00:00Kanye West released an album late last month, so the end of March, he released an album.
00:06That album has been called Bully, and it's entered the Billboard 200 at number two.
00:14It dropped an 18-track album with no label, no press tour, no radio campaign, and no interviews.
00:23And literally in 24 hours racked up 33.2 million streams on the Spotify platform.
00:35All I've got to say is we look at these figures, we look at these numbers, people are still buying
00:42his music.
00:43So there's been a lot of backlash to him going to Wireless Festival, but he still seems to have a
00:49support base behind him
00:51and has been forgiven for his actions that he has apologized for.
00:56So I don't know if it's necessarily that he's been forgiven,
00:59but I think the public is able to differentiate between what they like to listen to or what turns them
01:08on
01:09and what an artist says.
01:12Now, if we go back through history, we can all name an awful lot of people
01:16who we would not be comfortable if we were to have them at our dinner party.
01:23But that doesn't mean that we might not like looking at their art,
01:26or we might not like watching them act or listening to their music.
01:31And it creates an incredibly important moment where if people can be more self-reflective,
01:39if they can be a little bit aware of themselves,
01:41they can dig a little bit deeper into how do I really feel about a particular person.
01:47It's interesting, sometimes when it's convenient,
01:50people are very good at being able to separate the artist from their comments.
01:56I know in the world of professional sports, for instance,
02:00there are traditionally politicians, journalists,
02:06who will not necessarily feel comfortable with professional athletes having an opinion about politics.
02:12But now we've moved past that.
02:15And that same sort of feeling sometimes applies to actors as well,
02:18when they get up on stage and they talk about whatever their political leanings are.
02:25And I think we have to recognize that we're all a little bit hypocritical,
02:30and we all sometimes disagree with, again, what somebody says,
02:34and we might not want that person in our inner circle.
02:37But my goodness, they make good music, and that I really like.
02:41Thank you very much.
