A Conflicted Relationship with Kanye West

If you were to draw a Venn diagram of talented artists, brilliant business professionals, and truly deplorable personalities, you’d quickly discover that these groups are anything but mutually exclusive. And far too often, we find ourselves judging one aspect of a person’s life based on a different aspect of that person’s life. A glowing example of this is rapper, producer and entrepreneur Kanye West.

Let’s Have a Toast for the…

No one is going to mistake Kanye for a particularly likable person. He’s arrogant. He’s ignorant. Just about every time he opens his mouth in an interview, he inevitably says something stupid. Maybe he can’t help it. More and more people hate him just about every day. The whole Taylor Swift fiasco certainly didn’t help his cause nor did begging Mark Zuckerberg for money (through Twitter of all places).

And while he has certainly gotten weirder and more experimental with his “artistry” in recent years, it’s undeniable that he is a talented and creative individual. Back before the persona of Kanye West took center stage, his songs could be judged on their own merit. I really enjoyed everything from “Through the Wire” to “I Wonder.”

Then, the ignorant Kanye we all love to hate started to show up with songs like “Can’t Tell Me Nothing.”

“I feel the pressure. Under more scrutiny.
And what I do? Act more stupidly.
Bought more jewelry, more Louis V,
My momma couldn’t get through to me.
The drama, people suing me,
I’m on TV, talking like it’s you and me.”

It’s actually a pretty great track and I had it on heavy rotation in my car for weeks. And that’s the thing. Even if you don’t necessarily like the person as a person, you can still enjoy what they create… right? It’s just a personality thing, right?

Hate Me, But Give Me Your Money

I experience a similar kind of dissonance with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. I didn’t know who he was until he appeared as a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Here’s his interview, in case you missed it.

While I’m certainly not completely up to speed on the business implications that it may have on the taxi industry, the idea of Uber is a real game changer. I like the idea of this “sharing economy” with other services like Airbnb. It all seems rather brilliant.

But in that interview with Colbert, Kalanick comes off — at least to me — as a rather unsavory individual. You get the impression that he’s a real jerk. He seems like he would be very difficult to get along with, as if he puts himself up on a “greater than thou” pedestal. Like he’s better than the clever host who’s interviewing him.

Really, he’s not unlike Kanye West, but with slightly more eloquent and measured articulation of his thoughts. It’s because of people like Kanye and Kalanick that I’ve come to wonder whether you really can separate a person from his ideas. Can you support a company whose management is distasteful?

The Wheel of Morality?

This is quite different from supporting a company whose business is unethical. That’s a different argument altogether, because your dollars would then be supporting activities that you find morally reprehensible. Then again, is that all that different from giving Uber more money or funding Kanye’s next clothing line?

They can’t all be Elon Musk. They can’t all be generally likable and have groundbreaking, innovative ideas with an inspired vision of the future. Some of them just have to be Yeezy. And you can’t tell them nothing.

Image credit: rodrigoferrari (Flickr)