The natural question is then, what is Kanye’s instrumental use of the Confederate flag pointing to and for what reason.
“React how you want,” he said during an interview with radio station
Los Angeles 97.1 AMP. “Any energy you got is good energy. I represented slavery, my abstract take on what I know about it, I wrote New Slaves. So I took the Confederate flag and made it my flag. What are you going to do?”
I debated did this even warrant a response as Kanye has clearly set himself as a part of the now alternative hip hop group genre. Alternative hip hop encompasses these disparate artists and groups that don’t even like the label “alternative” hip hop, but they exist jumping between the margins and the center. Alternative hip hop emerged in the 1990s, but to a larger audience nearly two decades later, those artists seem mainstream now. Groups like Jurassic 5 or even Outkast at one time were considered alternative, now are definitely mainstays in the hip hop millieu. The new class of alternative hip hop natives includes born in the 1990s and have barely crossed the threshold of their 21st birthday: such as OGWGKTA, from Tyler the Creator, and slightly older ones like N.E.R.D., Childish Gambino, Lupe Fiasco. Also, let it be noted, as hip hop itself as a music genre is always morphing into what it will be itself. There are moments listening to the “mainstream” artists where the timbre of the tracks themselves hearken on musical engineering akin to the hip hop alternative.
But this classification gives the artist the space to be, well, weird. In an era where prank movies like “Jackass” can rake in millions, and where social media gives a window to watch the antics of what amounts to more thank just pranks, but actual random acts of violence, I have to be honest, I’m a bit concerned as a global citizen about where is this all going. The nihilism that paints the backdrop to which much of these lyrics, music and fashion is birthed. While I am all for free expression, I all for having a pointed direction in what it is one is doing.
I think the scary part in Kanye’s c00nery is that he’s simply doing it because he can. It’s the old school equivalent of a rich guy buying his 7th car, not because he needs it, not even because he wants it, but doing it because he can–and he’s bored. There’s not intrinsic value attached to Kanye reappropriating the Confederate flag other than to add another entry into his Wikipedia page under “controversy.” Kanye didn’t do for money because the only place that would knowingly carry those flags would be the truck stop off of I-20 just this side of the Mississippi state line. No major department stores will ever carry that for mass distribution. The only place they will sell will be the pop-up stores at his concert venues.
And we wonder why people feel it’s okay to dress up in blackface for Halloween.
Now I’m not making the argument that Kanye should be grand “race uplifter” like this is the height of the Civil Rights movement, but I am having issue with a culture that seemingly has no ground to stand that seems to be directly affecting some of the random violence. No, I’m not trying to be a curmudgeon declaring some end of the world cataclysm and go around quote Yeats’ “things fall apart, the centre cannot hold” as though doom is here, but I am saying that if you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything. The unfortunate part of that is that some of what you fall for may be falling toward your death and destruction. Or in this specific case with Kanye, I see him as hip hop’s Confederate c00n.
The clashing irony of stanning for the Confederacy while at the same time being a c00n is the rarefied space in which Kanye and Kaye alone occupies. His black skin and still other cultural signifiers identify him as black, yet he’s reclaiming the Confederate flag. No this isn’t something birthed out of the grand satirical comedy of Dave Chappelle as Clayton Bigsby, but rather Kanye enters the c00n space because he seems to fail to see how what he’s doing is perpetuating more harm than good; he’s being overtly selfish. He’s not reclaiming it for some greater purpose (even those who said “nikka” is a term of endearment have attempted to make it for a greater service), but he’s reclaiming it just because he can!
As countercultural as I position myself, I don’t see the value of doing something just to be doing it. Perhaps that does come from my religious trajectory and I have no problems admitting that as a crutch to understanding the unmitigated freedom that doing what you want when you want provides. It fuels
Kanye’s god-like complex; the notion of God’s sovereignty–God can do what God wants, when God wants, how God wants and to whomever God wants–is real and it’s something that Kanye certainly embodies. Despite all of the deity aspirations put forth by 5-percenters or the like, Kanye, again, doesn’t seem to have a hold onto
why he’s doing what he
Quote
Its like you decided in your head I dont like K-rino so you make up statements that I havnt even written. Its easy to win arguments in your own head 
