TAMPA, Fla. — It’s been 10 years and a lifetime of scandals since the rapper formerly known as Kanye West performed in Tampa.

And Gage Polk is ready.

The 26-year-old Tampa superfan scooped up floor tickets for Ye’s Friday and Sunday shows at Raymond James Stadium during the presale. Now, all there is to do is wait ... and wait ... and post videos of himself waiting.

Every day for nearly a month, Polk has posted up for hours at a time outside the stadium, where the highly scrutinized concerts will take place. He crosses N Dale Mabry Highway in between his mass communications classes at Hillsborough College, bearing trail mix and extra water for sustenance, and a tripod to document his devotion.

And make no mistake: It is real devotion. Polk has listened to Ye’s music for 21 years, through the hits and the highs and the many, many controversies.

Ye has apologized for his recent turn toward antisemitism, attributing his behavior —including songs that praise Adolf Hitler and merch featuring Nazi iconography — on mental health issues including a bipolar diagnosis. For Polk, that’s good enough.

“This artist may have said something hurtful to people,” Polk said. “I still have love for him, and I want him to know that Tampa still accepts him.”

Does it, though?

The controversy surrounding Ye’s Tampa concerts wasn’t just expected. It was baked into the deal between the rapper’s promoter and the Tampa Sports Authority, which operates RayJay, with a clause in the contract specifying that no political backlash over past or future scandals could put a stop to the shows. Sports Authority officials say the First Amendment gives them a green light to bring Ye.

So, he can have the concerts. The question is, should Tampa buy tickets?

Or as we’ve heard for weeks, swirling around in group chats and Instagram comments, perhaps even echoed by a voice in our own heads:

Am I a bad person for wanting to see Ye in Tampa?

Hits aside. Top-selling, genre-bending albums (both the good and the bad) aside. Twenty-four Grammy awards aside. How do you stomach the idea of shelling out hundreds of dollars to see someone whose reputation is more about the harm they’ve caused in recent years than the music itself?

Does it matter that he’s apologized for calling himself a Nazi? Met with a rabbi? Attributed his behavior to the brain trauma of a car crash?

Depends on who you ask.

Some have tuned Ye out

For those at Sen. Rick Scott’s news conference at the Holocaust Museum last week, the decision was clear:

Supporting Ye in Tampa isn’t just a matter of poor taste. It could actually be dangerous.

“Whatever artists say or athletes say carries weight, and you don’t want to give the guy that kind of platform,” said John Rinde, a Holocaust survivor who worried about the kind of influence Ye could have at the shows.

His wife and fellow survivor, Toni, agreed. “The question is, is music what the world is all about? Or people?”

Their nephew, attorney Michael Igel, called the concerts “a different type of moment” — one that people shouldn’t ignore.

“I also think people are strong enough and deep enough to understand that this is about more than just going to a concert,” said Igel, chairperson of the Florida commissioner of education’s task force on Holocaust education. “There are times where you have to draw a line.”

Some music fans are opting out of the Ye conversation entirely.

“To tell you the truth, I feel like I tuned out Kanye a long time ago,” said Jon Ditty, a 38-year-old rapper and songwriter based in Pinellas. “No offense to Kanye — or all offense to Kanye — but I feel like there’s doper hip-hop in and coming to the Tampa Bay area.”

Tampa’s DJ Sandman, a longtime pillar of the local hip-hop scene, said he knows of about eight out-of-town friends who plan to travel for Tampa’s Ye concerts — though not everyone is comfortable announcing their plans to the world.

“I’ve seen a lot of people saying they’re excited to go, and then I’ve seen other people saying, ‘We’re watching who buys tickets … how could you support this person?’” Sandman said. “I’ve had other people saying that they wouldn’t buy a ticket, but if a friend invites them or they get a free ticket they’re going to go and just stay quiet about it.”

Others face the ethics question head-on

Ye’s Tampa shows are among his first in North America following an especially turbulent period.

After drifting to whichever European and Asian cities would take him — and some wouldn’t — in April he grossed $33 million in ticket sales from two sold-out nights at SoFi Stadium near L.A.

These shows inspired musicologist Imani Mosley to turn Ye’s antics into a lesson for her students.

“They just don’t really know what to make of this,” said Mosley, assistant professor of musicology at the University of Florida’s school of music. “And so we tried to kind of un-complicate it, if you will.”

On her classroom board this spring, Mosley put up a “spectrum of crime,” spanning infractions from jaywalking to genocide. She asked her students how far Ye, or another artist they love, would have to go for them to stop listening to their music or to pass on attending a concert.

“The general consensus is that there is not a crime that an artist could commit that would stop people from listening to their music, if it’s an artist who makes music that means something to them,” said Mosley, who has been running this kind of exercise with students for years.

Philosophers going all the way back to ancient Greece were suspicious of music and its influence, Mosley said. Everyone who listens to music, Ye fan or not, will inevitably have to face this ethical dilemma with a beloved artist.

“One of the best things about music — and also one of the worst — is that it’s made by people,” she said. “And people can be horrible.”

Mosley herself listened to West for years, bumping his early albums throughout grad school.

As conversations started to become less about the songs and more about the scandals, it became harder for her to enjoy Ye’s albums. One day, she just couldn’t listen anymore.

But Mosley, 42, knows from her studies that this type of cultural death isn’t always permanent. She predicts Ye will sell out both Tampa shows — and many others — thanks to loyal fans. He may even be able to win back some people.

“If Kanye puts out a song that everyone deems to be hot, the tides will turn,” she said. “All it takes is one song.”

Can Tampa forgive Ye?

For Polk, the superfan, seeing Ye in Tampa was never a question.

He remembers sitting on his mother’s lap as a child and clicking on his first-ever YouTube thumbnail — the music video for West’s song “Stronger.”

Years later, the words of West’s mother, English professor Donda West, inspired Polk to become the first person in his family to enroll in college.

“I didn’t have guidance for that going up, so I found it in his music,” he said.

For Polk, it’s important to stand by the rapper more now than ever — not in spite of what Ye has done, but because of it.

“I grew up in an abusive environment, and I learned to forgive my abusers,” said Polk. He wants to spread that same forgiveness to Ye.

Does that make Polk a bad person or a good person? In his mind, that isn’t what liking Kanye is about.

“The artist, he’s just a human being,” he said. “I don’t know him personally. I don’t know what he’s going through, but I do know that he had an injury in his mind growing up, and I understand that mental trauma is something serious. Everyone makes mistakes.”

Ye’s Tampa concerts still have tickets up for grabs, though they’re moving quicker now that Ticketmaster and resale sites have lowered prices on some seats. In the meantime, Ye has already announced more American dates for fans still willing to go, including one July 4 in San Antonio.

There’s already a push to get it canceled.

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