I wrote this year-end thing that was mostly about Kanye West. And I keep seeing this things and hearing from people that the Dirty Diddy Money album is so good and so on. I listened to it (on headphones!) and I think it’s not very good. I probably sound like the people who don’t think My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is very good. I realize that.

The Kanye album. The whole Kanye West Experience. I’ve invested so much time and personal energy into it, following it, keeping track of it, writing about it, listening to it. I’ve probably spent now a hundred hours listening to the Kanye album in various forms on videos, as GOOD Friday, and as the album itself. I said in my piece that Kanye tried to destroy hip-hop and remake it in his image. I think what he’s accomplished instead, in a personal way, is to destroy music criticism for me.

I no longer care about writing about Kanye or reading about Kanye. Not because I’m tired of it. Rather, it’s because I think it’s such an indubitable principle—like gravity or the fact that I know my name (shout out to Wittgenstein) or that the sun will rise tomorrow—that when I read anyone saying anything else, I know I just don’t inhabit the same world. When I read criticisms of Kanye’s album, even perhaps valid ones, I tune it out or get bored.

My engagement with the album has basically rendered it axiomatic in my life. And that’s made music writing a little less interesting for me, which is an entirely unforeseen consequence of 2Kanye10-apalooza/gate.