Look, we really don’t want to do this.
We don’t want to write about Kanye West.
The rapper is either suffering from a mental breakdown, in which case he needs professional help…
… or he’s just saying crazy and disturbing stuff to build up publicity for his next two albums, in which case: eff you, dude.
But the rapper, who can’t stop fawning over Donald Trump, said something so ridiculous during a visit to TMZ headquarters on Tuesday afternoon that we can’t help ourselves.
We have to write about it.
We would not be doing our job as a celebrity gossip website otherwise.
In an outlandish nutshell, West said African-Americans only had themselves to blame for being enslaved.
“I am in hip-hop, but I’m not just in hip-hop,” Kanye opened, while talking to the hosts of TMZ Live.
He then continues:
“I’m a black person in the black community, but I’m not just that. I feel like one thing is that people try to minimize me… I’m always going to represent that, but I also represent the world.”
Okay, we guess.
Go on, ‘Ye…
“You hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years? That sounds like a choice,” he said, to the consternation and confusing of those around him, adding:
“Like, that was there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all? It’s like, we’re mentally in prison. I like the word ‘prison’ because slavery is too direct to the idea of blacks.
“Like Holocaust is Jews, slavery is blacks. So prison is something that unites us as one race, whites and blacks being one race. The human race.”
Where do we even begin with nonsense such as this?
For historical fact, the Civil War ended in 1861.
Backtrack 400 years and the the year is 1461, three decades before Christopher Columbus set foot on America and about three-hundred years before America defeated Great Britain in the Revolutionary War.
So we have no clue where Kanye got his “400 years” from.
Putting that aside, however, it should go without saying that even the mere hint of slavery as a “choice” made by black people is incredibly offensive.
Which is why TMZ employee Van Lathan (pictured below) stepped in.
“Do you feel that I am being free and that I’m thinking free?” Kanye asked the room, which promoted Lathan to say the following:
I actually don’t feel think you’re thinking anything. I think what you’re doing right now is actually the absence of thought. The reason that I feel that is because Kanye, you’re entitled to you’re opinion.
You’re entitled to believe whatever you want, but there is fact and real world real life consequence behind everything that you just said.
While you are making music and being an artist and living the life that you earned by being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives.
We have to deal with the marginalization that’s come from the 400 years of slavery that you said for our people, was a choice.
Frankly, I’m disappointed, I’m appalled and brother, I’m unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something, to me, that’s not real.
Now, yes, this all took place in front of TMZ cameras and could all have been some staged publicity stunt.
But even so, Lathan says everything perfectly here.
It’s not “freedom” of thought, as Kanye likes to say, to just spout anything that enters your head.
That’s sort of what a mentally imbalanced person does, screaming anything and everything without stopping to think if it actually makes sense.
This is why Kim Kardashian is allegedly trying to organize an intervention for her husband.
It’s especially galling, as Lathan also points out, for a mega rich celebrity to be saying this stuff because, let’s face it, Kanye West is going to be just fine.
He won’t be negatively affected in any real way by Donald Trump’s policy, but low-income African-Americans will be.
It’s easy for Kanye to sit in his ivory tower and saddle up on his high horse and show support for Trump or say something dumb like slavery was a “choice.”
He’ll just go home to his mansion, laugh at his number of Twitter followers and make love to his millionaire wife.
For someone who considers himself to be oh so “real,” Kanye lives in nothing resembling the real world.
After his exchange with Lathan, West walked across the newsroom and said to him: “Bro, I’m sorry I hurt you.”
So there he goes. There’s a start.
If Kanye rethinks pretty much every attitude he has on life and says the same thing to the rest of the country, we may actually get somewhere.