Later, on that same song, West tells someone – Kim? The media? Onlookers around the world? – to “ make a choice: oxygen or wi-fi?” It’s been suggested that he’s asking us to choose between his ability to breathe freely or access to the drama that is his current relationship status. There’s no room for the following line where the reality star and entrepreneur joked: “So when I divorced him, you have to know it came down to one thing – his personality.” When he samples Kardashian’s recent SNL monologue on ‘Sci-Fi’, he conveniently only includes the parts where she bigs him up as “the best rapper of all-time” and “the richest Black man in America, a talented legit genius who gave me four incredible kids”. ‘Donda 2’ doesn’t back that up, with West far from acknowledging he might be at fault in at least some ways. In a since-deleted Instagram post, Kanye claimed that he took “accountability” for his social media comments about his ex-wife as she tries to move on with her life. “ Never stand between a man and his kids / You ain’t got enough security for this.” “ Never take the family picture off the fridge,” he warns. You can hear the anger in West’s voice, which only grows stronger against the unsettling instrumental. “ I am the best, you hit the top / Wait til they find out,” he boasts on the Frankie Knuckles-sampling ‘Flowers’, later alluding to his 2022 Valentine’s Day gift of $100k’s worth of flora to his former partner: “ Keep the flowers, send a hunnid thousand.”īut his grand gestures (in reality and in lyrics) feel hollow when he immediately follows that track with ‘Security’, a headline-grabbing, seething threat to Kardashian’s new boyfriend, SNL comedian Pete Davidson. It’s most evident when the rapper writes about his personal life, particularly his ongoing divorce from Kim Kardashian. There are points across West’s ‘V2.22.22 Miami’ version of ‘Donda 2’ – which seems more likely to be a work-in-progress than the finished album – that fall into that pattern. It creates entitlement, feeds on manipulation and fixates a spotlight on your worst side, even if you believe that to be impossible. When indulging your ego becomes unhealthy, you allow yourself to believe that only you (or those who agree with you) are in the right and that you are on a higher plane of superiority than the rest of the world around you. Where once it was a tool, now it feels like a trap, and it’s rigged up invisible snares all over the songs that have emerged on the $200 player so far. Society might not like that he is unafraid to call himself a genius when he has created genius works, but that seemingly unfaltering belief and confidence in himself has presented the world with an unstoppable icon ready to push both boundaries and buttons.īut as West – or Ye, as he is now legally known – dribbles out versions of his 11th album ‘Donda 2’, the sequel to last year’s ‘Donda’, via his new Stem Player device, he is inadvertently highlighting another aspect of ego that can catch all of us out. It’s helped give us masterful works like the industrial about-turn of ‘Yeezus’ or the expansive maximalism of ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’, and led him to make game-changing innovations in music, fashion and beyond. Since his breakthrough in 2004, Kanye West’s ego has typically been a strength for the legendary rapper, helping him blaze trails that few before him have trodden.