Advice for Kanye’s ex

Where's the feminist anti-hip-hop community when you need them? For years, these ignorant sluts have criticized rappers for talking about bitches and hoes, as if there isn't a such thing as either of those things, but the one time a rapper makes an entire album going off on a specific, erm, lady, I've yet to hear a peep from them.

I'm not gonna lie. I haven't spent a significant amount of time listening to Kanye West's new album, 808s and Heartbreak. I had another guy review it for my own site, just like I did with Graduation (which I've yet to hear in its entirety to this day, oddly enough), so I only spent enough time with it in order to determine that it doesn't have a single redeeming quality. Which it doesn't. Never mind what Billy X Sunday says.

But I figure I've heard enough of 808s and Heartbreak to know that all it is is song after song of him going off on his ex-fiance, Alexis Phifer, who, like the nappy headed hoes in the Imus incident, isn't a public figure per se, and hence doesn't really have much of a platform from which to mount a response. (That is, unless she wants to email yours truly. We can discuss this over a couple of two-piece meals at KFC. I just got some gift checks in the mail from them.)

And I'm not the only one to notice this. The newly unemployed Tom Breihan devotes a significant amount of his review of 808s and Heartbreak - which he calls "almost frighteningly cruel and devoid of empathy" - in last week's Village Voice to talking about how Kanye's a douche for going off on his ex like that. (Of course, most of the rest of the viewly is very positive.)

In retrospect, the dead giveaway should have been the secret, largely forgotten alternate version of the god-awful video for his song "Flashing Lights," from Graduation. The one we all know and love is the one where Rita G, in what can only charitably be called a bikini, beats Kanye to a bloody pulp in the trunk of a Mustang. I didn't have any particular beef with the content of the video; I just wish there was more to it. At the very least, she could have been naked.

But if you remember, that version of the video was created only after another version of the video was created and subsequently shelved. It didn't leak to the Internets until a while later, and when it did, it escaped mention on Kanye's notorious fake, plagiarized blog/discount travel scam operation. In this version of the "Flashing Lights" video, a model chick rolls out of bed at the ass crack of noon, Bol-stylee, proceeds to start drinking, then later she goes to a club and gets raped while she stumbles home drunk.

Um, wow.

Maybe I'm just astute like that, but it was obvious to me even at the time that this was Kanye's way of wishing rape on his ex-fiance. I wrote as much in a post here at the time. I'm a fucking visionary, I swear.

You would think the fact alone that the most famous rapper in the world has a video that's basically a rape snuff film would be enough to set... sombeboy off. Presumably, that's why the TIs let him talk Spike Jonze into ruining his legacy with the "official" version of the "Flashing Lights" video. Though I'll maintain to this day that Jonze' extended-length (nullus) clip for "What's Up, Fatlip?" is the best movie ever made about hip-hop, right up there with Havoc.

If I was Kanye West's ex-fiance Alexis (no homo), I'd seriously think about getting a restraining order against him, just in case, since we know he's out of control. We know, because we've got it on video, that he went apeshit on that photographer in the airport out in LA. And I heard there was another incident recently, over in Europe, though he might have paid to have that covered up. I can only imagine what he might do to his ex-fiance, if he's already wished rape on her, and he's got an entire album going off on her.

Then I'd see about getting some money out of him. The two of them used to live together out in California, right? I've heard that's a bad state to go to family court in. She could almost certainly take him for a hefty settlement out there. Look at the facts: She put her modeling career on hold to marry him, then he dropped her like a bad habit just because his mom died and he's crazy now. But her stock's just not gonna be as high, if everyone knows she spent several years having sex with a black guy, let alone the fact that he's been on a campaign to destroy her reputation.

And of course, if she does go through with this, it would only be right if I received some sort of finders fee. It doesn't even have to be a lot of money. Part of it would just be the satisfaction of knowing that I could be of such assistance, but part of it's that, if there's one thing being down with XXL has taught me, it's how to ball on a budget. If it's anywhere near the four figure mark, I could be straight for quite some time. Nhjic.