On Thursday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Knowles discusses a conversation between Kim Kardashian and Kayne West, in which the rapper brings up to his wife that it negatively affects him when she wears revealing dresses in public. Video and partial transcript below:
[Kanye West is a perplexing public figure, who played] himself off as one of the most narcissistic people in politics. He said George Bush doesn’t care about black people, [which] made him a big Leftist hero. Then Kanye West endorses Donald Trump, hugs him in the Oval Office. Kanye West starts talking about Christianity very seriously, starts reading the Bible seriously, makes an album now called “Jesus is King.”
Kanye West was caught on reality TV telling his wife, Kim Kardashian, that she needs to dress more modestly because she’s his wife and he loves her and she’s part of his soul. [He says] when she does that, it hurts his soul. [Now], I count myself in the blessed few Americans who have never seen an episode of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” but I might start watching. This clip is really, really good for the culture.
KARDASHIAN: You now say that you’re not into me wearing a tight dress?
WEST: You are my wife and it affects me when pictures are too sexy … . Corset is like a form of underwear, it’s hot, it’s like, it’s hot for who though?
KARDASHIAN: So like, the night before the Met, you’re going to come in here and say that you’re not into a corset?
WEST: I just feel like I’ve just went through this transition where — from being a rapper, looking at all these girls and looking at my wife [thinking], Oh my girl needs to be just like the other girls, showing her body off, showing this, showing that, and I didn’t realize that that was affecting like my soul and my spirit, as someone that’s married and love and the father of like now about to be four kids.
NARRATOR: Kim shut that down real quick.
KARDASHIAN: You built me up to be this like sexy person and confidence and all this stuff, and just because you’re on a journey — and you’re on your transformation — doesn’t mean that I’m in the same spot with you.
This is a tremendous exchange. People are talking about Kanye West’s new comments on politics, culture, and religion. They’re speaking about it from a primarily racial perspective, like Blexit and that kind of thing. That is legitimate, sure. I think even more exemplary here is Kanye West, as a millennial — as someone who speaks to millennials and Gen Zers and someone who’s pretty young himself — Kanye West is coming out of the same culture we all came out of: increasingly irreligious, increasingly uncultured, increasingly shallow politically. And he is going through a transformation because he is learning things, and he’s learning things on every one of those levels.
He’s learning. Oh, hey, maybe the Left isn’t really helping the black community. Oh, maybe the Left isn’t really helping anybody. Oh, hey, maybe these conservatives aren’t so bad after all. Hey, maybe Republicans do care about black people is learning that, and then he’s learning on the metaphysical level. Oh, maybe life isn’t all materialistic. Maybe it’s not all just about appeasing appetites and it’s not all about a cult of the self. Maybe there’s a metaphysical universe and a moral order. Maybe there’s a God. Maybe that God has a personality. Maybe he’s a real person that we can talk to. Maybe my relationship with my wife is not just a kind of sexy, lustful relationship, maybe that relationship is emblematic of something higher. Maybe the relationship of Christ to his church. Maybe I should privilege modesty over just this kind of material appetite, satisfaction.
[Kanye] says all of that to her and then her answer is great too, because she said you’re going through this transformation, but I’m not where you are necessarily, maybe I’m a little behind where you are.
I love it, it’s an interaction that the culture is working out right now and Kanye West is a little ahead of the curve, because Kanye West has always been a little ahead of the curve on pop culture. That’s why he’s probably the leading pop culture figure in the United States. I think this is a great thing, and we can either react to it by knocking Kanye West for not really knowing everything politically, and not really knowing everything spiritually, and getting some things wrong here in there, or we can react to it with encouragement.
Because Kanye West is actually asking questions. He’s curious. He’s following ideas with some logical rigor, and he’s leading people back from this brink of cultural destruction — pulling them back a little bit. We can either criticize him for not doing it fast enough or well enough, or we can applaud him for doing it at all. I think it’s a great thing and I encourage Kanye on his journey.
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