Nick Cave has defended his “fondness” for Kanye West’s music – despite his antisemitic rampage.
The 67-year-old musician recently revealed he would like the problematic rapper’s 2013 song ‘I Am God’ played at his funeral after he named the ‘Yeezus’ track as one of his favourite songs on the BBC’s ‘Desert Island Discs’.
It didn’t go down well with some fans and the ‘Mercy Seat’ singer has now explained that while Kanye’s behaviour – including selling t-shirts with swastikas and making a series of antisemitic comments – has been “unacceptable”, he is “reluctant to invalidate the best of us in an attempt to punish the worse.”
Cave began by clarifying that he does not believe it’s possible to separate the artist from their art.
A fan asked him on his The Red Hand Files blog: “How the hell can you listen to the song without seeing the scum of a human being that Kanye has become?”
As well as the 47-year-old hip-hop star’s blatant racism, the goth rocker mentioned the discourse surrounding Kanye’s wife Bianca Censori wearing a completely see-through dress which showed her naked body on the Grammys red carpet recently, and insisted he agrees it’s “wrong”.
Cave started his response: “Numerous letters have come in expressing, in no uncertain terms, disapproval of my fondness for Kanye West’s music.
“A lot of time and energy has been spent explaining the evil of Nazism, the harm of antisemitism, why it is wrong to sell t-shirts emblazoned with swastikas and why it is unacceptable to coerce one’s girlfriend into standing naked on the red carpet at the Grammys. On that matter, it seems, we can all find some common ground. I agree.”
He went on: “The idea of an artist being divorced from their art is absurd. An artist and their art are fundamentally intertwined because art is the essence of the artist made manifest. The artist’s work proclaims, ‘This is me. I am here. This is what I am.’ However, the great gift of art is the potential for the artist to excavate their interior chaos and transform it into something sublime. This is what Kanye does. This is what I strive to do, and this is the enterprise undertaken by all genuine artists. The remarkable utility of art lies in its audacity to transfigure our corrupted state and create something beautiful.”
Cave insists that it’s still possible for “broken and flawed people” to “achieve staggering things – beautiful, brilliant, inspiring, wild and audacious things.”
He went on: “We are all broken, flawed, and suffering human beings, each a disaster in our own right, each with the capacity to cause great harm, each brimming with misguided notions, perhaps the most deluded of which is the belief that we are somehow exclusively and morally superior to everyone else. Many of you might be thinking, ‘Well, speak for yourself! I’m not like Kanye! I could never behave like that!’ Yet, given the circumstances, we humans are capable of anything. To be human is to be flawed, yet it is also to possess the potential to achieve staggering things – beautiful, brilliant, inspiring, wild and audacious things; things to be cherished, despite our complex and compromised natures.”
Cave added that he always looks “to seek the beauty wherever it presents itself”.
He said: “As sickening as anti-Semitism is – in its sadly always-present, ever-morphing forms – I endeavour to seek beauty wherever it presents itself. In doing so, I am reluctant to invalidate the best of us in an attempt to punish the worse. I don’t think we can afford that luxury.”
Sharing his love for Kanye’s song on ‘Desert Island Discs’, he said: “This became, weirdly enough, a kind of family song. My kids love it, Susie [his wife] loves it, I love it. It’s an extremely playful, extremely dark, complex song where on the one hand, Kanye is presenting himself as a god, and then towards the end of the song, he’s screaming in terror.”
He continued: “It’s an unbelievably deep song, in my view.
“This is a song that I value on a personal level, and actually I just think is a complete, amazing work of art.”
Cave previously hailed the ‘Stronger’ hitmaker “the greatest artist on Earth”.
He told fans on his blog in 2020: “Making art is a form of madness – we slip deep within our own singular vision and become lost to it.
“There is no musician on Earth that is as committed to their own derangement as Kanye, and in this respect, at this point in time, he is our greatest artist.”
However, it’s not the first time he has called out Kanye’s behaviour.
Speaking at London’s Southbank in 2022, he admitted he found the ‘Good Morning’ rapper’s antisemitism “deeply disappointing” and “disgraceful”.