Nile Lansana says his nearly bulletproof love for Kanye West has eroded. The Chicago interdisciplinary artist, performer and educator says the change did not happen overnight, but it has reached a point where West’s fall from grace is hard to watch.
That shift matters now because Lansana is not speaking as a casual listener. He grew up in Chatham, off 79th and Cottage Grove, with West’s music in the background of family life and school days. Ms. Donda West was a family friend, and Lansana said he listened from The College Dropout to The Life of Pablo. “Gold Digger” was the first rap song he memorized, while “Amazing” and “Touch the Sky” played on pre-game car rides to middle school soccer and basketball games. “Champion” followed every poetry slam win in high school.
For Lansana, West was part of the earliest days of his writing journey. He said he was moved to tears by a song off every Kanye album up until Yeezus, and he watched the Jeen-Yuhs documentary when it dropped. That is why the disappointment lands so heavily. When West stood with Donald Trump, Lansana said he felt betrayed and bamboozled. He unfollowed West on all platforms and boycotted his music for years.
The break widened as West kept making statements and taking actions Lansana says he can’t excuse. West has said slavery was a choice, wore a White Lives Matter shirt with Candace Owens, praised Adolf Hitler and was sued for sexual harassment by his former assistant. Lansana said he acknowledges West has dealt with grief and mental health struggles, but those struggles are not excuses for the racist, hateful and violent comments West has made. “I don’t want to believe he believes what he’s saying and doing,” Lansana said.
What makes the rupture harder to dismiss is that it has lasted. Lansana said holding West accountable comes with hopes that he would apologize and change his behavior, but a decade has passed and not much has changed. For a Chicago fan who once treated West’s music like part of the family soundtrack, the question is no longer how much influence West once had. It is whether that influence can survive what he has chosen to become.
