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Kanye West returned to Twitter last Friday, April 13, after a nearly one-year hiatus, and since then the rapper and fashion mogul has been tweeting at a rate of nearly 10 tweets a day, dishing out philosophical advice about the struggle for authenticity alongside his own shameless self-promotion.
After being welcomed back on the platform by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, he started building up his own hype in true Kanye fashion, tweeting glimpses of new clothing and teasers about new music to his 12 million followers.
His most retweeted post so far, with more than 245,000 retweets and 514,000 “Likes,” was when he revealed a date for an album drop: June 8 with rapper Kid Cudi.
But peppered into the business announcements, Kanye started dishing out philosophical truisms like this one about the performative nature of human experience.
in life, we are all trained actors. When we're born we're ourselves and then one of the first things we're thought is how to act. If you see a kid screaming at a restaurant because he feels something and can't express himself in a conventional manner
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 18, 2018
He then announced that he’s actually writing a book “in real time” when he feels like it and that he’s going to be free from the pressures of any publisher:
oh by the way this is my book that I'm writing in real time. No publisher or publicist will tell me what to put where or how many pages to write. This is not a financial opportunity this is an innate need to be expressive.
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 18, 2018
And advice on how to retain your sense of self amid pressure to conform to societal norms:
don't trade your authenticity for approval
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 18, 2018
Don't follow crowds. Follow the innate feelings inside of you. Do what you feel not what you think. Thoughts have been placed in our heads to make everyone assimilate. Follow what you feel.
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 18, 2018
In other tweets, he sounds like a New Age guru, extolling the virtues of those who can “shift the consciousness” to be in touch with their inner selves, and critiquing those who become “hard-core capitalist,” valuing money over all.
Some people have to work within the existing consciousness while some people can shift the consciousness
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 16, 2018
often people working with the existing consciousness are jealous of those who are more in touch and they become hard-core capitalist in hopes of creating the illusion that the value of money is worth more than the value of time and friends
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 16, 2018
Ironically, though, while Kanye is tweeting about following crowds and critiquing capitalistic ambition, he is the smartest capitalist of all — satiating the public appetite for his musings after two years of living in relative obscurity following his very public breakdown, and drawing even more attention to his new business projects.
Well played, Kanye.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
