I May Destroy You promised to be provocative, given that it springs from the mind of Michaela Coel (the creator, writer, and star of the hit Britcom, Chewing Gum, now on Netflix). Since the show revolves around sexual consent, I also expected it to be tonally different than her relatively lighthearted series, and yes, that’s the case. Yet the show is not a fully harrowing watch despite tackling difficult issues. It’s true that Coel brings a brazenly witty reputation to the table, although I still did not anticipate any humor and guessed wrong there. What I did expect is a sort-of blend of Unbelievable and Euphoria, yet this effort feels less clinical and exudes more warmth, respectively, than these recent treatments of sexual assault and violence. All three shows are very good in their own way, but I May Destroy You cements Coel as a fearless creative force, not to be ignored.

Coel’s multi-hyphenating again here as creator, writer, and star while adding executive producer and co-director to her existing mix for the BBC One series that will also air on HBO and HBO Max. It’s dizzying, what she’s accomplished, with this disorienting and uncomfortable and tragic and triumphantly real series. As noted, there’s a darkly funny streak that tears through the 12-episode season of half-hour episodes, although this was neither engineered nor avoided (Coel even told the BBC, “I didn’t add humour, humour is always there; at every party, funeral and war, although often uninvited, she’s always there”). Well, this uninvited party “spikes” the show, akin to the drug slipped to Coel’s character (Arabella) by a rapist.

Here’s the thing, though: we’re not supposed to laugh during stories of sexual assault. For a reason: rape is absolutely no joke, but Coel’s navigating the post-#MeToo era, and she’s not afraid to make her audience feel uncomfortable. She’s also stunningly adept at weaving textured stories, where a survivor is not singularly defined by their own trauma. This is an authentic portrayal of her character’s experience, not only as a woman but as a Black woman and artist and fully-dimensional human, against an expansive backdrop, and yes, humor tiptoes into the space.

The setup: The London-based, 20-something Arabella is a carefree soul with a lively social life and a writing career-on-the-rise (she’s celebrated as a “voice of her generation”). One night while desiring a break from deadline pressure, she hits a bar with friends and wakes up feeling “off.” An hours-long gap in her memory turns troublesome, and it’s quite apparent that something is wrong, but she’s only snapped into awareness by a fleeing memory flash. The rest of the series sees her piecing together the mystery of who raped her and how to take action on said perpetrator. The show could be triggering to some viewers, but Coel so deftly handles the subject matter that there’s an overwhelming sense of catharsis by season’s end.

This setup is also is notable for a few reasons:

(1) The rape is based upon her own experience while writing Chewing Gum.
(2) Arabella’s a flawed and “imperfect” victim, and said portrayal will be controversial.

The first characteristic is what helps Coel grind her heels deep into an authentic portrayal of the potentially dicey second aspect. It’s an inherently risky approach, for sure. Yet Coel toys with the notion that sexual assault victims must behave in certain ways, lest they not be believed, almost as if to challenge the system that’s actually set up to make prosecution of rapists exceedingly difficult. Adding to her ways of f*cking with expectations: some disorienting aspects of the show. Some moments don’t seem real — but the rape sure as hell is real — and this appears to be subversive commentary on how survivors are often made to question their own versions of events.

Here’s where I come back to the notion that this show is provocative. It is that, but more than simply looking to provoke reaction, I May Destroy You is seeking to provoke a thought process. Other arcs intersect with Arabella’s main story, with other players and flashbacks and various iterations of the sexual assault theme. The central sexual assault is the most generally accepted definition of rape: Arabella was drugged by a stranger, who forcibly had sex with her. Other scenarios are at play, like a non-consensual encounter between two people who previously had consensual sex, or the removal of a condom in an otherwise consensual encounter. There are even more permutations to consider on this series, but underneath it all, there’s a collection of achingly human friends, who support each other as these questions (unfortunately) must be asked.

What this distills to the core, for me, is that Arabella, as a character, is multi-dimensional and resilient and triumphant through all she endures. She’s not drawn through a particularly sensitive lens, and that might be off-putting to some. Arabella seeks to avoid but must reckon with her trauma, but where I May Destroy You differs from other survival portrayals is this: this show does not brand survivors with their trauma. Yes, there’s an added layer to Arabella’s post-sexual assault existence, but it’s not something that other characters view as her defining characteristic. That’s how many sexual assault survivors are written, but Coel’s too crafty to let that happen to Arabella. Or to herself.

Coel, underneath it all, is a firestarter, and that brings me to one of the most striking scenes of the season. This takes place very late in the story, so I will not supply much context for the surrounding scene, but it involves Arabella dancing in a drinking establishment to one of The Prodigy’s most notorious tunes. She’s tearing through lyrics, limbs flying everywhere in controlled chaos and shouting, “I’m a firestarter, twisted firestarter!” almost as a dare. A dare to another character? Perhaps. A dare to the audience? Definitely. This leads to a complicated, sure-to-be-controversial flourish for the show, one that conquers trauma, but might start some fires in the process. Yet as with the rest of the season, Coel — who is a voice of her generation — undertakes her character’s actions with a fearlessness that’s almost breathtaking.

BBC1’s ‘I May Destroy You’ makes its HBO debut at 10:30pm EST on Sunday.

The effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic, including bans on international travel, have gone on a lot longer than I think most of us were really expecting when the whole thing got started. That may have something to do with a change in WWE’s official rhetoric we saw on last night’s episode of NXT.

If you watched the show, you know that El Hijo del Fantasma beat Drake Maverick in the tournament finals to become the new NXT Cruiserweight Champion. That’s great for him, but when this tournament started it was only going to crown an Interim Cruiserweight Champion, because Jordan Devlin is still the official champion but is currently stuck in Ireland. You didn’t hear that word “Interim” as the tournament ended, however.

So what changed? According to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio, WWE has quietly stripped Jordan Devlin of the title since he’s been unable to defend it or even appear on WWE TV in so long, which makes Fantasma the sole champion. As for why this wasn’t explained on the show, Dave said they just expected fans to come up with their own explanations, which does sound like typical WWE behavior.

On the other hand, as of today, the roster page on WWE.com shows both El Hijo del Fantasma and Jordan Devlin sharing the Cruiserweight Champion slot. So it’s possible that Meltzer is wrong on this one, and all that’s happened is a change in rhetoric. Either way, it seems likely that an angry Jordan Devlin will return to wrestle Fantasma just as soon as he’s able, and the winner of that match will be Cruiserweight Champ going forward.

The NBA’s Board of Governors approved a return to play plan that will send 22 teams to Orlando in July for the completion of eight regular season games before the playoffs.

The Players’ Association now must ratify that plan as well, but if they do, it will bring basketball back at the end of July. We learned earlier in the day that the plan will put the NBA Draft on October 15, with the lottery on August 25. The Athletic’s Shams Charania then offered details on the key dates for the return plan, not just for the resumption of this season, but for offseason and 2020-21 dates as well.

The July 7 date for everyone to head to Disney offers them a chance for more practice and camp time, as well as some “preseason” type scrimmages with other teams, as reported by the AP’s Tim Reynolds, before the July 31 start.

With the season ending on October 12 at the latest, the draft on the 15th and free agency starting on the 18th will make for quite the turnaround. While most anticipated something like a Christmas Day start to next season, according to Charania, the plan is to restart on Dec. 1 with camp starting on Nov. 10, which means it’s possible that teams in the Finals could have less than a month of rest before camp begins.

It is an incredibly condensed schedule, and it will be very interesting to see how this impacts next season for teams that make a deep playoff run this year. One would think those teams would be more likely to try and rest players and shuffle lineups in and out to keep guys fresh on such a short turnaround. It’s hard not to think that the NBA starting so soon is in an attempt to set players up for potentially playing in the Olympics next summer, although it wouldn’t be a surprise if players that play deep in the playoffs this year would be less than keen on playing an extended schedule of international play next season.

Charlamagne Tha God, known for being a host on the NYC-based radio show The Breakfast Club, virtually joined Stephen Colbert on a recent episode of The Late Show. As a guest, Charlamagne discussed systematic racism, the ongoing protests, and why he’s not shocked by news of looting.

“None of it surprises me,” Charlamagne said, speaking to Colbert about reports that over 380 cities across America have held protests. Charlamagne said he believes America has oftentimes been misportrayed as an inclusive country:

“Right now, America’s being exposed right now for the illusion it’s always been. America advertises itself as an all-inclusive resort, but it’s really a project founded by an old, rich white man for rich white men. They make the rules and then we’re all caught up in this web of white supremacy. Nothing’s going to get us out of that web until you have more privileged white men who are willing to dismantle that system by relinquishing and sharing the wealth and power. Black people, we don’t have the power to dismantle that system. We didn’t create it. We have the power to force our elected officials to change the way the system is, and that’s what the protests are doing to me.”

Charlamagne continued to point out the hypocrisy of liberty in America: “You can’t advertise liberty and justice for all but only offer liberty and justice for white folks. How many times are we supposed to watch Black people brutalized and murdered at the hands of the police? Our ancestors were enslaved and built this country for free and didn’t get anything for it and the country feels like it doesn’t have to atone for that?”

Continuing to speak about protests, Charlamagne addressed news reports of people looting various stores and offered his explanation:

“Forty-plus million people filed for unemployment and wondering how they’re going to pay their bills, their rent, put food on the table. And you wonder why people are looting? Not to mention, people are clearly not happy with the administration in the White House, so you just have this perfect storm for people who are disgusted by this white supremacist system called America. That doesn’t surprise me at all. I think America has been past its breaking point. And I’m actually shocked this is just happening now.”

Charlemagne added that people both have the right to be angry and the right to express their anger. “I think that they’re just screaming to America to make a change,” he said. “We keep talking about things ‘going back to normal.’ Normal was never working in America. It just wasn’t. How does a white supremacist system work for everybody?”

Watch Charlamagne Tha God on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert below.

Drew Brees has drawn the ire of the sports world for comments he made about kneeling during the national anthem on Wednesday. While Brees has long-believed that those who follow in Colin Kaepernick’s footsteps are disrespecting the flag — evoking his grandfathers’ service in World War II — he repeated those comments on Wednesday amid the protests that have occurred nationwide in response to the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

Brees received a firestorm of criticism in the hours following his comments. Teammates, other NFL players, and even LeBron James all chimed in to call Brees out for his ignorance and lack of understanding, leading to Brees offering up an apology on Thursday morning that earned a mixed reaction. Perhaps the strongest reaction came from Fox personality Shannon Sharpe, who called on Brees to “probably retire.”

Sharpe, during Thursday’s edition of Skip and Shannon: Undisputed, said that “what’s made the Black fight so hard is people like Drew Brees,” before diving into Brees’ “insulting” mention of World War II, referencing how Black Americans were treated upon returning stateside.

“I can’t believe you, Drew,” Sharpe said. “What would make you think, at this moment, Skip, eight, nine days after George Floyd had lost his life, you would bring up the military and the flag? Again, Skip, I told you, Skip, if you wanna talk about B, and I don’t wanna talk about B, I wanna talk about C, I’m gonna talk about D, I’m gonna talk about everything except what you wanna talk about, because that’s an issue I do not want to face. Drew, Blacks fought in World War II alongside your grandfather, and did not have the freedoms that they had when they came home, Skip, although they had sacrificed the exact same thing as his grandfathers did.”

Sharpe eventually spoke from the perspective of someone who has been the leader in an NFL locker room, calling his apology “meaningless” and saying that in his eyes, it may be in Brees’ best interest to retire.

“It will never be the same,” Sharpe said. “Take it from a guy that’s been a leader in a locker room for a number of years. At every step, Skip, I’ve been the leader in a locker room. What he said, they gonna, “oh, yeah, you know.” No, they will never look at him the same, because he spoke his heart, and Skip, it wasn’t what he said, it’s how he said it. He was defiant. I will never respect the man, even though Colin Kaepernick had told you what he was doing, Skip, and guess what? Even after all this, nobody had even mentioned the flag. He brought that up on his own.”

Brees has drawn a ton of ire, but few have been as pointed and blunt as Sharpe in referencing the historical contexts that his comments demand and expressing their belief that he should call it a career. There is no word on whether Brees, who has a deal lined up with NBC to move into the broadcast booth at the conclusion of his NFL career, will heed Sharpe’s advice.

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have a new album, Sideways To New Italy, set to drop tomorrow (June 5). Ahead of then, they have offered one more preview of the record, a song called “Cameo.”

The band’s Fran Keaney says of the track, “This is a love song. It’s about reaching through time portals. The lyrics were pieced together over about a year like a little puzzle. I found the first pieces in Rushworth, and the last pieces in Darwin.”

Keaney previously said of the album as a whole, “I wanted to write songs that I could use as some sort of bedrock of hopefulness to stand on, something to be proud of. A lot of the songs on the new record are reaching forward and trying to imagine an idyll of home and love.” Bassist Joe Russo added, “We tried to make these little nods to our friends and loved ones, to stay loyal to our old selves.”

The group also recently offered a statement about the George Floyd protests, providing their perspective as white Australians: “None of us have ever felt unsafe walking down the street because of how we look. We don’t even need to think about it. We are beneficiaries of the same systemic racism that lets people of colour die at the hands of those who are supposed to protect them. Not just in America, but in our own backyard, where First Nations people continue to die in police custody & suffer the highest rates of incarceration in the world. We stand in solidarity with protestors and we are continuing to educate ourselves about how to be useful allies, and confront our own sense of complacency and despair.”

Listen to “Cameo” above.

Sideways To New Italy is out 6/5 via Sub Pop. Pre-order it here.

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As the NBA finalizes the makeshift calendar in place for the remainder of the 2019-2020 season, it has also reportedly settled on dates for the draft lottery and the draft itself. A report from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski listed Aug. 25 as lottery day and Oct. 15 as draft day.

Should the NBA Finals go seven games, the latest they would end is Oct. 12, which would put the draft a quick three days afterward. The lottery teams will be set in stone by Aug. 25, as this is likely around the time the regular season portion of the NBA’s Orlando bubble league will finish, locking in who makes the playoffs and who gets ping-pong balls designated for them for the lottery.

Expect that the next details to emerge will be how to restructure free agency, which would likely come shortly after the Oct. 15 draft. Currently, contracts are set to expire June 30, a full month before the restructured season is even due to begin. The NBA also will, according to Shams Charania, continue to explore its options to run a draft combine. The annual April event in Chicago was canceled shortly after the NBA season was put on pause.

In addition, everything from player and team option dates to trade exceptions to the moratorium will have to be reconsidered, but establishing a firm calendar when it comes to the draft will allow players, agents and scouting departments more clarity about what to expect this year.

It’s okay if you’re a little fried right now. There’s a lot going on out there. We’re in the middle of a pandemic and we’re teetering on a massive recession (depression?) and people all over the country are taking to the streets to protest hundreds of years of systemic racism. Any one of those things would be a lot. All of them happening at once is something else entirely. This is not to say you shouldn’t engage with them. You should. You can devote your time and energy and resources to any and all of them. Donate money, join a protest, educate yourself and others. Be a helpful member of society for as many hours a day as you can without burning yourself out entirely.

It’s fine to take a breather every now and again if you need to, though, just to give your brain a break. You’re no good to yourself or anyone else if you don’t recharge the batteries once in a while. That’s all we’re doing here: giving you some options for recharging a little. Below, I’ve compiled a list of television shows you can try to flick on when you need a quick break. The best part: Every show on this list has three or fewer seasons. Again, there’s a lot going on in the world. It’s okay if you’re not prepared mentally to dive into 12 seasons of a bleak procedural. The second-best part: It gives me a chance to yell at people about watching my favorite shows again, which is a little bit of self-care for me.

This can be good for all of us. Let’s do it.

If you’re looking for funny shows about bummed-out people

Patriot is one of my favorite shows ever. It’s also one I recommend to people a little more cautiously than other shows. That has nothing to do with the quality of it. Patriot is so good. It has more to do with the deep, personal hurt and disappointment I will feel if the person I recommend it to doesn’t also like it. It’s also hard to explain. The show is about a very depressed spy who gets tangled up in an international espionage fiasco. He works undercover at a piping company. He goes to Europe. He shoots people. He sings folk songs. Sometimes his songs play in the background and only after about 30 seconds will you realize that the lyrics are narrating the action on the screen. It is profoundly weird and profoundly silly and sometimes just profound. Amazon canceled it after two seasons and, while I’m still livid about this, the two seasons out in the world are about as close as a show can come to being made specifically for me. It’s like the Coen brothers directing a John Le Carre story that was punched up by the team from Bojack Horseman. This is what I meant about it being hard to explain. Just watch it.

Speaking of very silly shows about depressed guys that only lasted for two seasons and sent me into a rage-spiral upon their cancellation, there’s also Lodge 49. Lodge 49 was also so good. The show followed a guy named Dud who recently lost his father and his purpose and was floating through life sipping mixed drinks from a giant jug he called Thermosaurus. He stumbled upon a mysterious lodge — think like a budget Freemasons — that he soon discovered was also full of people who were lost and searching for something. It’s about finding meaning in life through friends that can become like family, and it’s about wild road trips to Mexico, and Paul Giamatti shows up in season two as a prolific and unhinged author who occasionally heaves himself through a window. It’s a peaceful and relaxing watch that will sometimes make you cackle and sometimes make you tear up. Both seasons are on Hulu. You could do way worse.

If you’re looking for something a little heavier and timely that also stars Regina King

Want some shows that speak to the current moment but also feature very goofy gags about, say, cruise ships filled with lion-crazed sex cults or phrase like “squid pro quo”? Would it help if they’re both on HBO Max and star Regina King? Of course it would. Damon Lindelof is here to help, first with The Leftovers, a show about two percent of the world’s population straight-up vanishing one day out of nowhere and all the ways the people who survived it try to cope. The first season is heavy, man. The second season is as good a season of television as you’ll ever see. The third season wraps everything up — kind of — in a heartfelt and meaningful way and also features a bunch of jokes about wieners and the Wu-Tang Clan. There’s a lot going on. If you want to address the idea of a pandemic head-on, this notion that not everyone will make it through this stretch, The Leftovers is the best version of that you’ll find.

If you’re looking for something that addresses the other huge issue in the news right now, policing and systemic racism, then there’s Watchmen, another series from Lindelof that mixes the very serious with the openly ridiculous. The show opens with the Black Wall Street massacre in Tulsa and builds from there, filling its world with superheroes and racist cops and raining squid. I’m not a big comics junkie by any means but I was still hopelessly hooked by the very loose adaptation of the Alan Moore classic. Again, part of it was how well the show shifted gears. It shied away from nothing of societal substance but also featured, I swear, a fart by Jeremy Irons that lasted so long it required two separate on-screen captions. There are layers at play here. And, again, Regina King, who is so good in this show. Regina King is so good in Watchmen. There’s something very cathartic about watching her shout our language’s best cuss word over and over.

I feel this deeply right now.

If you’re looking for some soothing comedies about goofballs

But maybe you don’t want something about depressed people or something that hits close to home right now. Maybe you want to shut your brain down a little and just laugh. Maybe you want something soothing and funny that detaches you for a little bit. No problem. Allow me to introduce you to Detroiters and Joe Pera Talks With You.

Detroiters starred two people that comedy fans probably know well by now: real-life best friends Tim Robinson (I Think You Should Leave) and Sam Richardson (Veep), who played fictional best friends in charge of an independent advertising agency. It was so good and so funny. It had heart. It had a car that pooped out its tailpipe and an episode-long gag that led to a Blade reference. Every episode had something, most had plenty of things. You can only find it on Comedy Central’s website and app right now, which stinks, but it’s better than nothing. Let Detroiters settle your frayed nerves. Let the “Farmer Zach” episode bring you a tiny moment of joy.

But no discussion about soothing comedies is complete without a mention of Joe Pera Talks With You, an Adult Swim show — also only available on the channel’s site and app — that is unlike anything else I’ve seen on television. Most of the episodes are less than 10 minutes but they still have no interest in rushing. It’s totally in line with the style of its creator and star, comedian Joe Pera, a man who speaks deliberately by nature and uses it to lull you to sleep before punctuating it with furious fits of humor. There’s an entire episode about going to the grocery store. There’s one about him discovering the song “Baba O’Riley.” There’s a season-long arc in season two about him growing a bean arch in his backyard and it is legitimately more satisfying than almost anything you’ll see from almost any “it’s actually a 10-hour movie” season of television. The whole thing is like taking a Xanax and goofing with a very relaxed and funny friend. That’s the best way I can describe it, I think. It’s not perfect, but it’s close.

If you’re thinking about rewatching two perfect shows in under 14 hours total

I’m going to assume you’ve seen Fleabag and American Vandal. I’m going to assume this because everyone yelled at everyone else to watch both shows a few years ago and then both shows had a real moment in the zeitgeist. I bet if I went on social media and just wrote “Who drew the dicks?” I would get dozens of excellent replies. Both shows are perfect little two-season slices of comedy.

That’s why you should rewatch them. Rewatch them this weekend. Both of them. American Vandal’s two seasons on Netflix follow a teen investigative documentary team that tackles the dumbest possible crimes (graffiti dicks; poop cannons) with the utmost seriousness, somehow satirizing true crime from every angle while also chronicling a very real aspect of teen culture in the era of social media. It’s basically a magic trick. And Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s fourth-wall shattering masterwork that’s right there on Amazon, is even better. Two seasons, twelve total episodes, a combined runtime under six hours, a tightly constructed comedy delivery system. You loved Fleabag. I bet you don’t remember all of it. There’s a simple solution here.

Watch them both. Do it this weekend. Or spread them out and watch one episode per night before bed. You have options. But you should do it. Flip from one to the other every episode and see if you start dreaming about the Hot Priest vandalizing cars with drawings of cartoon penises. Probably better than what you’re dreaming about these days anyway.

If you’re looking for a truly insane diversion

It’s has been almost three months since I yelled at you about watching Zoo, so let’s strike up that band again. Zoo was a short-lived CBS drama about the animals of the world rising up against mankind. It was also the single most ridiculous show I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something because I also watched CSI: Cyber, a show in which James Van Der Beek saves a clearly fake plastic baby from drowning in a lake and then Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Arquette gives aggressive CPR to what is still very clearly a plastic doll. Topping that was never going to be easy.

This is a line of dialogue from the very first episode of Zoo.

Here is James Wolk — Bob Benson from Mad Men — backhanding an evil four-star general in the face and demanding to know the location of a mutated sloth that can cause earthquakes with his shrieks.

Here’s a dog named Pizza.

Everything that happens is somehow more insane than the thing that happens before it. The team pushes a car out an airplane and into a volcano to trick a flock of demon vultures into committing mass suicide. The evil four-star general who got slapped by Bob Benson later has hit heart kickstarted with a homemade defibrillator consisting of two plastic cups and a few dozen electrocharged mutant ants who had just tried to blow up Switzerland. There’s a character who starts as a blogger and eventually becomes what I can only describe as “if J.K. Rowling was also Batman.” At one point she gets swallowed whole by an invisible snake.

This isn’t everything. It’s not even close to everything. Zoo is the perfect show for this moment because it is the only show with more happening than our real world right now. Actually, no. Let me take that back. I don’t want to jinx it. The way this year is going, it would be silly to taunt the universe with “at least there’s no mutant animal revolution.” We already had a close call with the murder hornets.

Black celebrities may not always share the “correct” reactions to controversial situations — they aren’t superheroes, after all — but there’s one voice that has been the loudest in its absence. While Kanye West has become better known for sticking his whole foot in his mouth with regards to his political opinion than voicing the prevailing thoughts of the zeitgeist, after nearly two weeks of protests against police brutality, some are starting to wonder why he hasn’t spoken with his “dragon energy brother” Donald Trump, especially in light of the latter’s recent responses to the will of the people.

Among those pointing out West’s conspicuous silence are respected hip-hop journalists like Ebro Darden, who wondered, “And furthermore why is Kanye so quiet?” on Twitter earlier today. The responses have, for the most part, expressed relief — an understandable reaction considering he spent a year flaunting a “Make America Great Again” hat at public appearances and still seems not to get why so many fans were so disappointed in him over it. Darden also shared a post featuring a remixed version of the “Homer Simpson Backs Into Bushes” meme, that turned the titular cartoon character into an animated avatar of Kanye — complete with the red ball cap that caused so much trouble before.

However, Ebro may have a point. When ASAP Rocky was locked up in Sweden, Kanye was quick to take credit for prompting Donald to call up the Swedish authorities — a publicity stunt on Don’s part, and one that spectacularly backfired later — and West’s wife Kim Kardashian has become a vocal advocate for prison reform, which ties directly into some of the police’s tactics which are being called out now. If Kanye has Donald’s ear, you’d think he would try to bend it as Trump barricades himself in the White House behind newly installed fencing and calls for the military to shoot down protestors exercising their First Amendment rights — if only to rehabilitate Kanye’s own image, at least. Kanye has never been one to keep his opinions to himself, which makes his silence now all the more deafening.

See more reactions to Kanye’s absence from the discourse below.