Can Kanye West Find Refuge, or Money, in Music?

In early 2016, everything was lining up for Kanye West. Already a living legend in hip-hop, having delivered six straight paradigm-shifting albums, West, who is now known as Ye, was cashing in his cultural capital across multiple mediums.

With thousands gathered at Madison Square Garden and millions more watching online and in movie theaters around the world, Ye combined the reveal of his seventh solo album, The Life of Pablo, with the debut of his third Yeezy fashion collection for Adidas, filming it all for his family’s reality-television series Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Some of the music remained intriguingly unfinished, and one song, Famous, reignited a feud with Taylor Swift that would last years.

This was the Kanye MO for more than a decade: By pairing smash hits and unscripted spectacle, the artist often got away with messy moments thanks to the clarity of his creative vision.

“Those first five albums are probably the best five albums of any — I’m almost going to say any artist ever, not just hip-hop,” said Charlamagne Tha God, the radio and television host known for his syndicated morning show, The Breakfast Club.

Now, as corporate partners like Adidas, Balenciaga, Gap and the Creative Artists Agency, along with Ye’s longtime label, Def Jam, distance themselves from him following his flaunting of a slogan associated with white supremacists and repeatedly making antisemitic statements on social media and in interviews, many are wondering whether the music catalog that was once his bedrock can withstand the backlash, or provide a path back.

“This is one of the biggest L’s that we have ever watched a human take in business and in music, and it was all self-inflicted,” Charlamagne said. “We don’t know why he decided to throw the ‘White Lives Matter’ shirt on. We don’t know why he decided to start making antisemitic comments. We don’t know why he decided to defend Derek Chauvin, the officer that killed George Floyd. There’s not a song alive that can ever make me forget that.

“All that music,” Charlamagne added, “is just a distant memory.”

Ye’s four albums since Pablo have been more notable for their chaotic rollouts than for their quality, failing to make as much of an impact, critically or commercially.

While Ye once dominated the pop world with inescapable tracks like Jesus Walks, Gold Digger and Stronger, he has not had a major hit in years. The Life of Pablo sold the equivalent of about 3 million copies in the United States; subsequent records like Ye (2018) and Donda (2021) have each notched only about half as much, according to the tracking service Luminate, which supplies the data for Billboard’s charts.

Even when an album like his 2019 turn to gospel, Jesus Is King, debuted atop the Billboard chart, it quickly faded from memory. Projects have been plagued by repeated blown deadlines, incomplete recordings and aborted release strategies. His attention in the past few years has been far more focused on fashion. He has not toured since 2016.

While Ye’s presence on the radio has faded over the last month — from an average of about 2,300 plays of his songs a week to 1,800 last week, with many stations now dropping him entirely — streaming may provide a safety net. His stockpile of hits remains steadily popular there, drawing nearly 4 billion plays so far this year in the United States alone. On Spotify, he has 51 million monthly listeners around the world, making him the 19th most popular artist on that platform.

Over the last month, Ye’s streaming numbers have slipped a bit, declining by about 6% to 88 million on-demand clicks in the United States. But those totals are well within his usual range at this point in his career and are even up slightly since the beginning of 2022, according to Luminate. The number of user playlists on Spotify with songs by Ye has also shot up in recent weeks to nearly 1.3 million, according to Chartmetric, a company that tracks streaming and social media.

Those numbers suggest some combination of fan loyalty and user curiosity that may be driven by attention in the news media. “Most music consumers probably just care about whether they like the music or not, so any negative press coverage about an artist might just remind them to listen to their music,” said Rutger Rosenborg, the marketing manager of Chartmetric. “And maybe Kanye is banking on that.”

That phenomenon has played out numerous times in recent years. Many fans of R. Kelly stuck with him in their private listening habits, even as the singer was accused — and convicted — of racketeering and sex trafficking. Last year, after country star Morgan Wallen was caught on video using a racial slur, radio stations removed his songs for a time, and streaming platforms temporarily took him off official playlists. But fans rallied behind him, and Wallen has ended up with the longest Top 10 streak on Billboard’s album chart in nearly 60 years.

Artists such as Chris Brown, XXXTentacion and Michael Jackson, who have also been accused of misconduct, have held strong on streaming services. Those platforms have usually been reluctant to remove content, viewing their role as neutral protectors of speech. Kelly’s music, for example, remains widely available, even if it is not promoted heavily.

As-is, Charlamagne added, “Not one song is good enough for this level of bigotry.”