Is Kanye West about to explode?

This week has been tough for both Kanye West and his family. Tweet after tweet, awkward statement after embarrassing statement, the rapper and fashion designer seems to have succumbed to his own psychic turmoil. The last episode was last night. In a now-deleted tweet, Kanye said that, in order: his family would try to make him declare him mentally ill with the help of doctors, that he had tried to divorce his wife Kim from 2018 and called his mother-in-law "Kris Jong-Un"." In a series of other inconsistent tweets, West took on Kris Jenner, cited various conspiracy theories and compared himself to the protagonist of Get Out because his family would try to get him interned. In a video surfaced online, the rapper allegedly threatened to abandon his partnership with Gap, prompting the company's shares to tumble 6% overnight.

The origin of this delirium via social media was probably the Charleston pseudo-rally during which the rapper made a series of controversial statements (including proposing to donate a million dollars to every new mother and insult the national heroine Harriett Tubman). The climax of the bizarre scene came when West admitted that he considered aborting his first daughter, North, only to burst into tears, mention the Old Testament and get lost in a series of unintelligible and, most likely, completely inconsistent sounds. The real damage, however, has been private. Anonymous sources close to West's family have told People that the relationship between him and his wife has deteriorated after the rapper's statements:

«Kim is shocked that Kanye spoke about North at the rally. [...] Things have broken down significantly between the two of them, and it’s happened pretty suddenly».

The main problem is that the Wests are not an American family like the others, but they are part of an economic empire of considerable size, ranging from music, television to fashion, and is linked to the economic fates of entire companies. It remains true, however, that, historically, the only side of Kanye's activities negatively affected by his problems with bipolarism was the musical one. Yeezy's sales, in fact, have successfully surpassed far more serious episodes involving West, such as the one in November 2016, after which West canceled a series of concerts and was interned at UCLA Medical Center for an episode of temporary psychosis from which he had emerged, eleven months later, as a Trump supporter, inaugurating one of the most eccentric sides of the media story that is his life.

But the problem remains business-based. As mentioned above, one of Kanye's bold statements has precipitated the value of Gap's shares – a company that, among other things, to forge a partnership with him has rescinded the one with Telfar Clemens facing harsh reactions from the public. West's behaviour also affects a commercial sphere of agreements and strategies prepared months in advance, no one would want to put a mentally unstable individual in charge of a great commercial synergy – but perhaps this is the moment when West's mental health and economic management skills will be on a collision course. It remains to be seen what will remain intact after the collision has occurred.