Listen Here
By Jordan Garcia
@jordierob
You would be hard-pressed to find a person in the United States right now who hasn’t heard of Kanye West. If you watched MTV’s Video Music Awards a couple weeks ago, then you may know him as the guy that babbled somewhat randomly during his acceptance speech for the Michael Jackson Vanguard Award. Kanye’s speech went viral and was retweeted and shared all over social media.
The Vanguard Award is something that reflects lifetime achievement of influencing the MTV culture. Kanye is long overdue for this award because of his work in the music industry and recent burst into the fashion industry. Often referred to as “Yeezy” or “Yeezus,” Kanye has been influencing the way other artists make music, how their videos look, and what people wear for years now. One thing about Kanye that has always intrigued me is his ability to speak his mind without worry of the public opinion of his actions. During his speech for the Vanguard Award, Yeezy finally reached his pinnacle for pushing his agenda to the general public.
If you haven’t seen the 13 minute long presentation, I strongly recommend going to MTV’s website and watching it. The scattered thoughts and awkward pauses will provide comic relief at the very least. While I sat and laughed through the entire thing, it occurred to me almost every word coincided with my thoughts and opinions on the music industry and world in general. Through his rambling, he touched on the way that MTV marketed the entire 2009 Taylor Swift vs. Kanye incident. Ironically she was the one who made the presentation of the Vangaurd Award.
Ye was literally accepting an award at the MTV Awards and using his acceptance speech as an opportunity to bash everything the MTV stands for.
How can one man have so much power that MTV allows him to publicly criticize them on their own channel? It’s because Kanye West has that much pull in the music industry and pop culture. He is the classic public figure who speaks his mind whether you like it or not.
The most shocking and important part to take from Kanye’s 13 minute monologue is his announcement to run for president in 2020. I almost thought this was ridiculous, and then I remembered that Donald Trump is the lead Republican candidate for 2016. If this wasn’t just a funny joke, do I think that Kanye could win? Maybe not, but I do think he has a unique voice that could ignite the youth of this country into actually caring about politics. I think that is his goal, anyway. Kanye stands for freedom, creativity, individualism, and doing what he believes is right. My vote for the 2020 Presidential Election might already be reserved for Kanye West.
