Kanye West: ‘Synesthesia Is The Key To My Genius,’ But What Is It?
Kanye West recently appeared on Ellen to talk with the show’s host, Ellen DeGeneres, about his life and career. Naturally, the talk turned into a vintage Kanye rant in which the rapper/hip-hop artist revealed the key to his genius, a neurological condition known as synesthesia.
Most viewers had never heard of the condition before, and that caused searches for the term to spike on Google Trending Thursday (May 19).
So just what is synesthesia? Here’s the explanation as described by Kanye West himself.
“I have a condition called synesthesia where I see sounds,” West told the audience. “Everything I sonically make is a painting. I see it. I see the importance and the value of everyone being able to experience a more beautiful life.”
The condition has also been linked to a number of other creative individuals, such as Pharrell Williams and Charli XCX, according to the New York Daily News.
In all three cases, audiences have pretty much had to take the artist’s word for it, but it’s not farfetched that Williams, Charlie, and Kanye West are on the up-and-up when claiming they have the condition.
The Scientific American defines synesthesia as “an anomalous blending of the senses in which the stimulation of one modality simultaneously produces sensation in a different modality.”
So it’s a tad more complex than West made it sound, but so-called “Synesthetes” hear colors, feel sounds, and taste shapes, the journal stated.
“What makes synesthesia different from drug-induced hallucinations is that synesthetic sensations are highly consistent: for particular synesthetes, the note F is always a reddish shade of rust, a 3 is always pink or truck is always blue,” explains Thomas J. Palmeri, Randolph B. Blake and Ren Marois of the psychology department and the Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience at Vanderbilt University.
It is not clear just how many people have this condition because claims are hard to substantiate, but SA says that it’s anywhere from one in 200 to one in 20,000 depending on the type of manifestation.
The first time “colored hearing” was mentioned in a medical context was in a German thesis by a German physician circa 1812. Around 73 persons claiming to have synesthesia were identified by 1876, but research has been difficult since much of what happens during the phenomenon is subjective and, thus, difficult to measure.
As for Kanye West, he didn’t spend the majority of his “realness” rant dealing with synesthesia. Instead, he discussed wanting to make a difference in the world in an almost stream-of-consciousness flow that went in and out of making sense.
Some of the more interesting scraps came when West acknowledged that he probably should have put out his $53 million request to Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook instead of Twitter and that he got involved with clothing and apparel to try and reduce bullying by giving kids “something cool to wear.”
Kanye West also criticized some in the media for referring to him as “Wacko” Kanye when all he really wanted to do was make a difference and open doors for people in the next 100 years — “people to come along after I’m dead.”
Also, in what may have been a veiled criticism of Chris Rock, he said that he didn’t take the Oscars to be any laughing matter, referring to the #OscarsSoWhite trend that came after no black people were nominated for any of the major awards at this year’s ceremony.
In the end, he apologized to daytime television for the “realness” to applause from Ellen’s captive audience.
Watch it for yourself in the video embed below (if you can).
What do you think about Kanye West, and do you believe he has synesthesia?
[Image via Flickr Creative Commons / Super45]
