[docker_up]

I love Kanye West. I think you need brazen, arrogant fearless artists that think and say preposterous things in order to move the thinking of a society for the better or for the worse. He has a dozen songs that I simply love that are older but still on my playlists, and I love that he immerses himself in creativity.

Sure, he can be a colossal ass sometimes, but I still think he's an important part of our societal ecosystem. We need people like him in our pop culture just like we need Stephen Hawking, Maya Angelou, Muhammed Ali, etc.

[pkaler]

I fire up either Kanye West or Jay-Z whenever I have that feeling in the pit of my stomach before doing a difficult thing. Sometimes you just need a little bit of brazen, bombast to get started.

Added to my .zshrc:

  curl -s 'https://api.kanye.rest' | jq '.quote'

[stochastic_monk]

I think it’s less that our society needs him than that he is the unavoidable product of today’s society.

Hari Seldon would have foreseen him.

[Waterluvian]

I think I agree but in a slightly different way. I see people like Kanye as the random noise added to a function to avoid getting stuck in a valley.

He just kind of vomits thoughts into the world and some of them get you thinking.

[tomc1985]

It makes me sad that so many people let his ego run rampant. If anyone is in need of ego death it is him

[fineIllregister]

If you listen to Kanye's music, he is highly self-critical and introspective at many times. I think this is a type of fearlessness, specifically the ability to be so publicly vulnerable (though I don't know if that's what GP had in mind).

Kanye's public image is reflective more of the pressures of his industry and how our celebrity culture depicts famous artists. However I think it goes beyond that to broader social and economic factors. Consider how many conversations there are on HN about dealing with imposter syndrome; if you compare Kanye's media portrayal and his music, I think there are strong parallels many people here could identify with.

[imperialdrive]

I suppose that works, except then you could say the same thing about the US president. They are friends too no?