Foreword; Davey D Preface ; Julius Bailey PART I: REVISITING THE PHARMAKON: ARTISTIC GIFTS/HUMAN COMPLEXITIES 1. Now I Ain't Saying He's a 'Crate Digger': Kanye West and the Soul Archive; Mark Anthony Neal 2. Kanye West: Asterisk Genius?; Akil Houston 3. Afrofuturism: The Visual Imagery of Kanye West; Reynaldo Anderson and John Jennings 4. You got Kanyed: Seen But Not Heard; David J. Leonard 5. 'An Examination of the Kanye West Higher Education Trilogy; Heidi R. Lewis PART II: UNPACKING HETERO-NORMATIVITY AND COMPLICATING RACE AND GENDER 6. 'By Any Means Necessary': Kanye West and the Hypermasculine Construct; Sha'Dawn Battle 7. Kanye West's Sonic Cosmopolitanism; Regina Bradley 8. 'Hard to Get Straight' Kanye West, Masculine Anxiety, Dis-identification; Tim'm West 9. You Can't Stand the Nigger I See!: Kanye West's Analysis of Anti-Black Death; Tommy Curry PART III: THEORIZING THE AESTHETIC, THE POLITICAL, AND THE EXISTENTIAL 10. When Apollo and Dionysus Clash: A Nietzschean perspective on the work of Kanye West"; Julius Bailey 11. The God of the New Slaves or Slave to a Religion and a God?; Monica Miller 12. Trimalchio From Chicago: Flashing Lights & The Great Kanye in West Egg; A.D. Carson 13. Confidently (Non)cognizant of Neoliberalism: Kanye West and the Interruption of Taylor Swift; Nick Krebs 14. Kanye Omari West: Visions of Modernity; Dawn Boeck