Cornel West Wants Kanye to ‘Get Off the Symbolic Crack Pipe’ After Ye’s ‘Black Future Month’ Declaration

Philosopher, professor, and activist Dr. Cornel West criticized Kanye West after the hip-hop multi-hyphenate suggested Black History Month should rebrand to “Black Future Month.”

When February began earlier this week, Ye declared it “Black Future Month.” It was during his appearance on Drink Champs last year that he first coined the idea, suggesting Black History Month focuses too much on the past. “I need Black Future Month. I need Black Possibility Month,” Yeezy said. “I’m tired of seeing us getting hosed-down. I’m tired of talking about slavery.”

When approached by TMZ about Ye, Dr. West joked, “I always wondered whether that brother was my cousin or not.” He described Kanye as “a genius in a way, but he’s confused in a whole lot of ways, too.” West, who resigned from Harvard University last year, said Ye is “wrong” about Black History Month, however.

“Kanye’s wrong. Kanye should recognize, as an artist, that every performance is the authorizing of a future in the midst of a present trying to recover the best of the past,” the professor said. “Black History Month is not about the past. It’s about the past in the present that can authorize a better future, and you get that in Kanye’s music but you don’t get it in his rhetoric. There’s a sense in which his artistry is so much more profound than his rhetoric, it’s true.”

He took a moment to praise Kanye’s classic track “Jesus Walks,” but not before he made his feelings on Yeezy’s recent statement abundantly clear. “So Kanye think you can have Black Future Month without having a Black History Month. Tell that brother to get off the symbolic crack pipe and be true to his own artistic genius!” Dr. West concluded that Black History Month is “required because white supremacy is still operating.”