With awards season underway, nominations have been revealed for the NAACP’s 54th Image Awards. Despite absolutely torching his reputation in the back half of 2022, Kanye West has somehow managed to land himself a nomination. Specifically, his collaboration with Alicia Keys and Fivio Foreign, ‘City of Gods’, has been nominated in the category of Best Hip Hop Song.
Without discounting Alicia Keys and Fivio Foreign’s contributions to the collaborative effort, it’s relatively safe to say that West’s behaviors of late haven’t particularly reflected the NAACP’s mission of bettering the world for Black people.
Alicia Keys celebrated the nomination on Twitter, without making any mention of her collaborator who has fallen out of the public’s good graces since the release of ‘City of Gods’ nearly a year ago.
West’s antisemitic words and deeds of late lead to the termination of a large amount of his business partnerships, most notably adidas cutting ties with the disgraced rapper’s YEEZY brand. Ye would go on to appear on Alex Jones’ Infowars program, during which he expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler.
Kanye was also booted off Twitter after posting an image of a swastika stylized as the Star of David, not before publicly posting his screenshots of an iMessage thread between himself and Elon Musk, who told the rapper what he was doing “is not love.” The owner of the social media platform swung the ban hammer in the rapper’s direction shortly afterwards.
West went dark on social media for a time afterwards, but appears to be active once more on Instagram, where has he been unfollowing a large number of accounts. There is also speculation the rapper has also begun the process of producing new music.
The other nominees for the NAACP’s Image Award for Best Hip Hop Song include ‘Wait For U’ by Future feat. Drake and Tems, ‘Hotel Lobby’ by Quavo and Takeoff, ‘BILLIE EILISH.’ by Armani White, and ‘The Heart Part 5’ by Kendrick Lamar.
We Got This Covered has reached out to the NAACP for comment.