Here’s what you probably got out of Kanye West’s break-the-internet acceptance speech at the VMAs: Taylor Swift adorably pokes fun at the infamous 2009 interruption and presents her old foe with the Michael Jackson Vanguard Award, an unfathomably classy and gracious act of forgiveness that further solidifies her as a universal can-do-no-wrong sweetheart; horrible human Kanye West goes on stage, and somehow has the nerve to nonsensically, egotistically, and hypocritically rant for 13 minutes while high (typical rapper!1!!!) and using the word “Bro” excessively, and is delusional and self-absorbed enough to actually believe that he can run for president—yet another display of how unintelligent and offensive Kanye West is.

Before I start, I think it’s important to acknowledge that few people defend Kanye as passionately as I regularly do. He’s my favorite musician, and while I think he can be overzealous, he’s often pretty damn insightful. When discussing Kanye, my opinion is consistently disregarded because I’m “biased” and allegedly “driven by blind fanaticism,” an argument I still don’t quite understand. I didn’t just pick a celebrity to defend, and I have no personal attachment to Kanye; Why can’t I just like what he does? Others accuse me of playing Devil’s Advocate, of pretentiously basking in the controversy that surrounds Kanye, an allegation that I hope you trust isn’t true. I’ve put in the time here, so please refrain from rolling your eyes and dismissing me right off the bat because you saw Kim naked in the “Bound 2” video and read a couple of contextless soundbites off of (woe is me) PerezHilton.

There exists a grotesque disparity between the aggressive confidence with which Kanye is despised, and the amount of information that serves as the basis for that dislike. To a certain extent, such pretension is to be expected. We’re all thirsty to impose our intellectual ownership on an unquantifiable point of debate, but we often forgo educating ourselves, and prematurely resort to our uninformed perspective. It’s true, everybody’s entitled to their opinion, but unfortunately too many prefer a baseless and harmful one to no opinion at all. This applies not only to Kanye and his music, but also to the way people approach music. I’m not about to disrespect you for disliking an artist, but the amount of times I’ve heard people bash Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly because it’s “too experimental” is sending me to an early grave. Great music tends to be innovative; innovation tends to be unfamiliar; a lack of familiarity tends to delay gratification. If you trust yourself enough to settle on an unfavorable opinion because your intuition rejects an artist’s foreignness, I urge you to second-guess yourself more. There also exists this archaic, racially charged sentiment, especially among salty old farts, that hip-hop is an inherently inferior art form to other genres; to many, the familiarity of a nice voice, “conscious lyrics,” and the ability to play instruments is all you need, regardless of how banal the end-product is (this is the line of thought is what makes it seem egregious for Kanye to push for Beyoncé’s artistry over Beck’s). Moreover, we’ve got an unfortunate abundance of folks who somehow still tolerate Eminem centuries after sobriety rendered him beyond abysmal, who look only for quick flow and “badass” punchlines to get them amped before their pickup game, and who see no value to rappers who are evolving hip-hop’s aesthetic. An additional barrier presents itself for Kanye’s music: people hate him. Yeezus is completely unprecedented, and when averse to novelty and convinced that the guy who conceived it is the anti-Christ, achieving anything less than repulsion is an insurmountable task. Why should you make the effort to like someone you’re convinced you hate? All I can do is offer my word: I have enjoyed his music at a deeply appreciative level, and I think you will too. Maybe hearing it from Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Nick Cave, Lorde, Chance, Vince Staples, Earl Sweatshirt, Drake, Lou Reed, Jack Black, Elton John, Prince, Justin Vernon, James Blake, The Weeknd, hell, even Mumford and Sons, will be more worthwhile to you. Just please don’t disregard Kanye’s creative output because you’ve decided he’s a jerk, because his entire body of work is astoundingly eclectic and influential, and you’d really be missing out.

Kanye’s every move elicits an extreme response from the trigger-happy public; everybody’s angrily and compulsively prepared to expose his stupidity, and the media doesn’t hesitate to cater to and proliferate this attitude. Howard Stern recently had a good time blasting Kanye for his VMA acceptance speech, calling him a “mentally ill […] egomaniac” who should “at least make some sense,” and went with the classic old-white-man-insulting-a-rapper cheap-shot by condescendingly impersonating the way he speaks (a preferred tactic over at Fox News.) This is a standard reaction to anything Kanye, and part of it is due to the fact that he’s so relevant beyond hip-hop, and brings a bit of the genre’s braggadocio vibe to the unsuspecting elderly couples tuning into the Sarah McLachlan dog commercials before bed. The dislike makes sense to me, I just think it’s misguided. You see a guy who’s into expensive clothing, is married to someone whom many believe to be the world’s most superficial and undeserving celebrity, and goes on stage and speaks extemporaneously (and therefore often inarticulately), but his desire to produce some kind of thoughtful rhetoric shines through even to the most determined detractor—and the perceived mismatch has people thinking Kanye’s the most hypocritical dude in the world. Then you hear him compare himself to these incredible innovators like Warhol, Disney, Jobs, and Michael Jackson, and instinctively the pretension feels overwhelming. But these are the people Kanye idolizes, whose impact he works his ass off to match, and he’s one of many to believe he’s made a strong case to have his name mentioned among them, an incredible achievement for someone tightly associated with an industry as maligned as hip-hop; why is it so wrong when he’s the one to say it? Go ahead and think that the way he presents himself publicly is over-the-top, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t smart. Just last week at the VMAs, he argued that we teach and praise low self-esteem, and I think that’s some really valuable insight. Our ideal celebrity doles out nothing but praise to those around him, and abstains from celebrating his own work. If Jimmy Fallon calls himself the best late night television host (he would not be caught dead doing this,) even those who agree would take issue; his self-deprecatory sense of humor and disingenuous and submissive love for just about everything he didn’t make are massive turn-ons for so many fans. Lebron James is by far the best basketball player in the world, but briefly shedding his Fallon and saying so himself pissed people off; and I’ll be honest, that clip has me cringing a little bit too, but I can’t properly rationalize it. Someone else’s self-confidence shouldn’t feel threatening enough to have us favor false humility, but it does, and Kanye West is mighty self-confident.

The 2009 Taylor Swift VMA incident is the consensus magnum opus of Kanye West douchery. It was horrible of him to interrupt a young artist’s moment like that, but the criticism he received for publicly expressing that Beyoncé should have won was unwarranted. People also took issue with Kanye this year when he spoke out (uninterruptedly) against Beck’s victory at the Grammys, again in Beyoncé’s name. Sure, evaluating music lacks the objectivity that many other debatable topics possess, but Kanye spends his life consuming art (take a quick stroll through his WhoSampled page and tell me another human being has listened to more music); he’s entitled to his opinion, and whether or not you approve of his “rant” tone, all he’s doing here is expressing it, and his fame shouldn’t make that a problem. But celebrities are held to a weird standard with a constant undertone of exhausting political correctness, and we, the #RealRecognizeReal Urban Outfitters and selfie-face generation that’s quick to call out any perceived fraudulence self-righteously, uphold the hell out of it by attempting to silence its most relevant challenger. Kanye’s candor is a massive breath of fresh air, but I think even he struggles to express it so publicly. His defenders (the 9 of us) and detractors alike cite, for different reasons, the fact that he “doesn’t care about what people think of him.” I disagree; I think he’s insecure about his image just like the rest of us—he just won’t allow that fear get the best of him. He just cares so much about fighting for what he believes is incredible art (who else has given away awards?), and he happens to produce a whole lot of it.

Taylor is happy to be the unconditionally loved universal sweetheart, the prototypical celebrity who won’t offend anybody. At the end of the day, celebrities are here to entertain us, and she does that exceptionally well. But we also need a counterbalancing force, someone who isn’t afraid to call out the Grammys when Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy end up just as empty-handed as Iggy Azalea’s debut album, or criticize MTV’s thirst for ratings while being broadcast on MTV, or suggest that maybe the government’s treatment of black and white people is unequal. Fame guarantees a person popularity if she can manage to create a diplomatic and pleasant public image for herself, and I don’t blame celebrities for giving in to that temptation. I sure as hell respect Kanye West for speaking his mind in spite of that imposing reality. Let the man speak.

Photo courtesy of here and here and here.

Anthony Milki ('17, Human Biology/Creative Writing) is from Palo Alto and listens to a lot of Kanye. ('17, Human Biology/Creative Writing) is from Palo Alto and listens to a lot of Kanye.