Podcast Summary: Cannonball with Wesley Morris – "America Has a Problem"

Episode Date: December 6, 2022
Host: Wesley Morris
Guest Co-Host: Jenna Wortham
Produced by The New York Times

Overview: Exploring the Cultural Reckoning with Kanye West (Ye)

In this deeply personal and culturally incisive episode, Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham dive into the reckoning many Black listeners—and general consumers of pop culture—are having with Kanye West ("Ye"). The hosts explore their own relationships with Kanye’s music and persona, tracking the artist's evolution from a creative disruptor and folk hero to a figure associated with harmful ideologies, misogyny, and antisemitism. The conversation grapples with questions of "divestment" from problematic artists, Black freedom and community, fame, and the endurance of collective wounds in the age of celebrity.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Pain and Complexity of "Divesting" from Ye

• Processing the Loss: Both hosts express a sense of loss and deep discomfort with the need to disengage from Kanye as an artist, given his public and harmful actions.
  • "It's so huge that I have to be done...I, Wesley Morris, am done trying to make a kind of intellectual sense of the artist formerly known as Kanye West..." – Wesley Morris [01:56]
• The environment in the studio is somber, signaling a moment that feels like a cultural death rather than a celebration.

2. Kanye’s Early Legacy: Disruption, Sampling, Black Freedom

• 2004 and “The College Dropout”: The hosts recall when Kanye emerged by challenging both mainstream and Black cultural orthodoxies about success, education, and authenticity.
  • "Here was a person I had kind of been waiting for… this guy was iconoclastic in his insistence that there are rules that you don't have to follow to become a successful Black person." – Wesley Morris [05:09]
• Musical Innovation: Kanye’s artistry, especially his sampling and production work, is praised as "archive work," connecting past Black musical lineages to the present.
  • "Some people call that production, but I also call that archive work... It's a way of honoring your musical ancestors, giving them their flowers in real time." – Jenna Wortham [08:30]

3. Freedom, Imagination, and Black Artistic Expression

• Early Kanye is described as sounding and feeling “free,” giving hope of new ways to define Blackness outside the Cosby/Huxtable paradigm.
  • "He was the latest Black American artist to find a way to express in his own way what freedom could sound like." – Wesley Morris [10:43]
• But as fame increases, so does isolation and self-importance, shifting from “I’m carving my own path” to “you do not recognize me for how great I am.”

4. The Shift: Vulnerability to Rage, Fame, and Alienation

• The discussion chronicles the transition from vulnerable artistry ("808s & Heartbreak") to an egoistic phase (“I Am a God” era), to public meltdowns (2016’s Trump Tower visit).
  • "It was not the beginning; that was the culmination to me of an evolution towards something that felt unsavory and potentially dangerous." – Wesley Morris [16:10]
• Saint Pablo Tour as Metaphor: Jenna describes the concert’s visual metaphor for separation and isolation, with Kanye on a shrouded, floating stage above indistinguishable fans.
  • "It had very gothic elements to it... it just felt really clear that Kanye's self-rendering was completely transformed and that where he was, we weren't meant to access." – Jenna Wortham [18:41]

5. Discussing "Freedom" vs. Emancipation: What’s at Stake?

• The hosts examine Ye’s supposed pursuit of “freedom”—including aligning with Trump and wearing "White Lives Matter" shirts—against the actual limitations and responsibilities of Black freedom, referencing Renaldo Walcott's "The Long Emancipation" and the distinction between "emancipation" and real "freedom."
  • "I just have a really hard time believing that a true expression of freedom comes at the expense of other people's safety, other people's humanities, and other people's sense of dignity." – Jenna Wortham [20:04]

6. Misogyny, Misogynoir, and Community Responsibility

• The discussion recaps a "long culture of misogynoir" in Ye’s work and life, from "Gold Digger" to the public shaming of Amber Rose.
  • "He just painted her as this opportunistic, greedy little slut. And he had to take 30 showers after he broke up with her. And that was on the radio. And Everybody laughed. The culture was just like, yeah, who cares about her?" – Jenna Wortham [22:15]
• Both hosts implicate themselves and the broader Black community in allowing problematic behavior to go unchecked due to Kanye’s artistic "genius."
  • "We're talking about this cultural complacency and our role in helping create this social monster that we have today." – Jenna Wortham [22:34]

7. Parallels in Black History: The Limits of “Free Thinking”

• Wesley draws comparisons to George Schuyler and Clarence Thomas: Black intellectuals/artists whose contrarianism ultimately served systemic power rather than liberation.
  • "Does that mean that the rest of us are sheep and that these are the free thinkers? Or are they what, you know, classically gets called Uncle Tom's? Because all that alleged free thinking just winds up doing more harm to people." – Wesley Morris [26:32]

8. Imagination, Violence, and Artistic Stagnation

• Jenna references Robin D.G. Kelly's "Freedom Dreams" and the need for Black imagination to build something new, while criticizing Ye for turning toward violence and white supremacy—a sign of artistic and imaginative bankruptcy.
  • "To talk about violence... is so unimaginative and boring and completely uninteresting, in addition to it just being completely unacceptable. That's what discounts Kanye for me." – Jenna Wortham [28:01]
  • "As long as you're out there trying to align a White Lives Matter T shirt with an artistic practice, your art has run aground." – Wesley Morris [28:38]

9. The Effects of Fame: The New Racial Construct

• Fame is discussed as its own “race” or class—a state that erases responsibility, empathy, and connection.
  • "Maybe Kanye isn't Black. Maybe he's just famous in his mind." – Wesley Morris [31:13]

10. Self-Reflection and Moving Forward: Personal and Collective Accountability

• The conversation turns inward—how do cultural consumers and critics retool their attention, invest in new artists, and protect their sense of self?
  • "I am really trying to assess what in me let me overlook those things for so long, and how can I pay that attention forward? ...The only work I can do is really analyze my own priorities and interests and curiosities." – Jenna Wortham [32:03]
• Wesley movingly explains that his deepest fear was always that Blackness, immersed in white spaces, could become lost—a fear Kanye’s trajectory makes public.
  • "He's got stage four cancer of the thing that I am a hypochondriac about." – Wesley Morris [35:03]

11. The Walking Dead Analogy: Universality of Cultural Infection

• Jenna analogizes the spread of toxic ideologies to the "Walking Dead" virus—latent and potentially present in all of us, ready to be activated in the right (wrong) conditions.
  • "There could be something latent inside of all of us that turns us unrecognizable. And that also is related to white supremacy… what's between you and me and someone like Kanye is mental health issues, a lot of money, a lot of enabling and a lot of self-loathing and an economy that's not stopping you." – Jenna Wortham [36:29]

12. Choosing to Quarantine: The Only Freedom Left

• The enormity of Kanye’s spiral and lack of accountability leads to a conclusion that, as a culture, divestment and non-engagement may be the only options left.
  • "The only power that we have as a society is just to say, like, we do not tolerate this and we don't condone this. And that's where we're at with Kanye." – Jenna Wortham [38:49]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Ending the Relationship:

  • "We're in deeply vile territory, and I can't make intellectual sense of that." – Wesley Morris [01:56]

• On Artistic Freedoms:

  • "He was the latest Black American artist to find a way to express in his own way what freedom could sound like." – Wesley Morris [10:43]

• On the Cost of Fame:

  • "Maybe Kanye isn't Black. Maybe he's just famous in his mind." – Wesley Morris [31:13]

• On the Limits of Artistic Imagination:

  • "To talk about violence, whether it's against women you've dated, [or] people you feel you're in competition to, is so unimaginative and boring and completely uninteresting, in addition to it just being completely unacceptable." – Jenna Wortham [28:01]

• On Self-Reflection:

  • "I am really trying to assess what in me let me overlook those things for so long, and how can I pay that attention forward?" – Jenna Wortham [32:03]

• On Blackness in White Spaces:

  • "I've never, ever, ever felt in danger of losing my sense of who I am as a Black American person. But I've always worried and wondered simultaneously why. Why am I not making the same choices Kanye West made? He's got stage four cancer of the thing that I am a hypochondriac about." – Wesley Morris [35:03]

Key Timestamps for Reference

• [01:56] – Wesley Morris: “I’m done trying to make sense of Kanye West.”
• [08:30] – Jenna Wortham: On Kanye’s sampling as “archive work.”
• [13:45] – Discussion of fame’s corrupting influence and Kanye’s "I Am A God" moment.
• [16:09] – The Trump Tower visit as a turning point.
• [18:19] – Jenna describes the Kanye Saint Pablo concert as visually isolating, with fans shrouded in darkness.
• [20:03] – Jenna explains the difference between "emancipation" and "freedom" (Renaldo Walcott).
• [22:32] – Jenna on cultural complacency with Kanye’s misogyny.
• [26:32] – Wesley connects Kanye’s journey to historical figures like George Schuyler and Clarence Thomas.
• [28:01] – Jenna on the limits of Ye’s imagination.
• [31:13] – Wesley’s “maybe Kanye isn’t Black, maybe he’s just famous.”
• [32:03] – Jenna on personal responsibility and changing attention.
• [35:03] – Wesley’s reflection on his fear of losing Blackness.
• [36:29] – Jenna’s analogy to “The Walking Dead” and latent societal infection.
• [38:49] – Jenna on the need to culturally quarantine from Ye.

Conclusion

The episode is a rare, vulnerable confrontation with both personal and communal grief over losing an artist who once represented hope, innovation, and Black freedom—now associated with harmful ideology and a loss of empathy. The reckoning is not only with Kanye West, but with the culture that allowed his harms to go unchecked for so long. The ultimate freedom, the hosts suggest, is in reclaiming attention, imagination, and a refusal to dignify destructiveness under the guise of genius or fame.

The dialogue is rich with cultural, political, and philosophical depth, challenging listeners to reflect on their own complicity, imagination, and roles as caretakers of the communities and cultures they cherish.