Amidst the Trump sympathizing, public rants, and shady political scandals, Kanye West’s saving grace has been his art — and it‘s looking more and more like that’s no longer the case. West’s mini-tantrum on Fivio Foreign’s latest track “City of Gods” may be another sign of his life ruining his music.
Released at midnight on February 11, the song finds Fivio Foreign, Alicia Keys, and West waxing poetic about their love for New York City. Fivio Foreign gives fallen Brooklyn king Pop Smoke his flowers, and Keys delivers her most impassioned ode to her hometown since she sang about the “concrete jungle where dreams are made of” on Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” from 2009. Even West started out terrific, flexing about bringing a “Sunday Service in Brooklyn” and aspiring to buy the Chicago Bulls. Then, West’s toxic side reared its ugly head.
“Ask my staff, I pay ‘em well/This afternoon 100 goons pulling up to SNL,” West raps.
For the second time in less than a month, West decided to ruin a perfectly good song by threatening physical harm on his estranged wife’s new boyfriend Pete Davidson. This time, the threat comes as he continues to speak of Kim Kardashian in possessive terms. “If I let 'em have my wife, niggas should thank me,” he raps. At least his gripes about his divorce on his January collab with The Game, “Eazy,” somewhat fit the song’s topic of his life not being easy. But what does claiming ownership over the mother of his children have to do with New York City? Sure, Saturday Night Live is synonymous with NYC, but no amount of artistic freedom can explain West obsessively aiming hollow threats at a man who’s done nothing more than date a woman who West has repeatedly disrespected in public.
West has always treated his music like a glorified journal. He’s shared everything about his life on songs, from info on his porn collection to assertions of former President George Bush giving Sadam Hussein anthrax. We loved him because he was transparent about life experiences we could all relate to. The problem now is that his life is hanging out with toxic celebrities, straining an already acrimonious divorce, and burning bridges with people who stood by him when most wouldn't.
Then again, West disrespecting his exes isn’t exactly new territory for him. On “Blame Game” from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, he rehashed the tumultuous breakup with Amber Rose. And in an interview on The Breakfast Club, he insulted Rose’s sexual choices. “It's very hard for a woman to want to be with someone that's with Amber Rose,” he said. “...I had to take 30 showers before I got with Kim." His latest songs seem to revisit that sort of vitriol — and, sadly, are a likely preview of what’s to come with DONDA 2, which West has said is executive produced by the toxic king Future.
Hopefully, West gets some good news in his life so we can get some good music out of it.
