For fans and admirers of Kanye West, the past five years have been a difficult, confusing, and sometimes infuriating time. His announcement at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards that he intended to run for president in 2020 soon turned into a bitter cycle of controversy and concern. West went on to be hospitalized and upon his return endorsed Donald Trump and issued a series of bizarre statements around slavery and racism.

The media circus surrounding West has since become an ongoing spectacle, fed by a frenzied press who report on each public outburst without compassion or contextualization. While West’s psychological state remains unclear, and concern for him has mounted in recent months, it has become common to pin his political statements and ambitions to armchair diagnoses of his mental health. But forcing such connections is often just a way to avoid the very real possibility that this cultural icon, with whom many deeply identify, may be genuinely drawn toward Trump and his platform.

Attempts to frame West’s recent political trajectory as a distinct break from his earlier views disguise the fact that West’s current statements aren’t a radical departure from the contradictory dynamics that have always driven his work. Lamenting the rise of the problematic “new Kanye” by harking back to the more politically palatable version of the “old Kanye,” has become such a standard refrain that West himself mimicked it on the track “I Love Kanye” from his 2016 album Life of Pablo, rapping from the perspective of a fan who has grown disillusioned with him. Yet the truth is that these personas are not as distinct as many would like to suggest.