THE MOST TRANSGRESSIVE POP RECORD OF 2025 (AND POSSIBLY EVER)
POOLHOUSE ON THE TIME YEEZY WENT FULL THIN WHITE DUKE (NEVER GO FULL THIN WHITE DUKE!)
POOLHOUSE ON THE TIME YEEZY WENT FULL THIN WHITE DUKE
(NEVER GO FULL THIN WHITE DUKE!)
BACKKLASH 2025 RETROSPECTIVE: KANYE WEST, “H** H**”
When David Bowie was a coked-out esoteric menace in the mid-70s, he famously threw the Roman salute at Victoria Station and arrived at LAX with suitcases full of Nazi literature — a move that understandably generated controversy. To my knowledge, none of Bowie’s bank accounts were frozen, nor did the outrage dampen his long-term commercial prospects. In fact, the biggest chart smashes of his career arrived in the decade that followed.
The same certainty does not exist at the moment for Kanye West’s commercial prospects in the wake of his own scandal.
His breathtakingly audacious release of “H** H**” this year is the closest thing I can think of to a nuclear bomb dropped in the form of a pop song. Much like Bowie, Ye seemed destined to spark backlash. He already occupies the cultural role of bogeyman; his right-wing embrace only reinforced the disdain of leftist audiences.
But come on: a cursory listen to the song will tell you this is the hood equivalent of a schlocky Nazi-themed 1960s exploitation flick.
“H** H**” is certainly designed to evoke a chill — a fear, I guess, of… African-American Nazis? “N***a, Heil Hitler” and “All my n***as Nazis” are absurd lyrics, but in their ability to provoke and inspire moral calamity, they are brilliant. I mean, honestly: wouldn’t an army of armed Black extremists just be… the Black Panthers? The Nation of Islam? Leftists love them!
There isn’t much that feels pro-Nazi here — or even explicitly National Socialist — aside from a clip of the Führer himself delivering one of his Pervitin-powered orations. It’s in German, a language I am gonna take a wild guess and say that most American Yeezy fans do not understand. and it’s a matter of historical record.
Hitler gave speeches. That happened. An artist including that in a sample does not imply endorsement. Instead, the pivot toward becoming a “Nazi” is framed not as hatred toward any group but as an act of self-hatred — a desperate, self-loathing attempt to own the villain role because he cannot bear his own reflection. Inflammatory iconography aside, I do not hear Jew-hatred; this is Ye-hatred.
Musically, this is not exceptional, but it’s not terrible either. The high concept is the selling point. There’s a dub-wise whippets-autotune quality baked into Ye’s vocals — thin, hollow, chemically collapsed — evocative of the nitrous haze he admits to abusing. There’s a grimy, video-game beat, a ghetto choir, and sweeping classical symphonics (more John Williams than Wagner, honestly).
All of these elements seem designed to tap into the zeitgeist by way of online “incel” and right-wing-adjacent meme cultures. I believe Ye is drawing on these themes not as an aesthetic endorsement, but because 4chan-/pol/-tier subcultures make for an accessible reference point that allows the artist to tap into the mounting angst and nihilism in young men across the West — angst that ironically mirrors Ye’s own struggles as a Black superstar in the entertainment business.
All of this only makes the “I’m gonna be a Nazi” motif feel sleazier, more off-putting, more pathetic. This is not how you glamorize a right-wing movement. This is the audio equivalent of watching someone drink themselves to death. It’s some of the darkest, most shockingly real, and truly transgressive art of the 21st century.
Ye’s lyrics reflect a poignant honesty. He really did lose his kids. His bank accounts really were frozen — for what was, ostensibly, protected speech. (See the Skokie case in Illinois — another 1970s historical precedent relevant to this record.) The landmark 1977 decision, defended largely by Jewish attorneys at the ACLU, affirmed that even literal Nazis marching through a Jewish neighborhood had First Amendment protection.
Let the irony marinate: Jewish civil libertarians once fought for the legal right of actual neo-Nazis to express themselves publicly; yet nearly fifty years later, an artist sampling a historical Hitler speech is treated as a civilizational emergency. We are farther from the actual horrors of the Holocaust than ever, yet somehow more allergic to contextualizing taboo art.
Now, let’s be real. This material will hit differently for Jewish listeners. That is a completely understandable response. Collective trauma does not evaporate simply because an artist frames these symbols through absurdism, despair, or self-annihilation. I’m not saying anyone can’t be outraged, or even that they shouldn’t be. I’m saying the outrage should be proportionate, contextual, and grounded in what the art is actually doing.
Nothing in “H** H**” resembles an endorsement of National Socialism, nor any kind of political program. It is the sound of a man who feels exiled from civilization and is grasping at the only taboo he hasn’t already broken.
Listen, chile — as a homosexual man who has spent decades loving hip-hop music, I’ve had my own moments of hearing lyrics that felt like a bitch slap. I’ve experienced that weird reaction of devotion and disgust. But never have I believed an artist should be unpersoned because their expression made me uncomfortable. Discomfort and disagreement are part of confronting art honestly. They are not grounds for cultural exile.
We do not condone Hitler, antisemitism, or any form of hate here at BACKKLASH — nor do we believe any of that has meaningful relevance to this astonishing work of pop art. “H** H**” is a piece about frustration, isolation, and the tendency for those alienated to society’s fringes to embrace the fringe. Ye lays it all bare: his addictions, his sexual compulsions, his edgelord impulses, his self-destructive tendencies.
This is the act of a man who has been possessed by his own fame, myth, greatness, legend, and spectacle. His shocking choice to shatter the idol he had become — by means of perhaps society’s most implosive transgression — may very well have been his only means to free the man trapped inside that gilded cage. If “H** H**” is political at all, it is in that it reminds us of the monk or radical setting himself on fire in protest, for the world to see.
Something else the left claims to love, by the way.
The politics of “H** H**” aren’t fascist.
They’re existential – possibly even suicidal.