Charlamagne tha God has always been comfortable criticizing Kanye West’s ventures outside of music, like when he notoriously said the first iteration of the Adidas Yeezy 750 looked like a “papier-mâché project” when Ye visited the Breakfast Club in 2015.
The host and cultural commentator now has thoughts surrounding West’s latest business move, his Stem Player exclusively releasing versions of the rapper’s Donda 2 album. During a recent episode of his podcast the Brilliant Idiots with comedian Andrew Schulz and Wax, Charlamagne spoke on the functionality of the device and if it’s a smart investment.
“It’s smart if you selling tech, it’s not smart if you selling music,” CTG said near the 1:34:00 mark above. “If I’m an artist I don’t know why I would be celebrating that, it’s not like they paid $200 for music, they paid $200 for a Stem Player.”
Charlamagne also clarified he’d like to learn more about the piece of tech before he makes any final judgments. His main point of concern is whether other artists’ music could be uploaded and played on it, or just West’s.
“We’re talking about music and tech,” he continued. “How does this revolutionize the music industry? ’Cause you even gotta be a certain caliber of artist to make somebody buy something for $200. There’s a few artists that can do that. Kanye’s one of them, Drake’s one of them. Rihanna. The Adeles. Even if I like that person’s music, I still wanna know what that something is that I’m buying. What happens to other artists?”
The trio also discussed whether people still care about Kanye’s music enough to want to invest $200. Ye announced on social media that Donda 2 will not be released on any streaming services, going so far as sharing his profit margins for the gadget.
Check out the full Brilliant Idiots episode up top.
