Brad talks with Harvard Divinity Student, activist, and former student Thomas Mitchell about Kanye's new album "Jesus is King." They discuss why this album is different, how Kanye has evolved, and how he is catering to white evangelicals.
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Thomas is a theology student at Harvard Divinity School, a political activist, a member of the United Church of Christ, and a former student of mine.
He was a student of mine in a first-year seminar in Memphis, and we've stayed in contact over the years.
Nothing makes somebody feel more proud and more old than having a student join them as a professional colleague, and so it's great to have Thomas with me today from Cambridge Mass, so thanks for being here.
Yeah, I'm excited to be gone.
Thank you.
I contacted you because I really wanted to sort of dig into Kanye's new album, Jesus is King.
Kanye's been rapping about religion for a long time, but Jesus is King seems notable for a number of reasons.
For our purposes on Straight White American Jesus, it seems notable simply for the fact that white evangelicals are in love with this album.
I mean, if you look on Twitter or online, anywhere, Everything from Focus on the Family to The Federalist, The Daily Citizen, there's white evangelicals everywhere talking about how Kanye is part of their flock.
And let me give you a quote from The Daily Citizen, which is an affiliate of Focus on the Family.
There's no doubt something radical is happening in Kanye's life and he's definitely not afraid of taking a risk and sharing his faith in Christ with the world.
He's also opening up in interviews and sharing about his addiction to pornography and some of his other struggles.
End quote.
And, you know, there's other examples.
There's a piece in The Federalist about the 10 best lines from Jesus as King.
One of those lines is, every knee shall bow, every tongue confess, Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Lord.
Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network is now covering Tanei's concerts.
There's folks online, white evangelicals, talking about how Kanye is sort of part of the group now.
I guess my first question, you know, Thomas, is just, you know, what's changed?
Kanye is throwing red meat out to white evangelicals for sure.
He's talked about giving up pornography, not using swear words on his albums.
Asking his wife, Kim Kardashian West, to dress more modestly.
But he's been rapping about Christianity and faith for a long time.
I mean, going on 15 years.
So I guess my first question is just like, why is this different?
What has changed to make Jesus as King the thing that sort of proves to white evangelicals he's part of the group?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So I think, you know, when he asked me to be on, I went back and listened to some of his albums just to get a sense of, lyrically, what's happening with his music from the last 15 years up until this point.
And I think what's interesting is that you're exactly right.
Like anything that he's done before, there's always been an element of religion tied into it.
I think what's happened with that, though, is that you end up with... Look at Life of Pablo, for example, right?
The first song on that album opens up with a little kid, like, praising God.
But then the very next song is just a really, really deep objectification of women.
And so I think that in a lot of Kanye's music, there's always been an issue where it's legible as being religious, but it's not readable that way for any tradition, because the words are there, but the spirit doesn't seem to be.
And I think what's happening now is, oh yeah, it opens up with this kind of soaring gospel arrangement, and then it's just The next, what, 30 minutes of the album, it's just like you're in church, essentially.
But it's now readable because there is no swearing.
There's no objectification of women.
There is throwing out all the red meat of, here's Chick-fil-A, here's lemonade.
These concepts that don't seem to be about Kanye anymore.
And so I think that...
That's a big piece of it.
It's just like he's made his lyrics more readable to the actual evangelical Christian.
I think the other piece is that he put on the Make America Great Again hat.
And like putting on that hat, I think, gave him, in some sense, superpowers.
I use his phrasing for it, right?
That putting on that attire made Kanye no longer the black rapper who once said that George Bush doesn't care about black people, right?
But it now made him this rapper who's battling all these demons in public and is willing to go on the stage and talk about jesus and he likes the president um and so i think for white evangelicals we know the ties between race and religion for them that like kanye now appears to be just an easy fit for them to latch on to thanks for listening to this free preview of our swag episode in order to get access to the full episode and so much more become a straight white american jesus premium subscriber by clicking the link in the show notes it's It'll take you like two clicks, I promise.
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