Kanye West’s Sonic [Hip-hop] Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

On September 2, 2005, Kanye West appeared on an NBC benefit telecast for Hurricane Katrina victims. West, emotionally charged and going off script, blurted out, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Early in his rapping career and fresh off the critically acclaimed sophomore album Late Registration, West thrusts himself into the public eye—debatably either on accident or purposefully—as a seemingly budding cultural-political pundit. For the audience, West’s growing popularity and visibility as a rapper automatically translated his concerns into a statement on behalf of all African Americans. West, however, quickly shies away from being labeled a leader, disclaiming his outburst as a personal opinion. In retrospect, West states: “When I made my statement about Katrina, it was a social statement, an emotional statement, not a political one” (Scaggs, 2007). Nevertheless, his initial comments about the Bush administration’s handling of Katrina positioned him both as a producer of black cultural expression and as a mediator of said blackness. It is from this interstitial space that West continued to operate moving forward, using music— and the occasional outburst—to identify himself as transcending the expectations placed upon his blackness and masculinity.