\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>f you were to go back and rewatch any of Kanye West\u2019s controversial moments from the last seven years \u2013 I\u2019m not sure why you would, as Ye\u2019s devolution from hallowed icon to cultural pariah has been one of the sadder pop culture stories of the decade, but let\u2019s say you did \u2013 you would spot, lingering in the background, a kid with a camera.<\/p>\n He\u2019s easy to miss \u2013 scrawny, often wearing Calabasas-sized sunglasses, usually holding an iPhone or iPad, he\u2019s nearly indistinguishable from the many fans and associates that often trail the Chicago-born rapper now legally known as Ye wherever he goes. But he\u2019s always there. In the Oval Office meeting where Ye pledged his fealty to Donald Trump, at his infamous \u201cwhite lives matter\u201d Paris fashion show, at any of his messianic \u201cSunday Service\u201d worship sessions \u2013 there he is, impassive, camera trained on Ye.<\/p>\n That kid is Nico Ballesteros, who DM-ed his way into Ye\u2019s orbit as a teenager in 2016, volunteering to record events Ye held at his Calabasas compound. By day, Ballesteros was a student at Orange County School of the Arts; by night, he was quickly becoming a staple of Ye\u2019s entourage. \u201cI would be in class texting with them and they\u2019d be like: \u2018Oh, I\u2019m with Ye right now. We\u2019re in Malibu, at Rick Rubin\u2019s,\u2019\u201d Ballesteros, now 26, recalled recently. \u201cAnd I\u2019d be in class thinking: \u2018Why am I even here? I\u2019ve got to be there.\u2019\u201d By senior year, Ballesteros had assimilated into Ye\u2019s scene. Which is how he got the assignment, shortly after Ye\u2019s hospitalization for mental distress in 2018, to film constantly for what Ye pitched as all-access, no-holds barred account of his bipolar disorder post-breakdown (or as the openly unmedicated Ye proclaimed it, his \u201cbreakthrough\u201d.)<\/p>\n Over the next six years, Ballesteros filmed over 3,000 hours of footage of Ye as the superstar experienced creative breakthroughs and, more often, outbursts, meltdowns, paranoia and international opprobrium. The resulting film, In Whose Name \u2013 given limited release this month after a torturous edit \u2013 is a grimly fascinating portrait of an exceptionally gifted mega-celebrity in unmitigated crisis, a fly-on-the-wall view of personal and professional downfall.<\/p>\n In Whose Name offers an inverse view to the many shocking clips of Ye since 2018 \u2013 the Oval Office visit, the Chicago homecoming, the strange alliance with evangelical leader Joel Osteen, all filmed from within Ye\u2019s orbit, with direct access to the delusions of grandeur and megalomaniacal thinking behind them. The film, aiming for a wider release after a solid box office haul with almost no marketing, spans a particularly tumultuous and isolating time in Ye\u2019s life: his failed, Maga-adjacent presidential campaign; calling slavery a \u201cchoice\u201d in a much-denounced 2018 TMZ interview; his divorce from, and harassment of, ex Kim Kardashian; the end of his lucrative partnership with Adidas, among other business deals, after several antisemitic tweets, including: \u201cI\u2019m a Nazi \u2026 I love Hitler.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It\u2019s all, one would imagine, a lot for a teenager to process, let alone film ethically, but Ballesteros takes questions in stride. He maintains that Ye, who openly decries medication, understood the stakes of filming; in an early scene, taped during Ballesteros\u2019s second week on the job in 2018, Ye tells the prolific producer Pharrell Williams his intent to document his mental health. \u201cThe invitation was apparent to me,\u201d said Ballesteros. At the beginning, he says, Ye \u201cwas in such a clear state of mind. He made it so apparent that that\u2019s what this was for. My silence and my stillness and my observation and bearing witness to it, I feel, was the best service that I could provide to him.\u201d<\/p>\n In Whose Name follows in the mold of verit\u00e9 documentaries \u2013 no talking heads, no narration, an unvarnished single timeline, albeit an unfathomably busy and starry one. Ballesteros\u2019s memories of filming are a blur, as he followed Ye\u2019s sleeping schedule of three to four hours a night. One section from 2018 sees Ballesteros, along with Ye, travelling to the White House, Uganda, Los Angeles, Big Sur, Chicago and Basel, Switzerland, in the span of a week. It was often a struggle to stay awake. \u201cAll I was thinking was, I know we have this thing where I\u2019m supposed to always record,\u201d he recalled of nearly falling asleep in the Oval Office. \u201cThat\u2019s what we feel is the mission here. I just have to sustain the shot.\u201d<\/p>\n During the whirlwind, Ballesteros silently witnesses Ye\u2019s rage toward his wife and her family, Kardashian\u2019s tears as Ye continues to publicly align with Donald Trump. \u201cI would rather be dead than on medication!\u201d he screams at Kris Jenner in one scene I found difficult to finish. (Of the Kardashians, Ballesteros said \u201cthey\u2019ve always been so respectful to me \u2026 they obviously knew what I was there to do and they were appreciative of it,\u201d though he\u2019s vague on whether they\u2019ve have had any conversations about a documentary that seems to challenge the tightly controlled image of their media empire. \u201cFor the most part, there are certain people who I\u2019ve intersected with organically, and reconnected with across the film as a whole, and some I haven\u2019t,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll just leave it at that.\u201d)<\/p>\n He witnesses, too, Ye\u2019s insistence, in meetings with shocked executives and artistic directors, that he\u2019s the greatest artist of all time, a Picasso, a visionary for \u201cnot being a slave to these companies\u201d. He serves as a mostly silent fourth wall for Ye\u2019s assertions of purpose; in a scene that stretches the meaning of surreal, Ye, unnervingly done up in cat-like prosthetics, insists to the camera that he is \u201cmentally free\u201d, because being bipolar means that everything is an art piece.<\/p>\n <\/span>Nico Ballesteros with Ye during Paris fashion week in October 2022.<\/span> Photograph: AMSI Entertainment<\/p>\n One might wonder if there was ever a point \u2013 say, when a fuming, clearly disturbed Ye gets in Kardashian\u2019s face \u2013 that the camera should stop. But Ballesteros insists on the inherent neutrality of the project. \u201cEven though I was young, I understood what it meant, more or less, to be a journalist. And I knew interjecting was not my responsibility or my role, and that I would then be crossing a line,\u201d he says. (Ye treated him well, he said \u2013 \u201che was always so respectful of whenever I needed to take a beat to just rest,\u201d though he \u201cdidn\u2019t like when I stopped recording, because I think he just wanted to feel seen, ultimately.\u201d)<\/p>\n Even in Ye\u2019s most shocking moments \u2013 and there are plenty, as he insists on invoking slavery bereft of any historical accuracy \u2013 \u201cI always just maintained journalistic integrity,\u201d he said. \u201cI knew that that was the professional thing to do, to keep my own personal opinions out of it. Because if I were to start to have opinions and formulate points of view, it would create a bias. And I didn\u2019t want to change what I initially intended, which was to create an objective observational documentary.\u201d He maintains that Ye had no input on the final product, though the two watched a cut together, an experience Ballesteros has described as \u201cbeautiful\u201d.<\/p>\n Arguably the most fascinating observation is not Ye\u2019s grim descent into rightwing nihilism, but how everyone around him barely reacts. Ballesteros films Ye in what seems to be constant contact with the uber-rich, powerful and provocative: Elon Musk, Jacques Herzog, Donald Trump, Drake, Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens \u2013 all of them overly obsequious, none of them challenging his ego, save Swizz Beatz and a clearly heartbroken Michael Che, post 2018 SNL meltdown. (Chris Rock assures Ye that his off-script rant defending his Maga hat will go down like Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor ripping up a photo of the pope.) Everywhere he goes, cameras, eager face, devotion, fascination \u2013 \u201ca reality distortion field\u201d of fame. The film\u2019s name, with its religious overtones, provokes questions of our continued attention and loyalty, in the face of madness.<\/p>\n But though In Whose Name is, in part, \u201ca film about idolatry\u201d, Ballesteros said his ultimate aim was compassion. \u201cA lot of those things that may have occurred throughout all those headlines \u2026 wasn\u2019t the deepest part of who this human is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cPerhaps there\u2019s some empathy there,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s not necessarily a goal of mine to convince anyone of anything, but I wanted to create a study of the human, not the idol.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you were to go back and rewatch any of Kanye West\u2019s controversial moments from the last seven years \u2013 I\u2019m not sure why you would, as Ye\u2019s devolution from hallowed icon to cultural pariah has been one of the sadder pop culture stories of the decade, but let\u2019s say you did \u2013 you would<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1929,9499,1930,1927,3890,14419,337,4014,14190,7446,13406],"class_list":{"0":"post-23650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-documentary","9":"tag-filmed","10":"tag-films","11":"tag-hours","12":"tag-kanye","13":"tag-kardashians","14":"tag-life","15":"tag-maga","16":"tag-rage","17":"tag-teen","18":"tag-wests"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}