An Open Letter To Kanye West

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to the Nick Oliveri show. I'm your host Nick Oliveri where we discuss great art, great people, and the many things in between.

(00:11):
Got a special one for you today.
It is an open letter. I am sure if you were plugged into any sort of pop culture or the ex-Twittersphere, however that goes, you may have heard about or seen some of Mr. Kanye West's

(00:42):
recent diatribes, ramblings, you name it, rants, incoherent at that, grammatically incorrect at that, and completely and utter maniacal at that.
And when I say maniacal, I always say this, hear me clearly, this is Nick Oliveri, five-time independent best-selling novelist, poet and fashion designer.

(01:13):
I decided to write an open letter to a fellow artist. You may never receive this message. I might be talking to a proverbial wall right now that's in the letter, but I just felt it.
Felt it to say it. Write it down and compose something more concise to Mr. Kanye West who I think is, let me preface this because this is a very, very, very, very, very touchy subject.

(01:49):
I am not condoning necessarily anything he has said over the past few hours, few days, or weeks, I'm not sure. I didn't look at every single tweet.
I do know that he's been trending on Twitter and probably even the mainstream media and other outlets of all sorts, depending on what you look at.

(02:10):
And if you don't know who Kanye West is, multi-platinum, multi-grammy-winning recording artist, blazed trails for hip-hop in the early 2000s and has never looked back since in terms of mind-bending creativity.
But you probably know him. He goes by Ye now. I'm probably never going to call him that or refer to him as that. I'm going to refer to him as Kanye West.

(02:31):
I'm sorry, not sorry if that confuses anyone or confuses him if he ever gets this message, if he ever hears this or catches wind of it.
But it's not necessarily about that. I just needed to express my feeling on the matter.
And while I'm also not condoning his actions or words as of late, I am not condemning him as an awful, evil person.

(03:09):
Or I'm going to pile on him and say, deplatform, cancel him, go ahead and revoke everything.
And I do think he needs help. He needs a lot of help. But if you folks remember something, it's an H-word. It's called humanity.
So before I just tear into this open letter and just go through it, Kanye West is someone who has suffered a lot of turbulence and I don't care what anyone tells me, absolutely suffers from a condition called Bipolar I Disorder.

(03:45):
If you don't know about Bipolar I Disorder, it is a debilitating neurological condition, potentially debilitating, but an extreme neurological condition of radical mood swings.
Some folks with Bipolar I don't necessarily need to swing to super low depths of depression, although many who are diagnosed with BP1 do.

(04:13):
Bipolar I is mainly characterized by very long protracted fits of mania.
And what is mania? Well, I'm not going to go into the symptomology. You can look it up.
But Bipolar I, essentially, if you ever heard the word, that person's a maniac.

(04:34):
If you ever said, oh my gosh, that's maniacal, you're a maniac, that's manic.
Actually, the roots of those words come from this diagnosis and the characterization of this diagnosis, which is mania.
Even in Bipolar II, which I'm not saying you don't suffer if you have Bipolar II, it's once again a very severe disorder.

(05:09):
It's just difficult to collect my thoughts, and I'm not trying to tiptoe.
At the same time, I'm trying to get everything as possibly right as I can.
Essentially, the longer you go on not treating Bipolar I, or Bipolar really, medicinally, like with pharmaceutical drugs or lithium, things of the like,

(05:38):
you run the risk of having your interoception, meaning your sense of internal well-being or internal homeostasis, compromised completely over time.
If you continue to engage in the chaos within you fully and unabashedly.

(06:00):
I'm going to start this open letter with all that said.
I'm not going to say, oh, well, he's right about this one aspect, or he's right about this other aspect of his rants, tweets, what have you.
I'm also not going to sit there and condone him, and I'm not going to pile on to him.

(06:26):
I'm not going to call him a bad person, whether in this preface to the letter or in the letter itself.
I'm not going to say he's totally right.
I'm not going to say he's canceling, don't listen to his art, or take it off Spotify.
I'm not going to say any of that.

(06:47):
I'm not going to condemn him or exalt him as a person in one way or another.
I'm going to read the open letter.
This is a relatively bare bones preface, but it's an important one because you need to understand where I'm coming from.
That's the context.
Okay, now here's the letter.
Dear Mr. Kanye West, you were one of the first hip hop artists I've ever heard.

(07:12):
You and Lil Wayne and Jay-Z and Drake comprised my homework soundtracks then, way back then.
I'd download bootlegs of your albums and listen to them religiously on every bus ride to school.
When I got old enough to drive, you know what I'd be playing in my 05 Ford Expedition.

(07:34):
Kanye West.
My beautiful dark twisted fantasy was and still is one of my favorite albums of all time,
inventing new ways seemingly to even consume rap and art altogether, conjuring visions of my mind.
In my mind of a better future, a world with no limits and an early conception of my bravado I've come to be known by as both a person and a professional a little later on in life.

(08:04):
Your art served as inspiring visions of grandiosity and maximalist fantasies as an adolescent.
Now as a young adult, your art still serves as a testament to pushing boundaries and continuing to improve, express yourself and push your craft to new heights no matter who says what about you or what you do.

(08:26):
Maybe though I was just an impressionable kid who fell for a ploy in a product or maybe there really is some divinity and magic to your earlier music.
I understand saying things for shock value. I understand promotion.

(08:48):
You've reached great heights by putting it simply, pissing large swaths of people off and embroiling yourself in controversy to limitless end and little regard for reprieve or conception of your own retreat.
Now let's get into our humanity, our collective humanity, and if you reject this letter, whether it be a random listener or Mr. West himself, let's get into the H word humanity because I know Kanye has lost a lot.

(09:29):
I know what it feels like to grieve when you've lost no one and to feel nothing at all, completely numb when you have lost someone.
I know what it feels like to think you're Atlas with the strongest shoulders, the biggest back muscles, the hardiest quads, bearing the weight of the world and even having it feel light for a while.

(09:55):
I know what that's like. I know what it's like to be manic and reach for substances to help with the crash or the fatigue in your own soul.
And then who once thought he was Atlas, a god, have the weight of the world crush him into bits, despairing and yearning for death with broken bones and scrutiny all around you.

(10:19):
I relate to being abandoned, betrayed. I've been castigated, slandered, mocked, punched, stolen from, taken advantage of, lied to, embarrassed, made a fool, tricked, alienated, alone.
And having who and what you hold most dear to you, ripped out of your chest, ripped from your life, destroyed and broken. I know what it feels like to be a god, to create things and reach high heights, higher than anyone around you.

(10:57):
I know what it feels like to reach out to God himself in the worst times and the best. I know what it feels like to blame myself for all my failure and attribute my glory and achievements and accolades and money and talent to others or circumstance or even happenstance.
And I also, at other times, have taken all the credit in the world. Sometimes I feel like I am the world, just like you may. Like a male Gaia or a female Zeus. I know rage, anger, violence, hatred and calls to vengeance. I know those things all too well because I feel them.

(11:39):
I also know forgiveness. I've burned bridges too, just like you. I've ranted too. I've cut down relationships with my own hand. I've cut down other people. I've said awful things too. I've hurt people too with caustic words and my own acid tongue that still to this day rears its head on the most untimely occasions.

(12:06):
But with all this said, I will end this rather abruptly.
I don't view you as a role model, and frankly I never have. I viewed you as a conduit for great art.
Aristotle said, No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.
Nietzsche wrote, You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.

(12:31):
I think you have more than a touch of madness, and I think there's more than a dollop of chaos within you.
That doesn't mean that you don't have things to say that you believe.
Most of your creative life you have focused on how you purvey your message.
As a prose stylist, and as I think many artists of other domains, most domains, would say,

(13:01):
the packaging matters, the delivery matters, and the context matters.
That's to say, theme and messaging.
However bold, grandiose, or milk toast and vanilla,
however cutting or soft your message is,

(13:23):
it matters how it is delivered.
I have learned that.
What you say will not be effective, I've learned also,
if you dance with chaos for too long, allowing the void to subsume you and all your emotions.
I wish sincerely you would take your medicine and take care of yourself,

(13:51):
because though I don't look up to you as a person,
countless impressionable minds across the world see you as a role model, and actually do.
And so I urge you to show yourself more respect,
with understanding that I don't always do as I say,
or as I urge others to do, and in that way I'm a hypocrite.

(14:15):
I've been trampled on or abandoned more times than I could count possibly,
because I simply took too many steps, too many across the line, for too many times,
and made the abyss, like you, my home, inviting my emotions and desires to subsume me.
Don't continue to do the same.

(14:39):
I urge you to set an example, even if I am talking to a proverbial wall,
and no one hears this, or if it falls on deaf ears.
I felt it in my heart to say a few words regarding someone who has the power to change culture for the better,
but rather has let himself be changed for the worse.

(15:02):
I don't look up to you, Kanye, but I do care about you,
and your art speaks to me as it will for generations to come,
from one child of God to another, one person among many with a similar condition.
I pray it gets better for you.

(15:23):
That's about it. We've got some links below.
I also make art, too.
Thanks.