“What was Kanye West thinking?” has remained a prevailing question since the Grammy award-winning rapper-producer pulled the rip cord on his spectacular descent into rightwing nihilism more than a decade ago. In Whose Name?, a cinéma vérité take on the tortured musical genius (who goes by just Ye now), offers fans and long-term observers a new artifact to pore over in search of answers – and reason to be disappointed all over again.
That’s not a knock on the 104-minute opus, an outcropping of more than 3,000 hours of footage – some of it never before seen, some of it a reverse perspective on the viral stunts and rants that have marked Ye’s dramatic nosedive. Director Nico Ballesteros – who started filming in 2018, at age 18, with nothing to recommend him (his stint as a second assistant director on a Jesus Is King concert video came later) – had sweeping access to Ye and made the distinctive choice not to layer it with any talking-head commentary for context. Mostly, he turns on the camera, holds a tight focus on his subject and lets the rest drift in and out of frame.
