Liberals have been complaining about what a fool Kanye West made of himself yesterday, by ranting incoherently at the white house and allowing himself to be used as a prop by President Trump.

However during the rant West claimed to have seen a psychologist and scored at the 98th percentile in IQ, but “only” the 75th percentile in repeating numbers.  If this self-report can be trusted, it sounds like he was administered the WAIS-IV and got a full-scale IQ of 130 but a 110 in the working memory index.

Of course West also claimed to be a billionaire,  so he seems prone to wild hyperbole (or confusion), however the IQ results sound more authentic because he gave a percentile (unlike many people who just claim an IQ) and it wasn’t astronomical (unlike most false high IQ claims), and because he also admitted to scoring mediocre in the repeating numbers section.

Of course liberals will consider him dumb not just because he’s a conservative, but because as a black man he should know better.   However he might be smart enough to realize that unlimited (low-skilled) immigration is bad for the black community because it drives down wages, and thus may have given his Trump support more thought than meets the eye.  And Trump’s tax cuts are certainly good for him as a business man.

There’s also the fact that West is supposedly very good at drawing, and might easily score 130+ on the Draw-a-Person IQ test.

It’s always interesting when a super rich person has some special talent that’s completely different from the talent for which they got rich, because it implies they have general intelligence, and are not just one-trick ponies who were in the right place at the right time.

Of course West doesn’t talk like someone with an IQ above 130, or even above 100, but having grown up middle class home with a PhD mother (high IQ DNA?), he may feel the need to sound especially ghetto to prove he’s part of hip-hop culture and not some privileged elite.  Add to that his mediocre working memory (75th percentile) and long sentences might not be his forte.  In addition, like a lot of creative people, he might be mentally ill, causing him to seem much dumber than he is.

Trump described him as a smart cookie, but whether that was sincere or condescension, I know not.  Whatever Trump’s flaws, he’s probably very good at reading people.

Anyway, I hope West really does have a 98th percentile IQ.  It’s always fascinating when a high IQ person gets rich in a field that has nothing to do with academics and required no academic credentials.  It shows IQ tests really do measure intelligence and predict real world adaptive behavior and not just narrow book smarts.