It is undeniable that professionally, Kanye West is one of a kind – a musical virtuoso, if you will.
In the Netflix series Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, a charming West displays an unfaltering sense of determination and self-belief at a time when the industry didn't take him seriously as an artist.
As a talented and accomplished producer who had already worked with some of music's biggest names (including Jay-Z and Talib Kweli), West had been pigeonholed.
He wanted to be an artist, but people saw him as a producer.
But not only did West refuse to stay in his lane, he went on to prove himself capable of creating new ones.
He's an artist now. He still produces music, but he's also a fashion designer and an entrepreneur with his own sneaker brand, Yeezy. And his innovation has even resulted in the creation of an audio remix device and music-streaming platform, Stem Player, which has been arguably successful and arguably unsuccessful.
He's even built his own brand of worship, Sunday Service.
But West has been heavily criticised for the music video for Eazy, a song in which he collaborates with rapper The Game.
In the video, West is depicted kidnapping and burying alive a claymation version of his former wife's new partner.
And when West was temporarily suspended from Instagram for violating the platform's harassment policy, it left some of his 15.8 million Instagram followers in a conundrum.
Tre Johnson is one of those Instagram followers. He describes West as a complicated genius.
"He's like a lot of people," Mr Johnson said.
"He's super flawed.
"He is incredibly talented.
"And he's also saddled with some mental health issues.
"So yeah, that makes him very complicated."
Mr Johnson is a race and culture writer who has penned articles for Rolling Stone and Atlanta Black Star and is currently working on a love letter to West, which will be published in the Washington Post.
He's also the author of Black Genius: Our Celebrations and our Destructions, which will be published by Penguin Books next year and explores black American subcultures from an historical and cultural perspective, looking at everything from surveillance to public personas.
Mr Johnson is troubled by what he sees playing out on social media with West.
"I know all things about art are subjective," he said.
"And I think that's been true now for the last couple of years.
"Now we're seeing a much tighter convergence between his state of being and the quality of his music.
"His personality has overtaken what he's been best known for."
Fan says no excuses for West's 'reprehensible' behaviour
Mr Johnson told the ABC that West's mental health issues could not be used as the sole explanation for his bad behaviour (West has addressed his bipolar diagnosis in his music, including on the song Yikes, which appears on his album Ye).
"It clearly factors into it, but most importantly, mental health or not, he is saying and doing dangerous things out there.
"His orientation around harassments, around alluded to or explicit violence to other people, his clear disdain towards [his ex-wife's new partner] Pete Davidson, and then even what many women have fairly characterised as his emotionally abusive approach to [his ex-wife] Kim [Kardashian] – these things are reprehensible."
Mr Johnson said it had been hard as a fan of West and his work to read through his Instagram posts and see comments from people validating the abuse.
He said the public narrative around West forced people to take one side or the other – and that was disappointing.
"And that's really unfortunate because I think it's reflective of where culture is at in a lot of ways now … he's complicated. He's really complicated.
"And he's really disappointing at this point now, and I still love him, you know?"
The love letter Mr Johnson is writing to West will share how his music has impacted and reflected his life at different moments, but also outline the point where he experienced a clear departure.
"Much like him, I've had to battle my own mental health demons at times too," he said.
"And there were times that both him and his music helped me understand those things.
"But then, now we're at this departure point where I can still go to his music, but I can't go to him.
"And I think that feels like a real loss."
These are real people we're talking about
AD Carson is an assistant professor of hip hop and the global south at the University of Virginia. He is also a hip hop artist who has recently recorded an album, Talking to Ghosts, which deals with, among other things, mental health.
It was written during COVID-19 lockdowns when he was, like many people, dealing with isolation.
Dr Carson also wrote a chapter in the book The Cultural Impact of Kanye West.
In the chapter, Dr Carson compares West to Jay Gatsby from the F Scott Fitzgerald novel The Great Gatsby.
But speaking to the ABC, Dr Carson cautioned people against treating West as if he was just a character in a story.
"And there are consequences and ramifications for all of their actions, as there should be.
"This is much more than a story that we are consuming.
"These are actual people's lives."
Dr Carson described West as an intriguing and incredibly talented artist, but said he was also an example of the perils of marketing.
"It feels like we are perpetually treated to news cycles that feel like Kanye West is about to roll out a new project," Dr Carson said.
"Because it seems that almost every time he's had a project to roll out, there's been some incredible media controversy that has been stirred up to get his name in all of the headlines.
"And then there's an album that comes out 'coincidentally' … and it's ready-made press or ready-made marketing for the project that is about to come out."
He said there were double standards on social media in which prominent people were allowed to get away the types of behaviours others would be pulled up for instantly.
"Because they are noteworthy, they generate news and because they're generating news and they are noteworthy, then the social media platforms are — rather than stopping them from the harassment that they're engaging in — allowing it to go on because they have a noteworthy account.
"It gives them opportunities to actually harass people more easily than someone who's not noteworthy."
He said social media platforms needed to evaluate who was being protected by their policies because people with little power were less protected.
"The people who are held to account are generally not the people who have the ability to do the most damage," he said.
Political manipulation could be at play
Music-wise, Dr Carson considers himself a student of West's work, and in turn teaches his students about him. However, he said he was quite obviously no longer the target demographic for West's art.
"What I get from people who are fans of, as he calls, it 'the old Kanye' is that there are folks who feel the same way — that they aren't his target demo anymore.
"I don't find myself listening to Kanye in the background," he added.
"If I'm listening, it's with the intent purpose of being able to speak about something that he's done, or to use it as an example in class, or to prep because that's what we're going to be talking about in a lecture."
He said West's target audience these days appeared to be people who might vote for him if he ran for president, or who would benefit from him running for president.
West reportedly collected just 60,000 out of an estimated 160 million votes when he ran in the 2020 US presidential race and he suggested afterwards on Twitter that he would run again in 2024.
"I imagine the fans of the candidate who wins because he's there as a spoiler [candidate], those people would want Kanye to run just as much as they want their candidate to run … that's really not fandom — that's the utility of Kanye as a political tool," Dr Carson said.
He said when cultural figures were seen as larger than life, people unfortunately stopped seeing them as human beings who had thoughts, dreams, ambitions and families.
"I believe that there are more responsible ways that we might go about [paying him this attention] without making Kanye into an object or a commodity that also removes not just his humanity, but the humanity of the people that he engages with."
