Before last week, you would have been hard pressed to utter the names Kanye West and Rudy Giuliani in the same sentence.
Now, however, thanks to an insatiable news cycle where all stories warrant a breaking news banner, it's clear that the rapper and the former New York City mayor have far more in common than previously imagined.
Both support President Trump. Both love to hear themselves talk. Both were on separate comeback tours last week, and both got into hot water for unsolicited comments they dropped during lengthy television interviews.
Rapper-fashion designer West, who announced on his newly reactivated Twitter account that he would be releasing two new albums in June, chose TMZ for his grand reentry into the fray. The celebrity news platform was one of many tabloids that gave rise to his wife, Kim Kardashian, and her family empire. For better or worse, the Kardashians and the tabloids made West a celebrity whose image and reputation reached an audience beyond his music. It's a history that half explains why West chose "TMZ Live" as the place to stage his televised return.
Former prosecutor Giuliani also chose a familiar and safe venue _ Fox News _ for his first television appearance as Trump's new attorney. The former presidential hopeful and passed-over candidate for top spots in the Trump administration was also a regular Fox contributor, so his appearance Wednesday was like revisiting the old neighborhood after achieving new levels of success elsewhere. The old loose cannon, as he's known in political circles, was back.
But for both West and Giuliani, familiarity bred recklessness. Within minutes of sitting down with hosts Harvey Levin and Charles Latibeaudiere in the TMZ studios, West rattled off dozens of odd, tangential and then inflammatory remarks, setting off a firestorm of criticism from many of his music peers, entertainers and fans. His provocative comments came during one of his first major interviews since the public meltdowns surrounding the release of 2016's "The Life of Pablo."
"When you hear about slavery for 400 years ... . For 400 years? That sounds like a choice," he said.
The bizarro hits kept coming, including, "The mob tries to make all blacks Democrats for food stamps." Asked about the Make America Great Again hat he wore in a photo that had been posted on Twitter the previous week, he answered: "There's infinite reasons to why an artist does something." None of which he explained during the scattered and offensive race-baiting interview.
The following day, it was Giuliani who stunned viewers and Fox host Sean Hannity by voluntarily mentioning, almost as a side note, that Trump had reimbursed his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, $130,000 for the hush money Cohen had paid porn star Stormy Daniels to secure her silence over an alleged sexual encounter with Trump. Giuliani's casual claim refuted the president's own statements of ignorance over the payout, adding to a mess of White House scandals so deep that even "Scandal's" Olivia Pope might throw up her hands.
Call it a cynical ploy for publicity, an easy branding opportunity or rallying the troops behind a cause so convoluted there's no chance of detangling it with logic. Whatever the case, both men's reckless, ego-driven monologues pushed them to the top of conversations across a multitude of media platforms, making their names hashtag-worthy after prolonged periods out of the spotlight.
Their approaches were pulled straight from Trump's own playbook: The message doesn't matter as long as you get the crowd's attention long enough to sell whatever it is you're selling. But Giuliani's aspirations to finally be seen as a serious Beltway player and West's attempts to stay on the top of a rap game that's been won by new geniuses like the Pulitzer Prize-winning Kendrick Lamar, were not only pathetic, they were dangerous.
At best, their self-serving banter creates fabricated controversy that distracts from bigger issues. In Giuliani's case, his rouge red-herring campaign did lead the public away from Russia and Mueller ... and right to Stormy's doorstep. It's doubtful he meant to do that, although he's since backpedaled, saying it was a sanctioned effort to show that the payment was not tied to campaign money.
At worst, these irresponsible pursuits of self-promotion erode trust in the democratic ideals both these men have championed _ be it Giuliani's career upholding the law or West's tireless commentary, on and off album, about racial equality.
TMZ senior producer Van Lathan, who is African American, echoed the reactions of many Americans, shaming the musician with razor-sharp potency as he rose from a desk on the set and declared: "While you are making music and being an artist and living the life that you've earned by being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives."
The beatdown continued, "We have to deal with the marginalization that's come from the 400 years of slavery that you said for our people was a choice. ... . Frankly, I'm disappointed, I'm appalled and brother, I am unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something to me that's not real."
West's over-the-top brand of showmanship has always been a mix of artistic credibility, hard-earned hip-hop swagger and a pastiche of provocative and often confusing sentiments on race, fame and American politics. But when he said live on air in a raw, shaky delivery during a 2005 benefit after Hurricane Katrina that then-President George W. Bush "doesn't care about black people," it came from a heartfelt desire to expose a horrific truth: People were dying across New Orleans and the government was doing too little too late.
I interviewed West a week or two before that, on the eve of his career-changing "Late Registration." Even back then, he was cocksure and full of himself, but he had the talent to back up most his boasts. Not all of them, however. "I think this is the best-produced record _ ever," he said.
But for all his bravado backstage at that video shoot, he still hovered nervously outside the door of a dressing room as some of his confidants listened to his new album for the first time. He kept popping his head in the room: "I saw you talking over the first verse of 'Dear Mama,'" he said. "You need to hear it again, because you may have missed something." Later, he grilled each listener: "What do you think? I mean, really, really think?"
Under all that swagger was a healthy amount of self-doubt _ that need to be better that drives all of us to be better.
Whatever is eroding West's basic sense of human decency, causing him to align with the bigoted hatemongers he once railed against, has undoubtedly destroyed his credibility as an artist. There is no coming back from this, unless it's as a reality show host, Fox News personality or perhaps presidential hopeful.
Even his mother-in-law, Kris Jenner, the ruler of the Kardashian enterprise, seemed close to defeated when she tried to defend West during an appearance on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show." "He has a lot of love for his fans, and he will explain himself in his own way," she said, claiming that West always does things "with good intentions."
Trump momentarily threw in for Giuliani, before throwing him under the bus and then defending him again over the Fox News gaffe. The president's comments may redeem Giuliani among his base, and he may even have a second shot at the Oval Office now that that once-unreachable bar has dropped below sea level.
Wherever they go from here, both men exemplify a tragic fall from grace. And if we choose to keep listening to their desperate pleas for attention, they may just take us all down with them.
