EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Is Kanye West a God?

Kanye West has a new song out, "I Am a God." Very few people can imagine Kanye West as a God. I can. EPPH has been arguing for years that important artists consider themselves God. This is not just, I believe, for delusions of grandeur (though no doubt there is an element of that) but also for more serious reasons. Poets, mystics and philosophers, for example, have long thought that each of us has God inside, is God. [See Artist as Christ and Inner Tradition.] We are all God. As the poet William Blake told us heaven and hell are inside us and always were. It was religion that turned spirituality inside out, personalizing the two interior forces into an old man in the clouds and the devil in the depths of the earth. That is why it still sounds so blasphemous.

How, though, does someone like Kanye West think of himself as god? I don't know for sure but I have a couple of ideas. We are all different people at different times of the day and often quite contradictory too. It's possible then that the singer is 100% ego one moment, and far more spiritual the next. It is this gap between the two states-of-mind that saintly people try to close, to reduce the influence of the ego in order to reveal god. He may also (or instead) be reacting to his knowledge of musical tradition (see article below) just as painters might have learnt about the Inner Tradition by looking at pictures. I did. Or, on the most mundane level, he might want a controversy to excite his fans and gain free publicity. That's what most people will think but the historical evidence in music, art and literature makes that most unlikely. Besides, he looks quite serious to me.

An excerpt from a recent article in the Washington Post follows that references the tradition in art with a link to EPPH. (Thank you, WP.)
 

Washington Post: Kanye West raps ‘I am a god.’ Who are we to disagree?¹

"There’s lots of chatter this week about Kanye West’s newly released, Jesus-referenced Yeezus album, including his song “I Am a God.” It’s well-known that West thinks highly of himself, (in 2006, a profile in Rolling Stone said “it has be- come a cliché to call Kanye West arrogant.”) And that was before this week’s extended Q and A in The New York Times in which West compared his cultural influence to that of Steve Jobs’s.

"But is West’s take on his nature and human nature beautiful — or blasphemy?
Here as some of the lyrics provoking the most debate this week:

“I am a god
 
Even though I’m a man of God

My whole life in the hands of God

So y’all better quit playing with God”

"West is far from the only celeb to compare himself to the Almighty. In 1966 John Lennon called the Beatles “more popular than Jesus” and, as Kia Makarechi in in the Huffington Post points out, Madonna, who grew up Catholic but now practices a mystical form of Judaism, often and controversially draws on religious themes, including mock crucifying herself during concerts.

"But artists have always used religious themes to tell their own stories. And many writers have praised West’s use of religious imagery in ‘I Am a God,’ endorsing the theological concept that all are created in the image and likeness of God."

1. Elizabeth Tenety, Washington Post, June 12th 2013 online at (reached July 25th 2013).