of the source of life. It's an attempt to marry the human to the divine so that life can begin anew, and the demons can be cast into pigs.
Grief is like dwelling among the dead for a while, and many of us are blessed to have Jesus pull us back from building houses on sacred dead ground. Many of us don't have to do this in the lime light, but Kanye does. And having lost my mother, I pray that the he has what I had when one Sheila Palmer was called home - a seminary/school full of loving and supportive friends, colleagues, and classmates who let me rest. They prayed while I cried (and still cry). While I have been able to grieve with God showing himself through my amazing friends, I think that Kanye needs the industrial size version so that the brother will find his way back to his black righteous home. I believe that when you cry out for Jesus, even when it sounds like "Yeezus," you can make it through the wire!
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