This Documentary Shows How the Fall of Kanye West Predicted Our Brainrotted Times

Of course Ye, né Kanye West, was friends with Charlie Kirk, the late conservative podcaster and activist whose killing last week has set off a virulent bloodlust from the right. There he is, midway through In Whose Name?, the sprawling, if not overwhelming, documentary from director Nico Ballesteros, who was given unfettered access to Ye over the course of six years, following his descent into the fringe conspiratorial figure he is today. Kirk is seen smiling with the genuine excitement of a fan as he interviews Ye about his turn towards conservative politics. This is in 2018, shortly after Kanye’s first visit to Trump’s White House, and well into his MAGA hat phase. 

On the surface, this makes In Whose Name? a compelling time capsule that takes us back to the fallout from Trump’s first election. Before COVID and before conversations about disaffected young men turning to Republicans in 2024. Before Chat GPT and AI delusions, and ICE raids ensnaring innocent civilians in a nationwide surveillance dragnet. Except, the film doesn’t set out to offer much in terms of new insights into Ye’s own journey into right-wing provocation, instead gesturing at the well-trodden forces that might have led him there. The movie opens with Ye’s return to Chicago (and a short-lived promise to never leave his hometown again) as he visits his childhood home, where he was raised by his mother Donda West, who passed in 2007, two years before his infamous VMA outburst at Taylor Swift. 

The Swift controversy is presented as a catalyst for the modern Kanye. When he returned to the VMAs in 2010 to perform “Runaway” from his opus My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, the footage backstage has the feeling of being in the locker room after a championship. Rihanna is there, in the flesh, congratulating him. Not long after, he’s cutting a cake in the shape of his signature shoe with Nike as his then-partner, Amber Rose, cheers him on. Indeed, sneakers would turn Kanye into a king. His collaboration with Adidas, launched soon after a creative split with Nike, would reportedly make him a billionaire. This, before he blew it all up. 

We hear the words “mental health” throughout the film like whispers from an off-screen ghost. Ye has publicly struggled with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and while his various periods off his meds have been well-documented in the press (namely, TMZ), here we bear witness to distressing episodes that might warrant sympathy if Ye weren’t so unapologetic about what he subjects the people around him to. There’s a harrowing trip to Uganda, where he snaps at an assistant who is seemingly trying to prevent an international incident. Ye transforms in a flash, visibly untethered from reality for a moment. These bouts of anger are met with uncomfortable and eerie silence while the stakes roar beneath the surface. They’d been dropped off at the remote locale via helicopter, presumably on Kanye’s dime. They were effectively trapped there with him. 

We see intimate moments in the home of the Kardashians; he explodes on Kris Jenner, as his then-in-laws’ family pleads with him to get back on his meds. In these unvarnished moments, we’re given a look into the level of volatility that surrounds Ye, though it never rises to the level of revealing anything revelatory. Watching any of the public output from Ye over the past six years would lead you precisely to the conclusion that this is what things must look like behind the scenes. 

These moments do, however, humanize some of Ye’s struggles. His own sense of being trapped is nearly palpable in his facial expression. A pained, searching gaze that feels like it’s aimed everywhere at once. There is, of course, a genius behind all of this madness. To Ballesteros’ credit, we’re not here to lionize an artist burdened by their own brilliance. As the film progresses, it’s easy to get lost in its rawness, like combing through the camera roll on someone’s phone. It functions as a remarkable view into the banality of celebrity life. More often than not, Ye is alone in the car, waiting to be ushered into a brief meeting with some other famous person, where they muse about nothing for a moment and go on their way, shuttled once again in a car.

Ultimately, it’s the entire apparatus of celebrity that Kanye so desperately wants to escape from — the very apparatus that gets him into the room with world-class architects and artists, such as James Turrell, whose stunning Roden Crater Project (for which Ye donated $10 million), makes for some of the film’s most arresting footage. Turrell’s project was a central part of Ye’s 2019 film Jesus is King, part of his turn towards the ecclesiastical. Ye’s Sunday Service series is rendered in impressive detail in Ballesteros’ film, making you appreciate what might otherwise be considered a less consequential moment in his career. It’s in his religious fervor that Ye seems to find the most clarity, though the bliss is short-lived, as he exhibits an almost magnetic pull towards controversy. 

In Whose Name? might function as a long-form critique of the media in the social media age. Throughout the film, Ye battles the invisible offscreen monsters of commenters and Twitter users who disagree with him. With the hindsight of watching the film in the present, it’s clear how many of Ye’s worst impulses were spurred by the instant gratification of our reactions online. Towards the film’s end, we get a zoomed-in picture of that disastrous “White Lives Matter” t-shirt controversy, which, in the unhinged world of 2025, somehow feels quaint. It’s not even the worst thing you can find on a t-shirt these days. Of course, Candace Owens is there, in fact modeling the t-shirt that would set off a series of rants from Ye that would make him almost lose everything.

The film doesn’t linger on Ye’s subsequent antisemitic ravings, opting instead to narrow in on his response to the backlash. Still, what should we make of the fact that, for all of the controversy, Ye continues to perform worldwide? That his YZY label, despite at one point marketing a t-shirt emblazoned with a literal Swastika, continues to endure? Much of his rhetoric has by now entered the mainstream. Candace Owens is a household name, along with Charlie Kirk, who is currently being deified in real time by the U.S. establishment. In Whose Name? inches towards an exploration of Ye and how all of his contradictions dovetail with the culture we live in, but it stops short of landing anywhere coherent, which maybe says it all.