ANTI

5y

crazy how kanye is gonna have more people in MB stadium tomorrow than the entire capacity of that stadium

by a lot too

yesac

5y

he finished me (pause)

Tubig

5y

wait what

v12

5y

ye bink and just unreal hov had them on the blueprint

che_guevara

5y

?? Unculterd swine

Kr0niic

5y

Sometimes I wonder

Who is ktt user 24-year-old Mikey Vercetti of Danville, Virginia

Magenta

5y

"gaysac"

Vae

5y

little early for h**** hours

trey anastasio

5y

Name right the f*** now

B Wong

5y

Hey man I have to work sometimes

ANTI

5y

stadium from that pic

che_guevara

5y

? Did u just call me jobless

Vae

5y

little early for h**** hours

che_guevara

5y

? Did u just call me jobless

Kr0niic

5y

in particular the website Kanye to The (KTT), one of the internet’s busiest and most influential rap message boards.

At any point of the day, it’s not unusual to find more than 6,000 active KTT users engaged in conversations spread across hundreds of unruly threads, some of which span hundreds of thousands of messages. To an outsider, the forum is practically impenetrable, an infinite scroll of emojis, memes, s*** posts, and in-jokes. The forum’s mostly twentysomething, mostly male regulars communicate in short, hurried jabs of thought, writing as if they have better places to be even though, to judge from the frequency of their posts, many of them do not.

There is substantial conversation on KTT, but you have to dig to find it. Mostly the regulars just kill time, debating music and fashion, pouring over the most inconsequential leaked news and gossip, lusting after Kim Kardashian, or hazing each other. Somehow they never tire of ranking Kanye’s albums—it’s their default hot-stove debate, and it occurs daily—or rehashing old battles about Drake or J. Cole. But on a Thursday last month, ahead of a flood of new Kanye projects and with the forum’s namesake in the news constantly, there were more pertinent issues to discuss. Users debated the veracity of a supposedly leaked album cover making the rounds on Twitter. “The cover is fake,” a user with the handle Banana Lero wrote. “Kanye is too passionate about fonts to use Helvetica on two straight albums.”

Like many forum regulars, 24-year-old Mikey Vercetti of Danville, Virginia, believes Kanye gets a bad rap and sees the backlash to his Trump comments as part of a pattern. “People weren’t trying to see it from his point of view or learn where he was coming from when he said it,” Vercetti tells me. “A lot of people have to have something to be mad about. They see things and they go, ‘OK, we gotta cancel Kanye.’ But they didn’t think beyond that.”

Vercetti discovered the Kanye to The forum about four years ago while searching for fashion inspiration and gradually got sucked into its culture. “KTT is how I learned to troll people,” he says. “I’ll say something, and if you get mad about it it’s not my fault. You’re the one mad about it. That’s how a lot of people on the forum post.” He’s gotten so used to trolling, he says, that he’s started doing it offline, too. “You know how Kanye said the slavery thing with no context? A lot of times I say things now in real life with no context just to get a rise.”

Given their shared knack for provocation, Kanye’s fans say it was almost inevitable that their hero, a producer who was told he could never rap, would see some of himself in Trump, a businessman who nobody believed could be president. The parallels between the two are lost on no one: Both are high achieving narcissists, cults of personality whose biggest believers will always be themselves. And no matter how much they accomplish, both will always be seen on some level as underdogs by their most loyal supporters. But while there are elements of both Trump and Kanye’s bases that clearly relish in watching their idols ruffle feathers, the Kanye internet isn’t nearly as venomous as the darker corners of the alt-right internet.

serenade

5y

i thought i was going crazy back in 2016 when everyone was gassing up that "life of paul" (or whatever it was called) album where all the songs had like five minutes of the original samples and random demo parts inserted into them.

Kr0niic

5y

in particular the website Kanye to The (KTT), one of the internet’s busiest and most influential rap message boards.

At any point of the day, it’s not unusual to find more than 6,000 active KTT users engaged in conversations spread across hundreds of unruly threads, some of which span hundreds of thousands of messages. To an outsider, the forum is practically impenetrable, an infinite scroll of emojis, memes, s*** posts, and in-jokes. The forum’s mostly twentysomething, mostly male regulars communicate in short, hurried jabs of thought, writing as if they have better places to be even though, to judge from the frequency of their posts, many of them do not.

There is substantial conversation on KTT, but you have to dig to find it. Mostly the regulars just kill time, debating music and fashion, pouring over the most inconsequential leaked news and gossip, lusting after Kim Kardashian, or hazing each other. Somehow they never tire of ranking Kanye’s albums—it’s their default hot-stove debate, and it occurs daily—or rehashing old battles about Drake or J. Cole. But on a Thursday last month, ahead of a flood of new Kanye projects and with the forum’s namesake in the news constantly, there were more pertinent issues to discuss. Users debated the veracity of a supposedly leaked album cover making the rounds on Twitter. “The cover is fake,” a user with the handle Banana Lero wrote. “Kanye is too passionate about fonts to use Helvetica on two straight albums.”

Like many forum regulars, 24-year-old Mikey Vercetti of Danville, Virginia, believes Kanye gets a bad rap and sees the backlash to his Trump comments as part of a pattern. “People weren’t trying to see it from his point of view or learn where he was coming from when he said it,” Vercetti tells me. “A lot of people have to have something to be mad about. They see things and they go, ‘OK, we gotta cancel Kanye.’ But they didn’t think beyond that.”

Vercetti discovered the Kanye to The forum about four years ago while searching for fashion inspiration and gradually got sucked into its culture. “KTT is how I learned to troll people,” he says. “I’ll say something, and if you get mad about it it’s not my fault. You’re the one mad about it. That’s how a lot of people on the forum post.” He’s gotten so used to trolling, he says, that he’s started doing it offline, too. “You know how Kanye said the slavery thing with no context? A lot of times I say things now in real life with no context just to get a rise.”

Given their shared knack for provocation, Kanye’s fans say it was almost inevitable that their hero, a producer who was told he could never rap, would see some of himself in Trump, a businessman who nobody believed could be president. The parallels between the two are lost on no one: Both are high achieving narcissists, cults of personality whose biggest believers will always be themselves. And no matter how much they accomplish, both will always be seen on some level as underdogs by their most loyal supporters. But while there are elements of both Trump and Kanye’s bases that clearly relish in watching their idols ruffle feathers, the Kanye internet isn’t nearly as venomous as the darker corners of the alt-right internet.