If there’s one thing that makes me mourn for the Kanye West we once lost, it’s the ninth song on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy: Runaway. Arguably one of West’s greatest tracks of all time, it contains a toast to the awful men in the world, himself included: “Let's have a toast for the a**holes, let's have a toast for the scumbags. Every one of them that I know [...] Baby, I got a plan. Run away fast as you can.” Maybe we should have listened.
West debuted Runaway at the 2010 VMAs, back when he still seemed relatively self-aware and mentally cogent. He was always controversial — the infamous ‘I’ma let you finish’ VMAs incident with Taylor Swift happened almost exactly one year beforehand — but based on his writing and old footage of the fledgling rap star, it’s fair to say he was smart, capable of critical thought and self-reflection.
By comparison, the 47-year-old, 24-time Grammy award-winning rapper spent the first six months of last year tweeting about being a Nazi, wearing KKK uniforms and exposing his daughter to Andrew and Tristan Tate, two men who are accused of sex trafficking. Of the songs he released during this period, one details his incestuous relationship with his cousin, another was entitled “Heil Hitler”, and another was a collaboration with the now-convicted criminal P Diddy (a song which also happens to feature Ye’s 11-year-old daughter, North). To quote himself, I miss the old Kanye.
By now, Kanye West has reached the point of no return four, five, or six times. And yet the man cannot be cancelled.
This week, it was revealed that Ye would be headlining all three days of Finsbury Park’s Wireless Festival 2026. This would mark the rapper’s first UK performance in ten years, and his first Wireless performance since 2014, when he interrupted his set with a long, protracted rant (a sign of things to come).
Granted, Ye has issued a public apology for many of his actions. In January, the rapper took out a full-page advert in The Wall Street Journal to apologise to his family and the Jewish community, insisting he is not a Nazi. In the letter, titled “To Those I Hurt”, West explains: “I am not a Nazi or an antisemite [...] I love Jewish people”.
He attributed his actions to his bipolar disorder, which he claims caused him to lose “touch with reality” and gravitate towards “the most destructive symbol I could find, the swastika”. He added: “I regret and am deeply mortified by my actions in that state, and am committed to accountability, treatment, and meaningful change. It does not excuse what I did though.”
For any other celebrity, this apology simply wouldn’t cut the mustard. Take Chappell Roan’s recent Instagram video explaining that she wasn’t rude to a child in a hotel in Brazil, which had barely any cooling impact on the media firestorm around her. And yet with Kanye, it seems to have worked.
Over the last five years, Ye became provocative to the point of ridiculousness. This cemented him as annoying white noise to pretty much anyone with sense.
If that white noise approach sounds familiar, it’s with good reason. That’s pretty much the same way everyone on the left treated Donald Trump… until he won the US election. Twice. This became a fable of sorts post-2016 election, with Salena Zito writing in The Atlantic, “The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.” Later, Matthew Yglesias wrote an article for Vox entitled, “It turns out we should have taken Trump literally as well as seriously.”
As much as the right-wing pundits claim cancel culture is real, there are now some very real public figures who appear to be able to do whatever they want without consequence. Donald Trump is the first President of the United States to be a convicted felon. Musk promotes conspiracy theories and controls online narratives. Mark Zuckerberg undermined democracy. The company owned by Jeff Bezos is accused of violating its workers’ human rights (Amazon denies this).
So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that Kanye hasn’t gone away like cancelled people used to. They have a new method now. They become uncancellable. And considering the majority of the world’s most powerful men have attained this status, well... then they can get away with pretty much anything they want.
