Would you invest a billion dollars in Kanye? By Lynne Everatte

"I'm this generation's Disney", Kanye tweeted, conjuring visions of Dope Shitneyland where you can get on Kanye's Taylor Swift Shake It Off, the only ride in history that insults you while it tries to throw you off. His latest album The Life of Pablo, in which Kanye is either referring to himself either as Pablo Picasso, the prophet Paul, or Pablo Cruise during its Love will Find a Way period, has garnered mixed reviews. Some say it's a brilliant scattershot blast on artistic boundaries, some say it's messy evidence of a self-indulgent artist coming apart at the seams, and others say it's both.

I don't like this. It has to be a perfect cube shape.

Sometimes I get emotional over fonts. ~Kanye West agonizing over merchandise stands and fonts

Before we reject Kanye out of hand, there is ample evidence to suggest there is something Jobsian in his obsessive perfectionism, and that his ideas, divorced from his lavish spending habits that try in vain to keep up with the Kardashians, are often good investments.
His albums have sold over 32 million copies, his songs have been downloaded over 100 million times and he has won 21 Grammies (his goal is 100). He began his career as a record producer, a talent that enables him to create artistic soundscapes that his rivals can't match. Kanye West was a college dropout who received a scholarship to attend Chicago's American Academy of Art. At first his middle class background, that included an adoring mother with a doctorate in English, made it difficult for him to break into rap.
The critically acclaimed College Dropout was the breakout album that enabled Kanye West to found a record label, GOOD Music, that has afforded him the creative freedom to explore music's most exciting frontiers. Not content to rule the music world, he has branched out into fashion and last week at Madison Square Garden, debuted both his new album and his third Yeezy sportswear collection for the post-apocalyptic season.

In 2015, six of the ten most expensive sneakers on eBay were Kanye creations. If you had invested in Kanye's Yeezy Triple Black rather than the S&P 500 index, your ROI would be a 436% versus -1%.


Perhaps Kanye West's greatest success is as a master of contradictions. He is developing a video game where the goal is to help his mother get to highest gates of heaven, yet his lyrics often pass through the lowest gates of misogynistic hell. His boasts make Donald Trump look like a paragon of modesty, yet people who work with him often say he's "very very humble". Whoever Kanye West is, he's nobody's idea of corporate, and admits that meetings with executives leave him "crying all the time".
From an analytical perspective Kanye looks like a good investment, but as a socially responsible investor, I can't invest in him. His misogyny goes far beyond addressing women with the rap salutation Yo, B*tches. He is the Picasso of misogyny, disassembling women and putting them back together as abstractions of vulgar fragments. I can't listen to his music anymore, and wouldn't give him a penny. But I do wish him luck.

I believe that I'm gonna be the head of the first trillion dollar company. ~Kanye West

A Kanyean post-script.
What would a story about hip-hop be without a Martin Shkreli cameo? Apparently pharma boy was fleeced out of $15 million because he thought he could pull another Wu-Tang Clan and get exclusive rights to Kanye's The Life of Pablo.
See all the good Kanye can do in the world?
KINGSMITH.