Kanye became problematic after Taylor Swift for white liberals. We didn't want to like him, but we also weren't allowed to like Taylor Swift, because of that middle America thing, so we came up with all kinds of coping strategies to talk about him. He went pop, his earlier stuff was better, he's a great producer but the lyrics are awful. Once he married Kim and went into fashion though all bets were off and you never even had to pretend to like him (as long as you made sure your white friends knew you still liked "real black music" which is code for backpacker shit white people listen to, or obscure ghetto productions you don't actually listen to, but maybe Vice told you about).