“Kanye has been for me one of the five most influential people in my life, music or not,” says Hecht, whose dad bought him West’s Late Registration in junior high. Now based in L.A., Jeremy Hecht is the head of video at HipHopDX, a hip-hop review and culture site. When West started making anti-Semitic comments a few weeks ago, I contacted a Jewish high school teammate of mine who is better at both basketball and rapping than I am.
I am both white and Jewish, which is not at all to say that Jewish people can’t be good at basketball or rapping, but is to say that this particular white Jewish man is not too talented at either. Irving was an electrifying prospect, with an Iversonian crossover and an immaculate ability to float by defenders as he drove through the lane. That year, Kyrie Irving was drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers. At camp in the summer of 2011, we listened nonstop. Kanye West performs at the 50th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in 2008, during what many consider to be West’s heyday.Īnd then Fantasy came out. KEVORK DJANSEZIAN / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES “When he first started out, he was huge,” says Barry Kay, a local entertainment figure who’s DJed Jewish events for 23 years. When I turned 13, it was 2008, meaning my Bar Mitzvah year coincided with West’s heyday as a radio superstar. I knew that wasn’t true, and started to listen more intently when I got my first iPod. The way rap was portrayed made it seem not an artform, but a threat. My entire childhood had been spent misunderstanding what the genre was, completely under the influence of racist depictions of rappers in television and film. I loved Kanye’s 2010 masterpiece because it expanded my understanding of what hip-hop was and could be. I loved the NBA because I loved to watch the game at its highest level, with the most skilled players in the world.
As a Jewish teenager in the year 2011, two things I cared about were the National Basketball Association and Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
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