Kanye West has bought 160m data, gained 24 Grammys and ran for U.S. president. However after a failed marriage to Kim Kardashian, praising Hitler and now an specific show in Venice…TOM LEONARD asks: Can he sink any decrease?

His behaviour could be thought of appalling wherever, however the reality Kanye West dedicated his newest and lewdest publicity stunt in Venice – a metropolis synonymous with class and wonder – someway made it a lot worse.

Sitting behind a water taxi, his trousers ridden down thus far that onlookers caught a glimpse of his naked posterior, he seemed to be engaged in a really public intercourse act in broad daylight together with his Australian spouse Bianca Censori, who was on her knees along with her head between his legs.

It is laborious to think about that even a rapper who likes to shock as a lot as West had genuinely sunk to this, however the incident however represented a brand new low for a person who lately has repeatedly proven that he considers caring about public opinion beneath him.

The rapper and clothier has described slavery as a ‘selection’; declared that he was making ready to go to battle with Jewish individuals; and even spoke approvingly of Hitler and the Nazis.

West’s apologists have blamed all this on psychological sickness – he was recognized as bipolar in 2016 – however others see his antics because the horrible hubris of a celebrity who believes he has a god-like proper to do and say as he pleases… particularly when it retains him within the headlines.

Controversial rapper Kanye West is seen together with his spouse Bianca Censori who rocks a see-through outfit whereas out in Tuscany

Whereas virtually anybody else would have been ‘cancelled’ way back, West continues to flourish, with 53 million month-to-month listeners on Spotify and 32 million followers on X, the social media platform previously generally known as Twitter.

And Censori, an ex-model who’s now described as an architectural designer, seems to have change into the newest casualty of West’s lust for the limelight.

The 28-year-old has trailed round Italy – religious residence of ‘la bella figura’ – sporting a number of weird skin-tight outfits, often translucent and infrequently worn with out underwear, that go away nothing to the creativeness.

These haven’t gone down nicely in what continues to be, in spite of everything, a conservative Roman Catholic nation. There have even been requires her to be arrested for ‘public indecency’.

That mentioned, Censori usually seems depressing, typically crossing her arms over her chest or utilizing her shoulder bag to guard her modesty, as if she is an unwilling participant in an train that’s starting to look as exploitative as it’s distasteful.

West’s ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, has spoken emotionally about how controlling West was throughout their marriage. 

She has claimed the rapper, who fancies himself as God’s reward to trend in addition to the music enterprise, threw out most of her garments early of their relationship, changing them with outfits of his selection.

And Kardashian was a girl of unbiased means who was a actuality TV celebrity in her personal proper. 

Censori, however, was working for West’s trend model, Yeezy, after they have been first romantically linked in early January this 12 months, simply two months after his divorce had been finalised.

The couple are mentioned to have tied the knot in a non-public ceremony in Beverly Hills lower than two weeks after that first public outing, however the legality of the union is in query, since they’ve by no means filed a wedding certificates.

Sitting behind a water taxi, his trousers ridden down thus far that onlookers caught a glimpse of his naked posterior, he seemed to be engaged in a really public intercourse act in broad daylight together with his Australian spouse Bianca Censori

Kardashian – who has 4 kids with the rapper – is reportedly ‘desperately embarrassed and worried’ by her ex-husband’s behaviour in Italy and believes ‘one thing clearly is not proper’. In reality, one thing ‘hasn’t been proper’ with Kanye West for years. 

So how did the artist, whose distasteful freak present this summer season comes solely three years after he introduced he’d run for U.S. president, go so drastically off the rails?

Many date the beginning of West’s decline to the loss of life of his beloved mom, Donda, in 2007.

He had relied closely on his mom, an English professor who raised him on her personal in Chicago, for recommendation and assist throughout his rise to worldwide stardom.

Donda all the time tried her finest to imbue the younger Kanye with a pleasure in his pores and skin color and a confidence in what he may obtain in life. 

He was writing poetry by the age of 5, and his mom had excessive hopes of him following her into academia. 

‘My parenting of Kanye was strategic,’ she mentioned, describing how, from a younger age, she surrounded him with photos of highly effective and profitable black males: ‘I started instructing him to like himself.’

West rewarded her devotion by enrolling in her college, Chicago State, to check her topic, English. However, on the age of 20, he dropped out to change into a rapper.

At first, Donda was deeply upset, however she later relented and have become his supervisor, providing him rock-like assist until the day she died.

West admits his devastation at her loss was compounded by a way of guilt that he was accountable: she died from a coronary heart assault throughout main beauty surgical procedure that he believes she would by no means have had if she hadn’t joined him in Los Angeles.

Censori, an ex-model who’s now described as an architectural designer, seems to have change into the newest casualty of West’s lust for the limelight

West’s debut album, The School Dropout, was launched in 2004, and he started exhibiting early indicators of a planet-sized ego when he complained that he had been ‘positively robbed’ when he was handed over for ‘New Artist of the Yr’ on the American Music Awards.

His narcissism solely acquired worse as his fanbase grew and the media fawned. Crediting his inventive creativeness to being bipolar, a situation West calls a ‘superpower’, he has in contrast himself with Picasso, Shakespeare, Apple creator Steve Jobs and — regardless of claiming to be a religious Christian – even Jesus.

Comically, West has mentioned his greatest remorse is that he’ll by no means be capable of see himself carry out stay.

His mega-celebrity was magnified additional in 2012 when he began a romantic relationship with actuality TV star Kim Kardashian. 

The couple went on to marry two years later in Florence and had 4 kids – North, Saint, Chicago and Psalm – the final two of whom have been born by surrogate. 

Like so many superstar couplings, it was a union that helped each their careers, particularly as they have been every intent on constructing trend empires.

West launched the Nike Air Yeezy coach in 2009, earlier than defecting 4 years later to Nike’s rival, Adidas, the place he would boast that the deal to provide Yeezy sneakers had made him a billionaire.

When he staged his first Yeezy runway present in 2015 throughout New York Style Week, Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour sat with Kardashian, Beyonce and Jay-Z within the entrance row, watching a variety of military-inspired £925 vest tops, £620 suede backpacks and £460 boots which – regardless of the excessive worth tags – attracted lengthy queues on the outlets.

Kim Kardashian – who has 4 kids with the rapper – is reportedly ‘desperately embarrassed and frightened’ by her ex-husband’s behaviour in Italy and believes ‘one thing clearly is not proper’

West appeared to have the Midas contact, and even essentially the most objectionable behaviour from the golden boy was missed, maybe on the grounds of his more and more well-publicised psychological well being points. 

He hung out in a psychiatric hospital in 2016, the identical 12 months that he was recognized with bipolar dysfunction.

America’s liberal media and showbusiness worlds are prepared to forgive a variety of stars who keep ‘on message’ politically by, say, publicly decrying racism and turning out for the Democrats.

However West, who’d beforehand donated to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, spectacularly broke ranks throughout his 2016 live performance tour when he informed his viewers he hadn’t voted within the presidential election that 12 months, but when he had, it could have been for Donald Trump.

Then he went a lot additional, donning a crimson ‘Make America Nice Once more’ hat for a boisterous assembly with Trump within the Oval Workplace in 2018, at which – because the president smiled on benignly – West delivered an outlandish ten-minute monologue through which he touched on the existence of other universes and hydrogen-powered planes, and claimed he and Trump have been each ‘dragon power’.

In the identical speech, he claimed he’d been misdiagnosed with bipolar dysfunction, however supplied no supporting proof.

Nevertheless, in June 2020, he introduced he was standing for the U.S. presidency himself, operating as an unbiased for the so-called Birthday Celebration. He not supported Trump, he mentioned, as a result of he ‘hid in [a] bunker’ in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic.

However West’s marketing campaign acquired off to a foul begin when he admitted in an interview that he knew nothing about taxation or overseas coverage and had by no means voted in his life.

No surprise many pundits dismissed it as a publicity stunt to advertise album gross sales. 

He gained a miserly 60,000 votes regardless of the very fact it was later reported Republicans had secretly contributed tens of millions of {dollars} to West’s marketing campaign in a bid to separate the Democrat vote.

Since 2019, when he claimed to have undergone what he known as a ‘religious awakening’ and dedicated himself to Jesus, critics have questioned whether or not he is not a lot celebrating Christ as imitating him.

West’s ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, has spoken emotionally about how controlling West was throughout their marriage

He wrote a Christian opera, and began staging ‘Sunday Providers’, over which he presided in monk-like robes and Yeezy trainers, accompanied by a 120-strong choir.

How does all this religiosity sit together with his degraded behaviour in Venice? As with a lot about West, it is laborious to separate real conviction from the will to shock and get observed. 

That actually applies to his deranged utterances on social media — the place he has promoted a string of usually anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, together with the concept Jews are behind a plot to make use of vaccination to inject us all with microchips.

His more and more strident opposition to abortion – he boorishly informed one political rally that he and his spouse had as soon as mentioned aborting their daughter – was reportedly a key consider his cut up from Kardashian and led to her submitting for divorce in February 2021.

Free from her restraining affect, his behaviour solely turned extra maniacal and distasteful. 

In October 2022, precisely a 12 months after he legally modified his identify to ‘Ye’ – saying it was essentially the most generally used phrase within the Bible – he and a handful of associates wore shirts he’d designed with ‘White Lives Matter’ written on them, a well-liked slogan amongst far-Proper teams.

Three days later he wore an ultrasound image of a foetus round his neck in an interview to display his pro-life views. Shortly after that, he was locked out of Twitter after he informed his followers he was ‘going loss of life con 3 on Jewish individuals’ – an obvious misreading of the U.S. nuclear alert standing ‘Defcon’.

Hip hop has a nasty historical past of sporadic anti-Semitism, however West took it to new extremes. CNN reported later that month that he had needed to call his 2018 album after Adolf Hitler and claimed he was obsessive about the Nazi chief.

By the tip of October, West’s diatribes in opposition to Jews had prompted Adidas to terminate its partnership over Yeezy sneakers, a relationship that Forbes estimated had been value $200 million a 12 months to West.

Undaunted, he gave an interview to the infamous conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, through which he claimed he ‘loves Jewish individuals’ but in addition ‘likes Nazis’ and might see ‘good issues about Hitler’. Even Jones was greatly surprised.

And it was an excessive amount of for a number of different firms with which he’d had industrial offers, together with Hole and trend home Balenciaga. 

The varied cancelled offers have minimize his web value — based on the monetary journal Forbes — from $2 billion (£1.7 billion) to $400 million (£346 million). He was additionally dropped by his regulation agency and his agent.

Others, tragically, are deeply impressed by his vitriol. Final December, a person attacked a 63-year-old Jewish male in New York’s Central Park, shouting ‘Kanye 2024’ – a reference to the rapper’s potential subsequent run on the U.S. presidency.

For all however essentially the most blinkered followers, his music and creative accomplishments – which have seen him promote greater than 160 million data and win 24 Grammy Awards – have been utterly over-shadowed by his outlandish and abhorrent behaviour.

Following the mockery and disgust West and his ‘spouse’ have provoked in Italy, maybe even they’ll start to fall away.