Kanye, you broke my heart

I miss the old Kanye this straight from the go Kanye the chop up the soul Kanye the set on his goals Kanye I hate this new Kanye the bad mood Kanye the always rude Kanye the spaz in the news Kanye the racist anti-semi Kanye I hate that I have to make this video I don't want to make this video I want to make another fun goofy little video about how much I love New York City ah but I open up Twitter and every other tweet is about Adidas dropping Kanye I open up Instagram and every post is someone saying I stand with my Jewish friends so when I'm on my run this morning my dark cold rainy run my time it's a time of the day when I'm um thinking I'm incubating ideas it's when I come up with all of my thoughts so that I then try to form and Patty into videos I have this block and I have this block because all I can think about is the hatred that this guy is spewing the damage that it's causing I fixate on the fact that here we are in 2022 and by all quantifiable metrics anti-Semitism that is the hostility towards all Jewish people is on the rise and Kanye West one of the biggest stars on the planet is doing his part to thin the Flames of hatred towards an entire group of people okay look this is me [Music] this is me here on this is me on my wedding day this is my nice Jewish bride this is me and this little pink funny little hat right here that is called a keepa here is a picture of my younger brother U.S Air Force Captain D neistat now retired this is him flying his jet this is Dean here judging by his Kevlar and the fact that he is has a has a gun this is probably in Afghanistan [Music] uh this is another picture of Dean again he's armed here so he's probably somewhere down range and then here's a here's a picture of Dean my little brother he's in Kabul right there welcome to Kabul now why does a a Jewish guy like me wear a keepa at my wedding uh why is that Jewish guy like my little brother wear one even when he's at War the truth is I don't know um I had actually looked that up on on Wikipedia it has something to do with like honoring God by having something between you and God I don't know the reason why I don't know I'm not religious uh I only went to shul shul is what you call Jewish church I only went to shore when I was a kid like once a year with my nana because I wanted to skip school and it was a great excuse but none of that makes me any less Jewish and that's because Judaism is an ethno religion and what that means is for most Jewish people you're born Jewish and you don't get to choose whether you're Jewish any more than a black person chooses whether they're black and while my feelings about religion are are um undefined I'm immensely proud of my Jewish background and Heritage so for you to spew that kind of hatred it doesn't matter if it's anti-Semitism or old-fashioned racism like the time he said slavery was a choice or when he said Harriet Tubman never actually freed the slaves he said those things he said those things with a camera in his face or whatever other like white supremacist garbage he was going on and on about in these interviews that are now going viral all over the Internet it's all the same it's all hate speech and what that kind of hate speech does when communicated by someone of his stature with his bully pulpit it tells other people other people of compromised Integrity not people like you or me people who are harboring prejudices of their own it gives them permission to also get out there and spread hate that's why it's called the dog whistle is because to good people people like us I hear ignorance I hear stupidity I hear Hate by a guy who is has mental health issues but to others those dangerous hateful people in the margins what they hear is something very different to them it's permission to to get out there and throw a banner over the 405 freeway in Los Angeles that says Kanye is Right while they stand on the bridge next to it giving the hail Hitler salute to everyone driving by that that literally happened yesterday in L.A now let me tell you why this hurts so much why this hurts me so much Kanye was great Kanye was great now I don't know Kanye I don't know him currently or ever but I did meet the guy on a couple of occasions so like 2002 maybe 2003 way back when this is before his first album College Dropout came out and I want to say this was before Jesus Walks which I think was his first single this is before that came out this girl I knew invited me to go to the Hammer scene Ballroom here in New York City um she had these backstage passes because she was working with like one of the artists performing or something so we go and like okay early 2000s hip-hop then rap then was still pretty hardcores like gangster stuff if you were a rapper you were tough and I'm like this white kid backstage and then in walks this like mild-mannered guy and I remember it was Kanye I remember he had on a polo shirt and it was like a pastel green or a pink or something and he had on a backpack like I remember that and we hung around backstage he was cool we didn't have much whatever he's cool and then the whole group of us like Kanye is Entourage which I was sort of a part of for weird circumstantial reasons we all walked to the stage Kanye led us out of that room and he was the first to open the door this this I remember first opened the door and he stood there holding the door open for all of us to walk past and like I was like the last or one of the last people to walk by and I remember being like thanks dude I like walked by the guy okay we go on stage I go on stage Kanye starts performing he's doing his thing all of his like the girls the guys the people around him they're all like getting into it they're all in the Rhythm Kanye's there and he's just like you know he's Kanye's doing Kanye and he's up there just like letting the audience have it I'm the only white guy on that stage and I don't know how to dance I don't know how to dance ever and I'm like I just remember like I'm on the stage and the audience can definitely see me they can positive and like I'm just trying to like find the Rhythm and dance and like like this is kind of how I dance I don't really know how to dance and I remember it was like really embarrassing and weird but I was psyched to be on the stage with this guy because he just seemed so cool and so confident I was embarrassing and amazing all at once that was the first time I met Kanye I still don't know how to dance by the way okay a decade later by now Kanye has become Kanye and I'm at like this dinner party it was for this artist friend of mine Tom had a like an after party for his art show Kanye was there so go over to him and I'm like yo Kanye let me tell you a story and I tell him the story I just told you and he's like oh I remember that and there's no [ __ ] way he remembers that but he was kind and he said I remember that I'm like honey what are you up to now very good to see what are you up to and he's like oh I'm on tour with my group you should come see us his group by the way was him and Jay-Z On The Watch the Throne tour and he did like he followed through he like sent me tickets I went and saw him the next time it was great anyway I'm like cool you're on tour what else are you up to and he's like well I'm getting into fashion I'm like tell me more tell me more and he just starts going off about his ideas for fashion and let's start designing clothing just he just keeps rattling off what he wants to do and he's like getting really excited about it he loses me completely no idea what this guy is talking about but the passion and he's just going and like I know the look I must have been giving him in that in that moment must have been like the look that Candace my wife gives me when I start telling her an idea for a video it's like an idea that made perfect sense in his head total sense in his head in his brain but to me I just it was like utter nonsense look look look look look I'll show you I got a picture look look this was us look that's look at how happy he is you ever seen such a happy Kanye he was psyched because I'm like tell me about your fashion plans we're homies and then he did it he did it all all those ideas he told me he did see Kanye is one of those rare few where he was an artist first some musicians are just musicians some musicians are like businessmen um others are performers and it's like YouTubers like some YouTubers are are cinematographers or photographers some YouTubers are influencers or personalities some very few are artists and Kanye was an artist he made art whether it was fashion or music it was it was it was made without a consideration of what his peers were doing he wasn't trying to fit in or follow some path defined by others who had already found success in the same in the same space he defined his own path that documentary on HBO called Gene yes um first episode there's this scene in that documentary and in that scene Kanye West is is he like he has a contract then with Rockefeller records but they're not following through they're kind of screwing him over and he busts into Rockefeller records offices like goes in there and his intention is to show whoever will hear him he wants to play his new single so he's playing all falls down for this woman watch look at that she doesn't know how to react so she's she's laughing and look look at that look he knows she didn't care she didn't like it she did not approve he knows that now I don't know what was going on obviously I don't know what's going on in that room I don't know what that woman was thinking but what it looks like is she didn't know how to react here's this guy he's got a new sound hip-hop then meant one thing and this did not fall into that Norm so of course she didn't know how to react his art was unprecedented but he knew he knew it was good he didn't care if you didn't like it or not because not liking hit not liking it didn't make him wrong it just it just meant it just showed that you couldn't see they couldn't see what he could see and that is what made him time and time again not just a musician not just a designer but an artist that song by the way went on to be his first top 10 solo track and it was nominated for a Grammy he had the vision and he was right even though he was literally laughed out of that office thank you but that's why this all hurts so much because that Journey that art is so rare it's generational it has the it has the power to inspire an entire generation it tells a generation that you can if you believe you can and and look Kanye didn't invent hate speech he didn't invent anti-Semitism it's been around long before him and it will be around long after him what but why this breaks my heart is because as an artist or someone who who has dreams me of being an artist I I can't imagine accomplishing what he accomplished using nothing but your art and your own Brilliance to become one of the most celebrated creative forces on the planet and to do that at a time when the planet is more fractured than ever and then to stand on this stage this stage that's taller than most could ever dream of and then use that platform to to divide instead of unite to promote hate instead of promote love to to just vomit negativity instead of sharing something positive that I just don't get that I'll never get okay I will see you in a few days with a fun video it will be positive and it will be about something I love

Channel: CaseyNeistat

Views: 2,816,126

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Id: 2MQF00rTEJU

Length: 13min 47sec (827 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 25 2022