Bianca Censori’s genius Kanye West ‘divorce’ move revealed

OPINION

One of the world’s most confusing and bizarre relationships since independent, vivacious Miss Piggy settled for the milquetoast Kermit appears to have bitten the dust.

Only two and a bit years after marrying in the tech mecca of Palo Alto, Kanye West and his Australian wife Bianca Censori are apparently kaput.

Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because we have had years of bewildered, fascinated rubbernecking out of these two.

And also, because it looks like Kanye might just have been out-Kanye’d.

Oh, the ironyy.

The latest split development came last week, a real blow for believers in true love and the ultra-sheen hose market, via a new song from West, now known as Ye, in which he rapped: “My baby she ran away.

“She’s having a panic attack and she is not liking the way that I tweeted / Until Bianca’s back I stay up all night I’m not going to sleep / I really don’t know where she’s at.

“I’m tracking my b**ch through an app / I’m tracking my b**ch through the city.”

Well, that sounds super duper healthy and not at all deeply, deeply disturbing – a sleepless, spun out Kanye, “tracking” his wife.

Censori, for her part, has not been seen since February, nor has she said a peep about possibly having left him, so until we see her clutching a sheaf of official-looking papers emerging relieved and much richer from divorce-lawyer-to-the-stars Laura Wasser’s office, we only have his chaotic word for it.

But let’s work on the assumption that West, who these days is best known for spouting repugnant Adolf-approved levels of anti-Semitism and buying MAGA merch with an adamantium Amex, is telling the truth.

That his second marriage is done, like his music career, public standing and oral hygiene.

If so, then Censori has just pulled off something worth cheering about – not only having left a highly concerning relationship, but also because she has taken the West playbook and turned its author.

Ever since, at the 2009 MTV Music Awards, a Hennessy-swigging West burst on stage and stole the mic from Taylor Swift dressed like she was off to her mother’s third wedding to a wealthy Florida dentist, the rapper’s stock in trade has been shock.

In rough order: He built a house with bathrooms with no sinks; bought a famed $96 million Malibu mansion and then had it torn apart to create a “Batcave” and a “bomb shelter”, the architectural equivalent of buying a Monet and then drawing d**ks all over it in permanent marker; dressed first wife Kim Kardashian like a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto; started hosting his own “church” services; began a school where kids were forced into black Balenciaga uniforms; spewed forth an ongoing stream of heinous anti-Semitic comments and then turned up at a synagogue uninvited; had $1.3 million titanium dentures made and paid some of the world’s most expensive TV advertising during the Super Bowl to air an iPhone video of him shot at the dentist urging people to visit his website where he was selling a swastika T-shirt.

West is not actually a musician or a creator anymore, but an attention-seeking missile who seems to feed vampirically on notoriety.

He wants a reaction from us and we are yet to disappoint him.

He is also someone who only seems to have one setting – escalate, escalate, escalate.

Newer, bigger, more horrifying.

The more appalled we were, it seemed to be, the better, although the unknown quantity in all of this is the part that declining mental health might play.

When he married Censori, a Melbourne-born one-time architecture student, she seemed a willing co-conspirator in his game, playing the role of toy/canvas/carer/muse as she trotted about the cobblestoned streets of European capitals defying gravity in towering heels, the duo perma-manna for tabloids and us the thirsty public.

But she was also learning and mastering the Westian Way.

Until the beginning of this year, Censori seemed to match him beat-for-beat in staging cryptic, inexplicable, tragicomic (verging on the just tragic) public outings that fell somewhere between embarrassingly undergraduate unitard-wearing performance art and transparently provocative media plays.

It was all about as subtle as her leaving the house in nothing but nipple pasties emblazoned with the words “look at me”.

Then came the couple’s appearance at this year’s Grammys, and things took a turn for the creepy and dark when he seemed to pressure her into shrugging off her coat to reveal an entirely transparent dress.

Now – according to these new lyrics anyway – she has left him.

If so, then it’s time for West to swallow massive spoonfuls of his own medicine.

If she has indeed left the marriage, it will be having learnt to fan the flames of infamousness like a bellows-pumping overachiever, someone who can transform an opportunity as mundane as a trip to the supermarket to buy more mango yoghurt into a publicity stunt slash Venice Biennale work.

In less than two and a half years, Censori has gone from being an anonymous civilian to a global celebrity.

Like him, she seems to have leant into being an entirely psychologically disorienting figure – should we shun or pity her?

Like him, she seems to have embraced his scandalise-the-masses, rote shock-a-rama schtick.

Like him, she is predictably unpredictable.

Like him, she is ever more cryptic, purposefully enigmatic.

And like him, she might have used all of this to make herself even more famous, though unlike him, wealthier.

If all relationships are built on some sort of value exchange, then it feels like Censori might have bested West.

I truly hope she leveraged if not downright used him to her own ends, her own benefit, because he fundamentally seems like a user who has never been forced onto the receiving end. Now, he just might have been.

So, the karmic wheel turns – and so Laura Wasser should keep an eye out for new clients.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles