Thursday, May 8, 2025 was a day filled with momentous events. The college of cardinals voted in the first ever American-born pope, leaders of BRICS-affiliated countries assembled in Moscow to celebrate “Victory Day,” and the artist formerly known as Kanye West, now merely “Ye,” dropped a track that may just prove, against all odds, to be the anthem of the summer, “Heil Hitler.”

The song and its accompanying video have, predictably enough, been removed from nearly all social media sites, but you can still watch it here (downloading recommended!):

https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1920387087049572704

Ye’s earlier release “WW3,” which became a Spotify hit in both Germany and Israel, already expressed many of the sentiments voiced in “Heil Hitler,” albeit with slightly less emphasis and a certain degree of sly misdirection:

They tellin’ me that I’m a bully, I’m antisemitic fully

They say I’m actin’ like Hitler,

But how am I actin’ like Hitler, when I am a fuckin’ nigger?

But his race (which he invokes with that unmistakable “hard r”) doesn’t prevent him from indulging in Nazi fandom, which he admits readily in the song’s second verse:

Rockin’ swastikas cuz all my niggas (are) Nazis

Reading Mein Kampf, two chapters ’fore I go to sleep

However, “HH” (shortened for the sake of brevity, not as a sop to any smelly would-be censors out there, whose names are Legion) goes into greater autobiographical detail concerning Ye’s frustrations concerning his current situation as a divorced father, and a blacklisted artist:

Man, these people took my kids from me

Then they closed my bank account

I got so much anger in me, got no way to take it out…

With all of the money and fame I still can’t get my kids back

With all of the money and fame I still don’t get to see my children

Niggas see my Twitter, but they don’t see how I be feelin’

But Ye doesn’t entirely spare himself, and even ventures into what some might think of as “TMI” territory concerning certain chemical and sexual proclivities:

I think I’m stuck in the Matrix

Where the fuck’s my nitrous?

Yes I am a cuck, I like when people fuck on my bitch.

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Ye seems, in fact, to be subjecting himself to what could be called a self-induced humiliation ritual. A month ago, he shocked his fans when he released the song “Cousins,” in which he admits to having watched pornography with his male cousin when they both were boys, and also confesses how they orally pleasured one another afterwards.

These sorts of revelations— that he enjoys being cuckolded (his upcoming album will apparently even bear the title Cuck), that he took part in youthful gay incestuous indiscretions as a teenager, and that he is a nitrous-oxide addict— needn’t have been made, but Ye, like many performing artists, clearly has an exhibitionist streak; perhaps this stems from self-loathing, or maybe it is indulged out of allegiance to a credo to shun fear, shame, and modesty whilst engaged in the creative process. It does lend Ye’s music an appealing vulnerability, a rare quality indeed for one who operates in a genre like hip-hop, which is largely built upon swagger, braggadocio and the establishment of “cred.”

In fact, even in this blistering, taboo-shattering “fuck you” anthem, Ye reveals that he his motives for intentionally embracing the role of “villain” are rooted in the frustration of feeling misunderstood and the pain of being unfairly ostracized:

With all of the money and fame I still don’t get to see my children

Niggas see my Twitter, but they don’t see how I be feelin’

So I became a Nazi

Bitch, I’m the villain

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Then the chorus kicks in, and the listener is suddenly caught up in a sonic earthquake. Ye’s voice is joined by those of several male backup singers, all belting out “Nigga, heil Hitler! nigga, heil Hitler! All my niggas Nazis, nigga heil Hitler!”

The chorus is the earworm of the song, and oh what an earworm it is! How deeply it burrows into the deepest recesses of your skull… In addition to being maddeningly catchy and sublimely resonant, there is also something compelling about the very improbability of hearing a group of black men’s voices passionately heiling Hitler in a manner reminiscent of an African chant, in supreme defiance of all petty prohibitions against “improper” speech.

The video is scorching in its simplicity, and equally as bracing in its visuals. Under eerie, soft-blue lighting, we see a tribe of scowling, muscular, dusky-complexioned warriors, clad in wolfskin pelts. Ye himself is not pictured; thus, these men assume the collective identity of the blacklisted rapper’s avenging psyche.

If this were 1985, an artist intending to be offensive and “play the villain” would no doubt compose a song with a title like “Hail Satan.” But in 2025, such a stunt would be dismissed as hokey and juvenile. Yet the very same people who would scoff at “Hail Satan” gnash their teeth and clutch their pearls when they hear “Heil Hitler.” But there’s another side to that coin: the very fact that Hitler and the Nazi swastika are so taboo enhances their juju; thus Ye’s song successfully taps into the rebellious spirit that chafes against the “smelly little orthodoxies” of our oppressive and sanctimonious Zeitgeist.

Yep, Ye’s “HH” is a certified hood classic, a banger, and a bop all rolled into one.

https://andynowicki.substack.com/p/yes-heil-hitler-is-the-song-of-the