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Kanye talks, and talks, and talks

By | Published on Wednesday 2 May 2018

Kanye West

Kanye West said a lot of things yesterday. By the time you read this, he may well have said a lot more. It’s exhausting. As well as his typical stream of tweets, he also appeared on TMZ Live and released videos of conversations with TI and Charlamagne Tha God – the latter almost two hours long.

In the videos, West discussed his support for Donald Trump, and also revealed that his 2016 admission to a psychiatric hospital was the result of an opioid addition. This addiction followed a plastic surgery procedure, he told TMZ. “Didn’t want y’all to call me fat, so I got liposuction”, he said. “And they gave me opioids”.

His most controversial comments of the day also came in the TMZ interview, when he said that the slavery of Africans in America had been “a choice” on the slaves’ part. “When you hear about slavery for 400 years… for 400 years? That sounds like a choice”, he said. “Like, you were there for 400 years and it was all of y’all? It’s like we’re mentally imprisoned”.

He was duly challenged on this statement by TMZ’s Van Lathan, who said: “You’re entitled to your opinion, but there is fact and real life consequence behind everything that you just said. And while you are making music, and being an artist, and living the life that you’ve earned by being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives”.

Lathan continued: “We have to deal with the marginalisation that has come with the 400 years of slavery that you said for our people was a choice. Frankly, I’m disappointed, I’m appalled, and brother I am unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something to me that isn’t real”.

West later followed up his comments on Twitter, saying: “Of course I know that slaves did not get shackled and put on a boat by free will. My point is, for us to have stayed in that position even though the numbers were on our side, means that we were mentally enslaved. They cut out our tongues so we couldn’t communicate to each other. I will not allow my tongue to be cut”.

Elsewhere, the video with TI sees the two rappers discuss West’s recently stated views on politics, before turning the themes of that conversation into new track ‘Ye Vs The People’.



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