Kanye West, in keeping with a truncated periphery necessary for megalomania, has upgraded from hipster shutter shades to a high couture diamond mask (by Belgian fashion designer Maison Martin Margiela) whose stones, growing in carat, funnel into his money machine, that is, mouth. His favorite puns involve you swallowing his cum, which is why I prefer to listen to him with a can of ginger ale handy. Like cheesy pop songs of the mid-90s with that embarrassing rap interlude, today’s hip hop (Kanye, Drake, Frank Ocean) strains itself with melody, often auto-tuned. As Yeezus is released today, drying out all the fervent leaks a week prior, we’ve found — or perhaps created — a black Jesus whose relation to our sins seems less compassionate than complicit. Short of dying for our sins, he would rather watch. The sadness of the “real” Jesus story is that he was gracefully on our side, which seemed too good to be true, so we killed him. It is the story of a learned cynicism, our grand expulsion. In 1966, John Lennon said The Beatles were more popular than Jesus and was met with outrage from both the Christian right and populace. Lennon later explained he was referring to the decline of religion (though his Jesus complex eventually resurfaced with his Abbey Road white suit and Imagine white piano). Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God (2007) is a sculpture about economics. It cost £14,000,000 to produce and was exhibited at an asking price of £50,000,000, an instant 350% inflation for patrons perhaps too dense to see the sarcasm. Hirst has been obsessed with a Dahmer-esque clinical curiosity of what’s inside us, though his perverse pathos stops short at a grant. His work mocks the mortal’s concept of immortality. Self-aware to a degree, Kanye’s diamond mask probably has little to do with the diamond mining industry in Africa, which accounts for two-thirds of the world’s diamonds, and whose upsetting trade empowers warlords and insurgents. If there’s any thing to say, we are enamored with the spectacle of depth. The stage as a pulpit. Grandiose entitlement is rather American, and with that, Kanye stops being its critic. Tired of splooge allusions, his “I am a God” repeats the title over and over: I am a God / Hurry up with my damn massage, though each time I read that line I see “message,” perhaps delusional that there is one.