One of the things I admire most about Ye is his how he’s reconciled his perfectionism with the failure that comes with innovation.
At his since-deleted blog post from 2008, Ye wrote, “It’s either pass or fail! A+ or F-!”
In his interview with REM in 2013, half a decade later, Ye says, “If everything I did failed, just the fact that I’m willing to fail is an inspiration. People are so scared to lose that they don’t even try.” (3:15)
The Stem Player is a great example of this; the streaming platforms and record labels are incredibly difficult to disrupt, and yet Ye, Yeezy, Alex Klein, and Kano are going straight into it as soon as they were contractually allowed.
Artists are going to gain courage from this and it’s going to start a self-fulfilling dynamic; whether the Stem Player succeeds or fails, Ye is pushing people to behave in the direction aligned with his worldview, with artists regaining some power over how people handle their art.