Can We Separate An Artist From Their Personal Views?

About 2 months ago, the world has seen Kanye go off on some extremely controversial topics; slavery, Donald Trump, lack of effort in the Chicago community from Barack Obama, and more. This question arises for me, are we able to separate an artist from their personal views? I feel like we have a bias when we are able to relate to some of our favorite artists’ personal views. I, myself, am also biased. When Kanye said, “That sounds like a choice” to Africans being enslaved, I told myself that I couldn’t defend that type of behavior, more less Kanye himself. He crossed the line and I still believe that to this day. However, do I write him off from being in my top five-producer/rapper list of all time? No. That’s like asking me to stop loving someone that I’ve known for a decade once they do something that’s foul. Can I distance myself from said person? Yes. I’ll continue to support Kanye or any other artist for that matter because I’m mature enough to separate personal views from good music (No pun intended). Now here’s where the extreme bias comes in to play. If I know information about an artist before I’ve even played their music or began to be familiar with it, I won’t be supporting their music. An artist that comes to mind is Russ. This individual is not humble by any means. I didn’t know one thing about Russ until I watched an Everyday Struggle episode with him as a guest. The condescending tone that he had against both Nadeska and DJ Akademiks was almost hard to watch. Not to mention the infinite times he explained the fact that he played every role when it comes to making his music. Again, that was hard to watch because the snippets that I have heard from his music were mediocre at best. At the end of the day, we as consumers have the option to eat, buy, and listen to anything we want, no matter what controversy is pinned with it. So to answer the question at hand, yes we can separate the artist from their personal views. It’s possible. But do we all practice this approach, including myself? No, and that is perfectly fine.