Kanye West & Father John Misty: An Ego Battle

Two major artists released records in June. Kanye West released ye, a seven-track rap album, or, depending on how you look at it, an emergency PR parachute to address his recent slew of public antics. A few days prior, Josh Tillman, as Father John Misty, released God’s Favorite Customer, a ten-track hike across his own private reckonings. There are many reasons to avoid comparing the two albums.

For one, it’s difficult to reason that West and Tillman share the same existential troubles, or even draw from the same pool of pain. Both men would certainly be bothered by the suggestion. West grew up in Chicago and Tillman in the South. West is a black man who was raised by a single mother, studied art, and fought for years to find a place in the Chicago rap scene. Josh Tillman was born in Maryland, where he lived through an oppressively fundamentalist childhood and only later found a sense of purpose in writing folk music.

Apart from his own theatrical on-stage persona, some especially acidic tweets, and one notable incident of mid-concert political babbling, Tillman does not really make headlines. Josh Tillman is neither dissimilar enough to be a perfect foil for Kanye West, nor close enough to be considered a reflection.

The comparison here concerns their alternate approaches to a shared challenge: what is the fate of an overly exposed artistic persona once it has been dismembered by critics and fans alike? According to these records, it either burns until it destroys itself, or retreats until it erases itself. 

Unsurprisingly, West takes the path of greater destruction. The album is overstuffed with features and samples, leaving just enough room for West to get some mediocre yelling out of his system. It’s very obvious that West didn’t slave over this album. Why was there enough space for a full track apologizing for the remarks he made last month? Was this record intended to exist, or forced to arrive? Is his purpose as an artist still to create great music, or to maintain his image as someone who creates great music?

The answers don’t really matter - it’s now the cloud of doubt around Kanye West’s genius that defines the future direction of his career. This is the explosive destiny of the Yeezy persona. By continually reinventing himself as more bombastic and unpredictable than ever before, West will never struggle to maintain relevance. He will, however, always struggle to recapture the breathless praise of his early career.

It’s not hard to imagine his bars and flows worsening as he tries to lift public expectations back onto the mantle from which they have fallen. In fact, that’s probably where we’re at right now. Ye is West pounding the table as hard as he can, brute-forcing opinion back on his side by falling on some predictable swords. On “Wouldn’t Leave”, West magnanimously prostrates himself in front of his wife, thanking her for her loyalty in face of his personal demons. On “Violent Crimes”, West uncomfortably begs his daughter not to become hot. On “Yikes”, West describes his mental illness in fairly confined terms: I’m a superhero! I’m a superhero! Aagh! Adult life has handed West some genuinely rich and sympathetic themes, all of which ye grandly fumbles. West’s delivery emits no vulnerability, and the writing is far from the glorious profanity of College Dropout or Graduation.

The most enjoyable track is “Ghost Town”, rocked alive by soaring and soulful mumbles. It’s a track that suggests what ye could have sounded like, given the appropriate patience in production and songwriting. As it stands, the album is mostly reaction and mirthless bluster. West’s persona sits like concrete over everything, walling the tracks in from any authentic burst of feeling.

And perhaps that makes sense. West is older. He has spent years digesting criticism about his idiosyncrasies, and he alone deals with the mental aftermath of that attention. He’s hungry to be recognized for what he’s battled. Perhaps it does not matter so much to seem white-hot and whip-smart if all you want is to feel heard.

On God’s Favorite Customer, Josh Tillman also considers his talent for provocation and controversy. Unlike West, Tillman leans away. Gone is the sarcastic troubadour of 2017’s Pure Comedy or 2015’s I Love You, Honeybear who delighted in exposing every narcissistic seam of human connection.

Every album prior to God’s Favorite Customer dripped with all-purpose disdain. FJM made fun of Hollywood, musicians, writers, politicians, lovers, and even the larger class of drunken and melancholy white men (of which he could be king). Tillman carried out similar sieges over Twitter and at a few concerts, though he never experienced West-level backlash for ‘speaking his truth.’

He did, however, become the subject of significant editorial debate between 2015 and 2017. Many critics found the persona overwrought and pretentious. Tillman was aware of the distaste, and his self-awareness soon became an artistic object unto itself.

In a 2017 interview with The Guardian, Tillman shared, “The main criticism people have of me is, ‘Why are you trying so hard? This guy’s exhausting.’ Yeah, I am! That’s my way of trying to get love’...” and later remarking, “This is a hell of a way to start this interview.” Most pieces on FJM are like this. Interviews with Josh Tillman are like song lyrics on Genius -- you get the annotations, the self-dissections, the redlines, the true preoccupations. It’s all included.

God’s Favorite Customer is an intentional shrinkage of persona and a triumph of artistic self-consciousness. The FJM ego hovers in the background, limp and defeated. The voice on the record is Tillman’s, contrite and no longer concerned with outsmarting his listener. On “The Songwriter,” Tillman confesses to the exploitation he commits every time he writes a song about his wife.

"What would it sound like if you were the songwriter, and you made your living off me? / Would you undress me repeatedly in public to show how very noble and naked you can be?"

Later on in “We're Only People (And There's Not Much Anyone Can Do About That)”, Tillman bows and retreats off stage,

"Oh, friends, all my friends / Oh, I hope you're somewhere smiling / Just know I think about you more kindly than you and I have ever been / and I'll see you the next time around the bend."

The record chides Tillman’s smirking alter-ego, gently departing from all that he once represented. 

In terms of long-term likeability and critical acclaim, Tillman’s unwillingness to get in his own way is a smart move. It’s a swerve that lands Tillman back in the graces of critics who suspected he had grown too big for his breeches. But the thing that makes ye a much more interesting album than God’s Favorite Customer is its entire disconnect from the game, its lack of cohesive messaging, its refusal to impart any sort of lasting insight, its indifference to fan expectation, and its insistence on being only and exactly what it is.

"I put my hand on a stove to see if I still bleed / and nothing hurts anymore, I feel kind of free." While that line from “Ghost Town” technically makes no sense (how would you bleed from that?) and reads like uncreative pop fluff, it rings much louder and larger than any line on Tillman’s record -- an album of arguably superior substance and production.

The line is emancipation and contempt, all at once. This is the quiet and dangerous power of Kanye West. Sure, all the other jesters have the chance to flee, but at least everyone is around to hear the prisoner roar.