Rapper and fashion designer Kanye West is about to drop his highly anticipated “Jesus Is King” album tomorrow, after a dizzying series of album release missteps. The project is shaping up to be a ground breaking concoction of religious and secular sounds straight from the mind of Kanye and his new band, Sunday Service, if you overlook what’s likely to be an impressive number of sample selections.
Still, some are forcefully airing their distrust that Kanye West is really on the up and up when it comes to God. We talk about Kanye’s work with Sunday Service all the time in this publication, but it’s worth noting that you didn’t hear about their jam sessions in the desert praising Jesus until after the superstar had suffered blows to his image from all his obvious brown nosing and public fan-boy worship of President Donald Trump.
Rapper Joe Budden, who hosts the Revolt TV show State of the Culture with Remy Ma, takes the skepticism even further saying… “He (Kanye) appeared to be looking for tax breaks long before Mama Kardashian introduced him to this scam.” Joe goes on… “Because that’s a scam that the Kardashian family has run for quite some time.” All of this under a backdrop of discussion questioning whether Kanye West is even Christian at all.
The now infamous images of Kanye West with that ridiculous MAGA hat on in the Oval Office, grinning away at Donald Trump, was extraordinarily damaging to Kanye’s image with Black people across the country. But when he starting singing about Jesus, the tide seemed to turn. The difference in how Kanye is received now, just a few short months later, versus how black folks thought of him then, is almost entirely different.
Kanye is being cheered on by black churches now, and even anti-Trump rappers like TI have been spotted at Sunday Service shows recently. If this new religious direction Kanye’s taking is in fact a scam, the one thing we all have to admit is… it’s working. As we wait for Kanye West’s next message to the world to drop tomorrow, an even better question may be – what will he do with all of his flock now?
