Kanye Didn't Fall Off. He's Always Been Exhausting

#news #discuss #kanyewest #donda

Yeezy season is once again upon us, and with it bloom a thousand laments for the Kanye of yore. Nostalgia for a supposed earlier golden age of Kanye West has been a nagging piece of his mythos for at least a decade and a half. In the era of this jaundiced memory, he was a less strident and more righteous person who made fundamentally different and, crucially, better music than the Kanye of the present tense. This line became such a tired saw of the aggrieved fan and curmudgeonly critic that Kanye himself satirized it on 2016’s Life of Pablo: “I miss the old Kanye, straight from the go Kanye / Chop up the soul Kanye, set on his goals Kanye. / I hate the new Kanye, the bad mood Kanye / The always rude Kanye, spaz in the news Kanye.”