He's done one hell of a job cultivating his brand, that's all this was.

Naaaah.

#1 Kanye stan here, I can say that what he said was stupid, but it wasn't "planned" (I know I said I think he's doing it on purpose, but I was just being obnoxious). Dude was drunk as fuck, for starters. He considers Beyonce to be his sister, is another. He takes it as a Rap/R&B vs. the World sort of scenario, which puts him even more on the defensive. People think everything Kanye does is some sort of publicity-stunt, including marrying his fucking wife, it's really creepy.

I do think he thinks it's about race, yeah, he just picked the wrong time to do it. Fucking Eminem won an award based on name recognition and skin color, because his album in 2014 was shit. Had he commented on that, people wouldn't have been as up in arms about it.

...Or they still would have, because Kanye is Kanye, and he provides views because people hate on him even though they don't really know why they're supposed to through clickbait articles about the guy. The dude has straight up referenced a Beck song in one of his albums, it's not like he's ignorant to the guy's body of work.

That being said, he did apologize, and I think he's allowed to speak his mind if it's what he thinks, even if it's super stupid for him to do so, especially in terms of timing. Dude keeps it real. I respect that.