Kanye’s Dissent: Marketing or Madness? 

(Courtesy/USA Today) 

Kanye West is a Grammy award-winning producer, fashion designer and entrepreneur, yet he has historically been criticized for his extremely controversial, racist and anti-Semitic remarks. His most recent hate comments as well as the attempted sale of Nazi regalia coming around the release of his next album has critics and fans alike asking: is this blatant hate rhetoric a poor attempt at marketing? 

Kanye West (also known as Ye) has a history of making anti-semantic remarks and has lost partnerships with brands such as Gap and Adidas for his hate speech. In October 2022, West tweeted, “going death con 3 on Jewish people…You guys have toyed with me and tried to blackball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.” Even after those controversial statements, his last two albums, “Vulture 1” and “Vulture 2,” were released in 2024 and charted at NO.1 and 2 on the US Billboard 200. 

More recently, Kanye posted a slew of tweets, claiming, “I love Hitler” and “I’m a Nazi.” Soon after those tweets, he released a t-shirt with a Swastika for sale online. Shopify, the online platform that handled the brand’s sales, removed the shirt shortly after. 

“He’s become someone that his old self would have hated,” said Shane Cameron, a senior TV/Film major at Howard University. “We’ve seen his mind dissolve and his morals disintegrate.” 

Other students dismiss his statements as just part of his persona. 

“He has to do and say all that insane stuff try to stay in the media attention. I try to stay tapped out of anything Kanye, it feels so fake,” said Kennedy Meadors, a biology major at Howard University. 

These tweets came right around the time he announced his plan to release his next album, “Bully.”  Although it was originally slated to come out during the summer, West did a surprise release in March, making it only available through YouTube or digital downloads.

“I won’t be listening to it personally, but I feel like I will be forced to listen to it anyway because it will probably be played everywhere. It’s insane to me that people still listen to that man,” says Chiamaka Udeh, a junior health science major at Howard. 

The album leak has done well critically, with Michael Saponara from GQ saying, “It Brings Us No Pleasure to Report that Kanye West made a Good Kanye West Album.”

“I most likely will be listening to the new Kanye album because it’s gonna be good music. He’s definitely wildin’ right now and he might just be trolling but, he made [the “Graduation” album], so we really can’t write him off,” said Jacob Wilkerson, a senior marketing major at Hampton University. 

Until this album has an official release, it’s hard to gauge whether Kanye’s latest statements are making a real commercial impact on his music career.