I Am Begging You to Stop Paying Attention to Kanye West

Unless you’ve been staying away from social media, you’re no doubt already aware of Kanye West’s latest tirade. Last weekend, the rapper-turned-professional-trainwreck made headlines by appearing on the Grammys red carpet with his wife, Bianca Censori, who showed up to the event naked. That stunt got his name back in the news and gave him an opportunity to announce that his new album, Bully, is slated to come out this June. But that wasn’t enough, apparently: Last night, West posted a now-deleted series of tweets doubling down on his anti-Semitism (including statements like “I’m a Nazi” and “I love Hitler”) and his belief that “slavery was a choice,” showing support for Diddy and declaring he has “dominion” over Censori.

It’s all disgusting, of course, but perhaps what’s most disgusting is it’s such a blatant attempt to get attention ahead of a new album release — a desperate grasp at relevance by a once-great artist whose best work is now 15 years behind him. Everything he says and does is intended to shock because he knows controversy has become his calling card. No one in the year 2025 is paying attention to Kanye West because of his music.

His last solo album, 2021’s Donda, has a Metacritic score of just 53 (out of 100), despite the fact it was the fastest of all his records to reach 1 billion streams on Spotify. In its first week, it debuted at No. 1, thanks to moving 309,000 album-equivalent unit, but only 37,000 of them were actual album sales. (The RIAA allows 1,500 streams to count as one album-equivalent unit.) In other words, a ton of people streamed it, but only a handful were actually willing to buy the critically maligned album; most people were probably just listening out of curiosity or gawking at how bad it was.

Please Stop Interviewing Kanye West

He’s repeatedly demonstrated that he doesn’t deserve a platform, and giving him one is just exploitation

West has realized that the way to get anyone to care about the music he’s making is to turn himself into a sideshow — and by drawing attention to his antics, we’re playing right into his hand. In one tweet, he screams, “ELON THEY KICKED ME OFF INSTAGRAM, SO GLAD YOU BOUGHT X.” But the post has a Community Note attached to it pointing out the screenshot he attached doesn’t show he’s been banned — just that he logged out of his account — and his account was still active at the time he shared that tweet. He’s so desperate to be edgy and controversial that he’s canceling himself because he knows it’s good for his brand. The most telling tweets in this latest rant are the ones in which he promotes a new collaboration with Diddy’s Sean John line available for sale on his website. He’s saying the most heinous shit imaginable to get eyeballs on his social media accounts again, and once he has them, he’s hawking T-shirts.

West claimed he lost $2 billion in one day after brands like Adidas and Gap cut ties with him following his previous anti-Semitic rant in 2022. He currently has no record label, and self-releasing his music isn’t cheap. Why do we keep falling for his ploys to drive up album streams and stay relevant when, without our attention, he’d simply fade away?