The Trouble with KanYe, BBC2 review — the disturbing new incarnation of Kanye West

Receive free Television updates

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Television news every morning.

What’s in a name? In the case of Kanye West — who is now legally known as Ye — his change of name has seemingly marked an alignment with the American far right. Since adopting the moniker in 2018, the rapper has undergone a disturbing shift from a talented yet obnoxious rapper to a hate-speaker harbouring unnerving political ambitions.

The Trouble with KanYe, a new feature-length BBC documentary, is about this latter “incarnation” as Ye. His fall from grace has been public and spectacular, dropped by both his label and several of his high-profile brand partners last year, but the film is more concerned with Ye’s parallel rise as a white-supremacy sympathiser, spouting antisemitic statements and praising Hitler. Attempts to cover this story can veer towards morbid curiosity or derision but British journalist Mobeen Azhar approaches it thoughtfully, taking heed of a warning from a disabused former associate of Ye’s that he “needs to be taken seriously”. 

To some viewers this might seem like a way of giving an inveterate attention-seeker what he craves. But to simply dismiss or ignore his offensive stunts — such as his “White Lives Matter” clothing — is to underestimate the commercial and cultural influence that he has. His influence is not just on extreme rightwing zealots, the documentary suggests, but impressionable teens. As an interviewee from the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles notes, many students are exposed to Ye’s antisemitic tropes before they encounter Jewish history. Yale professor Marcus Hunter meanwhile addresses how Ye has been “devastating to the consciousness” of young African-American people.

Azhar probes the origins and motives of Ye’s racist rhetoric. The rapper clearly yearns to scandalise but the question is whether he believes what he says. This leads the show to the delicate issue of Ye’s mental illness. A chat with the artist Bassey Ikpi, who was similarly diagnosed with bipolar disorder, offers insight into his behaviour — but zero excuses.

Azhar’s ability to broach thorny subjects in a genial manner can recall Louis Theroux, as does his polite yet pointed needling of members of Ye’s 2024 “campaign team” for his mooted presidential bid (which includes the notorious white supremacist Nick Fuentes). Sometimes, Azhar can feel too prominent, eager to fill every moment with a rhetorical question or state-the-obvious summation of what’s just been said. But there can be no criticising his tenacious, if fruitless, efforts to track down and challenge Ye in a direct conversation.

★★★★☆

On BBC2, June 28 at 9pm and on iPlayer thereafter