Kanye West recently sat down with prominent American radio personality – Charlamagne Tha God for a rare interview to discuss his 2016 mental breakdown and wife Kim Kardashian’s Paris robbery to his relationship with JAY-Z his support for Trump and a bevy of topics.
Here are some important informations we gathered from the one hour, forty-five minutes long interview.
On His Mental Breakdown or “Breakthrough” (as he prefers to call it)
Kanye explained that his 2016 mental breakdown which occurred after his wife’s robbery and his several on-stage rants was a result of fear.
Charlamagne: “What do you think caused the mental breakdown?”
Ye replies, “Fear, stress, control, being controlled, manipulation, like being a pawn in the chess piece of life, stressing things that create validation that I didn’t need to worry about as much.”
“This is the cons of a competition and being in competition with so many elements at one time. On a race against time, your age. ‘Hey, yo you’re getting old’. Race against popularity on the radio. Khaled got this song, Drake got this song playin’ to death. Saint Pablo ain’t playin’.”
On His Wife’s (Kim Kardashian) Robbery
The rapper explained that he felt helpless. “You’re feeling like, helpless,” he said. “You’re feeling like what can you do.”
“One of the things she heard is that they were coming to rob her and they had to wait until I left,” Kanye said. “The people had been strategizing and scheming on that for a long time, so probably when she got to Paris by herself, they’re like, ‘Okay, this is our chance.’ Next thing you know I’m off the flight the next day and they were like, ‘Oh, okay, we gotta fall back.’”
He also disclosed that he would have been hard for him to forgive himself if he had lost Kim.
On His Relationship with Jay-Z
According to Kanye, he and Jay Z are still on good terms. “We good. We texting each other as positive energy,” he told Charlamagne.
But he explained that the two don’t see each other very often, because they’re off in their own worlds. “I haven’t seen him but I can feel him. Sometimes also when you have such similar personalities and people are creating their own existence and their own world…you know they need to do it on their own,” he said. “I went off and started focusing on clothes, and building my company and my factory and my office, and focus on my family, and you know that’s what happened.”
He also addressed Jay-Z line on the song “Kill Jay-Z” off Jay’s widely acclaimed 2017 ‘4:44’ album, where Jay-Z claimed that he gave Kanye $20 million but Kanye paid him back with a 20 minutes rant.
Kanye’s response: That concept, that he gave me the money, that’s what frustrated me, because actually the money he got from Live Nation. It was a touring deal, but the fact that it was worded that it came from him – I’m a very loyal, emotional person – that made me feel like I owed more than just the money itself, the fact that it came from him.
On Meeting Trump
The heart of the Kanye controversy in the past two weeks has been his support of Donald Trump. In a tweet last week he called Trump his “brother” and said they both have “dragon energy”.
You don’t have to agree with trump but the mob can’t make me not love him. We are both dragon energy. He is my brother. I love everyone. I don’t agree with everything anyone does. That’s what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) 25 April 2018
Kanye reveals that he doesn’t support the President one hundred percent, but he’s just in love with Trumps non-conformist ideology.
Kanye’s response: I don’t have all the answers that a celebrity’s supposed to have, but I can tell you that when he was running it was like I felt something, the fact that he won it proves something, it proves that anything is possible in America. I’m not talking about what he’s done since he’s been in office, but the fact that he was able to do it, when I say I was running for president I had friends making jokes and memes, but now it’s like ‘Oh that was proven that that could have happened.’ I felt the non-conventional even from what we doing in fashion, to me being the kid with pink polos, to me being outspoken, to me being ostracised because of the Taylor Swift thing or the George Bush thing, or who I’m dating who I’m marrying, what I’m talking about – all of this is like an outsider thing, so when I see an outsider infiltrate I connect with that.
I love real change, I love challenging the norm. I love people who don’t love him, I love the fact that everybody’s speaking up and expressing themselves. I liked that it showed you that anything is possible.
I’m a non-conformist, but I’m also I’m a producer I like to segue things, I like to take ‘Otis’ chop it up, so what’s the Ye version [of a presidency], the Ye version would be the trump campaign and maybe the Bernie Sanders principals, that would be my mix and stuff – I think both are needed.
On his frustration with Obama
Kanye has been catching heat for some of his recent tweets criticizing Obama. In the interview, he breaks down the beginning of his relationship with the former president. “Obama came to me before he ran for office, and he met with me and my mother to let me know that he was going to run for office, because I am his favorite artist of all time, because I am the greatest artist of all time,” Kanye explained. “I’m like, this is dope. A black president. This dude’s mad cool. He’s from Chicago.”
Then Kanye goes on to talk about how much Obama’s infamous comment that Kanye’s a “jackass” hurt him. “[Obama] never called me to apologize,” he said. “The same person who sat down with me and my mom, I think should have communicated with me directly and been like, ‘Yo, Ye, I was in the room and it was just a joke.'”
“I love Obama,” he clarified. “I just think we were in a period where he had so much stuff to deal with he couldn’t deal with a wild card like me.”
Watch full interview below