\n
\u201cWhen all of this happened, the immediate reaction coming from most of his loyal Black fans \u2014 and coming from many non-Black fans who happen to be liberal or Democratic \u2014 was a lot of people were hurt by it,\u201d says Joshua Wright, who teaches history at Trinity Washington University and wrote the recent book \u201c ‘Wake Up, Mr. West’: Kanye West and the Double Consciousness of Black Celebrity.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\u201cThere was a lot of talk about Kanye West and ‘the sunken place,’ and people were comparing it to the movie ‘Get Out,’ \u201d which depicts a world in which a Black person’s consciousness can be sent into limbo while their body is inhabited by a White person. Multiple prominent Black radio hosts, Wright notes, said at the time that they would stop playing Ye’s music.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Of course, at the same time, \u201cThe comments turned off one segment of the population who loves him, but brought him a brand-new crowd of fans who may not have paid attention to him in the past,\u201d Wright says. \u201cIn recent years Kanye has been more in the Christian circles, and really tight with the southern Evangelical church base. A lot of those people tend to be Trump supporters. They tend to be conservative.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
That fall, things briefly soured between Ye and Owens. Many outlets reported that Ye had designed T-shirts for Owens’s \u201cBlexit\u201d campaign urging Black voters to leave the Democratic Party. Owens herself told Page Six, \u201cI am blessed to say that this logo, these colors, were created by my dear friend and fellow superhero Kanye West.\u201d Ye, however, denied his involvement in a tweet<\/a>: \u201cI introduced Candace to the person who made the logo and they didn’t want their name on it so she used mine,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI never wanted any association with Blexit. I have nothing to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n