Kanye West returned to “The Jimmy Kimmel Show” last where the music and fashion creative spent a good portion of the interview discussing his thoughts on Donald Trump. He also briefly discussed Virgil Abloh joining Louis Vuitton as head designer and having a $1.8 billion company. He also chatted about the motivation behind lyrics for “I Though about Killing You,” from his Ye album and spoke about being bipolar and the need to have open conversations about mental health.
When asked if he likes Donald Trump, West stated, “There’s two main motivating forces, it’s love or fear. And you can’t explain love. You know my cousin is locked up for murder, and I love him. He did a bad thing and I still love him. Just as a musician, African American, guy out in Hollywood, all these different things, everyone around me tried to pick my candidate for me. And then told me every time I said I liked Trump, I couldn’t say it out loud or my career would be over, I’d be kicked out of the black community. Because we’re supposed to have a monolithic thought, we can only be Democrats and all. Even when I said it right before I went to the hospital and I expressed myself and when I came out I had lost my confidence.
I didn’t have the confidence to take on the world and the possible backlash. It took me a year and a half to have the confidence to stand up and put on the hat, no matter what the consequences were.And It represented to me is not about policy because I’m not a politician like that, but it represented over coming fear and doing what you felt no matter what anyone said and saying, ‘You can’t bully me, liberals can’t bully me, news can’t bully me, the hip hop community, they can’t bully me.’ If I’m afraid to me, I’m no longer Ye. And actually I quite enjoy when people are mad at me for certain things. I actually quite enjoy it.”
On angering his wife, Kim Kardashian, over his supportive Trump comments, West said, “Right or wrong or even if I change my mind about it or thought about it more, which I’m not saying I did, just place a thought out there that everybody’s not thinking sometime. Galileo they wanted to chop his head off for saying that the Earth, what did he say the sun revolves around the Earth or visa versa.”
On whether he regrets any of his comments, West explained, “I think people focus too much on the past and regret. I think people focus to much on the past and focus too much on regret. Even when you deal with schools and you take the slave idea. My point I’ve heard of history class, I’ve never heard of a class that breaks down how you balance a checkbook or how you control your finances, which my father never taught me that. And I’ve never heard of future class. They keep us so focused on history that we start to believe that it actually repeats itself. And we become overly traditional and we can’t advance as a race of beings. We get too caught up in the past and what everyone’s saying and what everyone’s tweeting. And sometimes we have to be fearless enough to break the fucking simulation.”
West also tackled his own mental health issues, using the phrase “I hate being bipolar, it’s awesome” from his Ye album to jump start the conversation. West explained, “I think it’s important for us to have open conversations about, open conversations about mental health especially with me being black because we never had therapists in the black community. We never approached taking medication. I think it’s good when I had my first complete black out at age five, my mom didn’t fully medicate me because I might have never been Ye. At least I’m happy that I know.”
“Even for for this interview, I knew I wanted to stay in a calm state. By the time I got to TMZ I was ramped up so what was awesome, the world got to really experience someone in a ramped up state and that’s when you get these comments that just shoot out, almost like Tourrettes. There’s some cases of bipolar where people go low, I’m one that goes high, like Michelle Obama.”
West added that he doesn’t deal with depression in part because he’s able to express himself without fear.
Check out the full exchange below.
