Explaining OJ's Downfall Through Kanye West's Yeezus

We’ve obviously been looking a lot at OJ. We’ve seen him ascend from a poor black kid in San Francisco, to a hard-working American Football Star at USC, to, at the top of his game, the most successfully advertised black man in America at the time. But we also saw his downfall - The abuse of Nicole Brown, the social homicide of the OJ court case, and eventually the path of wild parties and drug abuse in Miami.

Recently, I’ve been listening through a lot of Kanye’s backlog again. Eventually, I got around to listening to Yeezus. In stark contrast to his past works, Yeezus embodies a brash, abrasive and aggressive sound. Lyrically, the album focuses a lot on Kanye’s personal demons struggles, and insecurities, all revolving around a common theme - Fame.

By listening and analysing the lyrics of Kanye’s songs on Yeezus, we can find a whole lot of connections to the downfall of OJ. However, Kanye hasn’t exactly lived the same sort of life as OJ. Kanye grew up in a middle class household, and lived in the suburbs of Chicago, although his parents divorced, Kanye never really faced a lot of the same struggles of living in the projects. However, there are things that OJ and Kanye can relate to. Through their raw talent and hard work, they have both been able to come up to the upper echelons of American society, and have both created an image for themselves as unique black men in the high class of American society.

In addition, both have also seemed to have fallen from this place. Kanye, while he seemingly has gotten better in the past year (debatable with the release of TLOP), has had countless PR nightmares, starting with the Taylor incident during the 2009 MTV Music Awards, and OJ devolving into the life of drugs and parties

If you have time, look into Kanye’s Yeezus and see what connections you can make. It’s really interesting.