Ign'ant Kanye vs. Conscious Kanye

A walking contradiction.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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The essence of Kanye West is contradiction. He’s a black liberationist with a hopeless appetite for luxury goods. He’s a porn addict who analyzes American history and politics in his spare time. He’s the most emotionally sensitive rapper to ever reach superstardom—and one of the world’s preeminent narcissists.

Kanye’s refusal to be defined or in any way boxed-in by pre-established archetypes is best illustrated by his dual love for the two most antagonistic sides of the hip-hop nation: The Conscious and the Ign'ant. One side demands that rap speak to social and political issues, and espouse a value system of self-respect, brotherhood, and collective well-being. The other side's credo is self-gratification by any means necessary, including but not limited to the cardinal sins: gluttony, wrath, greed, lust—getting yours right now no matter what, the next fool be damned. Or in other words, he wants to "cop 80 gold chains and go ign'ant." 

Half of what comes out of Kanye's mouth sounds like Chuck D. While the other half sounds like Willie D. Neither less convincing than the other. He never privileges one mode over another because he understands that both sides are honest and real and distinctly human. Balancing them, as he has for 10 years, has, somewhat counterintuively, helped him create one of the most potent, challenging, exciting catalogs of music in hip-hop history.

Don’t believe us? Just look at how he can make songs like "New Slaves" and "Black Skinheads" on the same album he gets called out by the American Parkinson Disease Association for rhyming, "Get this bitch shaking like Parkinson’s.” Or, just take a ride back in time as Complex traces the evolution of hip-hop’s most conflicted personality: It’s Conscious Kanye vs. Ign'ant Kanye...

Written by Sam Sweet

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"You looking all thick and sweet/You need a nigga that can give you dick and beats."

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"We shine because they hate us, floss cause they degrade us/We trying to buy back our 40 acres/And for that paper, look how low we would stoop/Even if you in a Benz, you still a nigga in a coupe."

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Song: "All Falls Down" (2004)
Album: College Dropout
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Conscious

"All Falls Down" was one of Kanye's early masterpieces, a point at which his anger and glee and goofiness and intelligence and vulgarity all intersected in a single moment of irrefutable charm. Herein is one of the finest articulations of one of the artist's most crucial messages: No matter how rich you get, you can't buy your way out of blackness. "All Falls Down" verbalizes something that smart rappers had been pointing out for years: Material aspirations are only an inadequate attempt to heal the degradation of slavery. Does it work? Of course not, but the ongoing internal conflict over that query would provide the foundation for the rest of Kanye's career.

"Drug dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy crack/And a white man get paid off of all of that."

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Song: "All Falls Down" (2004)
Album: College Dropout
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Conscious

You're in love with that money, sure, but make sure you follow the trail of that money: That's the implication of "All Falls Down." Whether you're chasing crack, new sneakers, or a Bentley, material acquisition means nothing if it's controlled by the oppressors. Simple Black Liberation theology, couched in an unapproved Lauryn Hill sample ('Ye hired Syleena Johnson to re-sing Hill's hook). In other words, you might be blowin' money fast, but regardless of your income bracket, you'll always be a nigger to the man who takes your cash.

"So here go my single dog radio needs this/They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus/That means guns, sex, lies, videotape/But if I talk about God my record won't get played, huh?"

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Song: "Jesus Walks" (2004)
Album: College Dropout
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Conscious

By the time Kanye stormed onto the scene, hip-hop had been accused of bad taste in every conceivable form. Depravity had become so synonymous with rap that bad behavior got boring. Leave it to Kanye to locate the last real taboo in rap music: Christianity. Of course, other rappers had appropriated Christ's martyrdom and mythical charisma for their own personae, but Kanye's Grammy-winning hit asked a more interesting question: How did rapping about Jesus become more risky than rapping about sex, dope and homicide? What does that say about the culture? The question answers itself, but that didn't stop Kanye from basking in his first incendiary statement. He plays his role to the hilt: the proud sinner, embracing his faith as the last form of true rebellion. 

"Swear I hear new music and I just don't be feeling it/Racism's still alive, they just be concealing it."

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Song: "Never Let Me Down" (2004)
Album: College Dropout
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Conscious

Time and again, Kanye attempted to avail his followers of the single most important lesson about race in America: That concealed racism is far more dangerous than overt racism. Thus, from Kanye you get a lot less rapping about burning crosses and a lot more rapping like "Never Let Me Down," in which he exhorts his listeners to look hard at their favorite radio hits. The idea is that racism is everywhere: in our favorite products, in our social networks, in our music rituals. We celebrate it without knowing it. Kanye asked us to listen harder to our favorite songs. What are we really celebrating?

"They take me to the back and pat me/Asking me about some khakis/But let some black people walk in/I bet you they show off their token blackie."

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Song: "Spaceship" (2004)
Album: College Dropout
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Conscious

The length of time in which Kanye worked in retail has now been eclipsed by the length of time he's been his own multinational corporation. And yet, those songs about folding clothes at the Gap get at the core of his critiques of race and class in a way that his post-opulence work never could. Ten years later, Kanye would still be talking about the casual racism inherent in the black shopping experience. But while "New Slaves" is ferocious, there is something even more cutting in the way he casually elucidated the effect of the "token blackie" in this early career classic.

"Now even though I went to college and dropped out of school quick/I always had a Ph.D.: a Pretty Huge Dick"

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Song: "Breathe In, Breathe Out" (2004)
Album: College Dropout
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Ign'ant

"Breathe In Breathe Out" is one of the essential 'Ye tracks, if only because it contains this sterling line. Because who cares if you're a college dropout, as long as you've got the only PhD that really matters-right? Don't follow? Let 'Ye explain: He's talking about a Pretty. Huge. Dick. In a career of groan-inducing punchlines, this is his Mona Lisa. True fans can only hope he might one day turn this into a song-length meme (i.e. M.D. = miraculous dong, M.B.A. = my big anaconda, etc.)

"It's a party tonight and ooh she's so excited/Tell me who's invited: you, your friends and my dick"

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Song: "The New Workout Plan" (2004)
Album: College Dropout
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Ign'ant

"The New Workout Plan" gave the world one of its earliest opportunities to meet Kanye's closest companion, co-writer, and hype man, a/k/a his dong. 'Ye loves a despicable pickup line almost as much as he loves as a lesson in black liberation theology. In a portfolio of punchlines, this is The Color Purple of dumbed-down dick jokes.

"See, a part of me saying: 'Keep shining'/How? When I know what a blood diamond is/Though it's thousands of miles away/Sierra Leone connects to what we go through today/Over here it's a drug trade, we die from drugs/Over there they die from what we buy from drugs."

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Song: "Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)" (2005)
Album: Late Registration
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Conscious

There couldn't have been a less popular year to release a rap song about Blood Diamonds than 2005, in which Paul Wall and Three 6 Mafia made the diamond-encrusted grill hip-hop's premier objet d'art. As usual Kanye is all about drawing the connections. Throughout his career he steadfastly avoided the first person crack dealer narratives that were so irresistible to his peers. In "Diamonds" he identifies with the dopeman and the dope addict alike: "Over here we die from drugs, over there they die from what we buy from drugs."

So many of Kanye's conscious moments are about zooming out to view the bigger picture. It's easy to rap about the oppression of inner city America, but who is really being exploited in the grand scheme? Hip-hop didn't care to see where the trail led but Kanye forced everyone to look. He was the first rapper to atone for his love of bling.

"If your stripper name 'Porscha' and you get tips from many men/Then your fat friend, her nickname is 'Minivan.'"

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Song: "Diamonds From Sierra Leone" (2005)
Album: Late Registration
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Ign'ant

How fitting that in his most daringly political song, Kanye placed one of his most proudly infantile lyrics, as if to verify that behind every socially significant action a lewd afterthought lurks. Such is the nature of man—or at least this man. Let's be honest though, 'Ye: Any stripper with the nerve to call herself "Minivan" is bound to clock serious tips.

"Your girl don't like me, how long has she been gay?"

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Song: "Bring Me Down" (2005)
Album: Late Registration
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Ign'ant

The greatest thing about Kanye is that when he goes dumb, he goes d-u-m. As in, elementary school playground taunts. This section of "Bring Me Down" is rampant misogyny, homophobia and narcissism condensed into eleven words—and yet, he delivers it with such convincing artlessness that it doesn't sound criminal. He may be the smartest supertsar out there, but this is proof that no rapper can tap into his inner 12-year-old quite like Kanye.

"Crack raised the murder rate in D.C. and Maryland/We invested in that, it's like we got Merrill Lynched/And we been hanging from the same tree ever since."

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Song: "Crack Music" (2005)
Album: Late Registration
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Conscious

"Crack Music" raised the question that would become central to Kanye's career: Is corporate prosperity its own form of slavery? By drawing a line from Wall Street to the antebellum South and back to the present-day hood, "Crack Music" answers in the affirmative. This is perhaps the finest demonstration of Kanye's favorite lesson: There is no difference between street commerce and corporate commerce if the white-operated power structure is the ultimate benefactor.

"I know that people wouldn't usually rap this/But I got the facts to back this/Just last year, Chicago had over 600 caskets/Man, killing's some wack shit."

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Song: "Everything I Am" (2007)
Album: Graduation
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Conscious

Hip-hop has never been big on facts. It's far more fun to boast in rhyme about doming, bodying or murking some nameless foe than it is to face the cold hard statistics as Kanye does in "Everything I Am." If he had only said "killing's some wack shit" the line might have been nothing more than a naïve slogan. It's the image of 600 caskets in Chicago that gives the verse its venom.

"Have you ever popped champagne on a plane, while gettin some brain/Whipped it out, she said, 'I never seen Snakes on a Plane.'"

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Song: "Good Life" (2007)
Album: Graduation
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Ign'ant

This is another one of those exemplary sixth-grade pickup lines that Kanye just can't resist. Here his obsession with his johnson is matched by his penchant for out-of-touch movie references (see "The Waterboy" in "New Slaves"). This is a song about getting brain on a plane while sipping champagne. And yet the year this came out, critics were accusing Gucci Mane of being the premier ign'ant rapper?

"How Ye doing? I'm surviving/I was drinking earlier, now I'm driving."

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Song: "Power" (2010)
Album: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Ign'ant

Rappers are supposed to boast about all manner of bad behavior, but "Power" deals with one subject about which we just don't hear enough: drunk driving! This is one instance in which 'Ye's propensity to go where others won't might have led him astray. "I'm surviving" might be the most ill-advised proclamation for an individual who has just decided to get behind the wheel whilst inebriated.

"I treat the cash the way the government treats AIDS/I won't be satisfied til all my niggas get it, get it?"

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Song: "Gorgeous" (2010)
Album: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Conscious

Like most rappers, Kanye is an unapologetic conspiracy theorist. He accepts as fact that the government created the crack and AIDS epidemics to control the black working class. The twist in "Gorgeous" is what makes it noteworthy. In just a few lines, a multitude of implications: that affluence is a form of disease; that wealth is a form of revenge; that money is a political weapon. The fact that Kanye has been as enthusiastic in his paper chasing as he over the course of his career only serves to strengthen his his image, and self-image, as an unsolvable paradox.

"How could you say they live they life wrong?/When you never fuck with the lights on."

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Song: "Hell of A Life" (2010)
Album: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Ign'ant

Like so many of Kanye's fantasies, the fantasy of marrying a porn star that begins "Hell of a Life" morphs into an indictment of mainstream moral judgment. Though West had often portrayed casualties of race relations in his songs, the porn actress in "Hell of a Life" might be his most sympathetic figure of systemic discrimination. The way he says "you never fuck with the lights on" like there is no greater hypocritical transgression only proves that 'Ye is a moral pervert with a heart of gold.

"Been a long time since I spoke to you in a bathroom gripping you up/And fucking and choking you."

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Song: "Blame Game" (2010)
Album: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Ign'ant

Gripping someone up in the bathroom while you spoke to them is one thing. But fucking and choking them? Though it may not qualify as ign'ant in the classically dumbed-down sense of the term, "Blame Game" compensates with pure cringe-inducing embarrassment. Because, really, who is more ignorant than the millionaire whose self-image of his own sexual prowess is in reality an assault in a public lavatory? By comparison, the boner come-ons of "Bring Me Down" and "Good Life" seem positively charming.

"(I got that hot bitch in my home)/You know how many hot bitches I own?"

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Song: "Niggas in Paris" (2011)
Album: Watch the Throne
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Ign'ant

Though he celebrates materialism, Kanye assiduously avoids the clichés that infect his contemporaries. He has eschewed first-person dope narratives and steered completely clear of murder chic. In spite of his seemingly superlative record of social and political values, Kanye has always been—and probably will always be—game for some casual misogyny. The thing that elevates this line from "Niggas In Paris" to his ign'ant pantheon is the way he overlays the sex boast with a reference to female slavery. It's a line that contradicts about a dozen of his other songs, which is precisely why he had to say it.

"And I'll never let my son have an ego/He'll be nice to everyone, wherever we go/I mean I might even make him be Republican/So everybody know he love white people."

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Song: "New Day" (2011)
Album: Watch the Throne
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Conscious

Ah, 2011. As Barack Obama's re-election cycle kicked into high gear, Republican references in rap songs hit an all-time high. GOP hopeful Willard "Mitt" Romney became a surprisingly potent symbol within hip-hop. On one hand, he embodied the billion-dollar aspirations that had long since become hip-hop's guiding principle; on the other hand, he was the stiffest, whitest and least-rapper-friendly human being on the planet. Watch the Throne was an album about how and where rappers fit into Romney's world. This conversation came so easy to Kanye that he didn't have to get angry: he was cracking jokes about the true meaning of the Republican platform. In the end he saw through the Republican brand for what it really was: an emblem of white complacency masquerading as economic self-determination. Conservative are less threatening only because they advocate less change. Guys like Romney can advocate for less change only because they are white.

"I feel the pain in my city wherever I go/314 soldiers died in Iraq, 509 died in Chicago."

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Song: "Murder to Excellence" (2011)
Album: Watch the Throne
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Conscious

As the offspring of a professor and a journalist, Kanye learned early that facts are man's most powerful weapon. If used correctly, they can settle a dispute with more efficiency than a gun. Thus, where other rappers brandished firearms, Kanye brandished statistics. "Murder To Excellence" returns to the point Kanye made during the infamous Katrina telecast. Whether or not the government cares about black people became an endless debate, but what other conclusion could be drawn from these statistics? For the first five years of Kanye's stardom, the death toll of the Iraq War dominated the daily headlines. Meanwhile, the streets of Chicago registered a death toll of equal or greater numbers, and yet that war remained invisible. The more the public wanted to avoid these facts, the more Kanye insisted we face them.

"I never understood planned parenthood/Cause I never met nobody that planned to be a parent in the hood."

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Song: "The Joy" (2011)
Album: Watch the Throne
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Conscious

Planned Parenthood is widely considered one of the great public services in the United States, but Kanye-in full social satirist mode-makes a sharp point. How does a place called Planned Parenthood appeal to young people in places where nothing is planned? It's just another example of the void between the left's best intentions and the reality of inner-city life. It is within those voids that Kanye thrives.

"Tell PETA my mink is dragging on the floor."

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Song: "Cold" (2012)
Album: Cruel Summer
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Ign'ant

For all the songs he has made railing against the exploitation of human beings with brown skin, "Cold" indicates that it's unlikely Kanye will ever write the great anthem against animal cruelty. Though he should—can you imagine? If 'Ye followed his diamond earrings back to Sierra Leone, just think what he'd uncover if he decided to follow his mink back to the fur factory.

"I rather buy 80 gold chains and go ign'ant."

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Song: "Clique" (2012)
Album: Cruel Summer
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Ign'ant

The ign'ancy of "Clique" is not a rejection of "consciousness—it's an equally potent power move. Because when you get down to it, isn't "conscious" just another prescription the white establishment uses to define and control rappers? Kanye knows he should save his money; he knows he should invest; he knows the "right" thing, and the "smart" thing, and that being right and being smart are too often equated with a system of traditional white values. So screw them and screw you too. Whatever you want him to be, 'Ye will turn in the opposite direction, if only because that's the only way to stay free and to stay truthful. Make it 80 chains, or make it 800—because the chains that you choose for yourself will never bind you like the expectations of the outside world.

"My momma was raised in the era when/Clean water was only served to the fairer skin/Doing clothes you would have thought I had help/But they wasn't satisfied unless I picked the cotton myself."

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Song: "New Slaves" (2013)
Album: Yeezus
Conscious Or Ign'ant?: Conscious

2013's "New Slaves" is not only the place where Kanye's most ignorant self coexists with his most conscious self; it is the song in which the warring aspects of his personality become one. Conscious IS Ignorant, and Ignorant IS Conscious. The first verse is one of the smartest of Kanye's career; it is also one of the snottiest. The rest of the song intentionally places his most ambitiously inflammatory statements alongside his most gloriously ign'ant declarations. A reference to Billie Holiday's Civil Rights anthem "Strange Fruit" knocks against a reference to Adam Sandler's retard-comedy classic The Waterboy. A venomously concise critique of the prison industrial complex segues into one of the filthiest lines of Kanye's career. (The Hamptons seems like a less good place for a family vacation now.) But that's not because he's doing two things at once—it's because he's showing that those two things are one. Political invective is street swagger; a sexual revenge fantasy is a form of historical retaliation. To Kanye, the profane IS political. And sometimes to be deep you have to be shallow, if only to prove the inevitable complexity of being a black man, being a rapper, being an artist. Thus, "New Slaves" itself embodies juxtaposition, as the violent, skeletal sonics of the first half suddenly give way to a lush coda that is an Ocean of sweetness.

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