After much talk and a few delays, Kanye West released his ninth studio album “Jesus is King” on Friday (Oct. 25), and before it dropped he sat down for some interviews.
One of them was with Big Boy from the Los Angeles station Real 92.3, where the rapper talked about a slew of topics, like his controversial comments on slavery, politics and how seeing his dad’s Playboy magazine at five years old affected his music throughout his career.
Then elsewhere during the sit down, the Chicago raised artist talked about “Doing it for the culture,” a term that’s often used in the black community.
He said doing something for the culture is a false concept, because much of what black folks refer to as culture was either created by others or is now owned by them.
“This is one of my main things,” West told Big Boy. “It’s like, what is the culture? It’s like ‘Man, this ain’t for the culture, we doing something for the culture.’ We are orphans, bro. We are culture-less. We don’t have our own culture. We sign to culture vultures. We sign our life away. Our contracts are culture vultures.”
“Think about everything that’s cultural,” he added. “Taking a knee is cultural, being on social media is cultural, wearing high fashion is cultural, pushing a foreign is cultural. All these things are now owned by our culture. So who designed the culture? What does it mean to do it for the culture? That’s why I do it for Christ.”
A lot of people weighed in on the interview afterwards, and while some agreed with West’s point, others clearly didn’t.
“Can’t lie gotta agree on this aw little bit,” someone wrote.
“Kanye is lost and wants to be intellectual so bad,” another person commented. “He’s confused and brings confusion that’s what the enemy does. My people know truth! … He was just calling himself God a few years ago.. now he’s down with Christ🤔 I hope he’s actually redeemed.”
“I understand what he trying to say, but he’s sliding off-topic through his emotions,” a third Instagram user stated. “We do have a culture and it’s heavily exploited by cultureless people for the means of profit.”
“And summa ya’ll on here agreeing with that nonsensical diatribe!!!” a fourth person wrote. “His problem is he doesn’t like his culture damned idiot.”