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Kanye West comments on the fallout from his anti-Semitic remarks

October 31, 2022

CNN
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After a week of financial fallout from anti-Semitic remarks on social media and in interviews, Kanye West is commenting on those thoughts, along with what he said about George Floyd and Black Lives Matter.

In a rambling 16-minute video shared by WmgLab Records on YouTube on Saturday and apparently recorded sometime after Adidas ended its business relationship with West on Tuesday, the artist appears to address a crowd of paparazzi and passers-by gathered in front of a building as he exits.

“I think Adidas felt like because everyone was ganging up on me, they had a right to just take my designs,” West told the small crowd.

“I feel like it’s God humiliating me right now,” he continued. “Because there are two things going on. A lot of times when I said “I’m the richest black man” that would be a defense I would use for the mental health conversation. … What’s happening right now is that I’m humiliated.

West then addressed the backlash for his suggestion in a recent podcast interview that George Floyd’s death was caused by the use of fentanyl.

“When the idea of Black Lives Matter came out, it brought us together as a people,” he said. “So I said that, and I questioned the death of George Floyd, it hurt my people. It hurt black people. So, I want to apologize for hurting them [sic] because right now, God has shown me by what Adidas is doing and by what the media is doing, I know what it’s like to have one knee on your neck now. So thank you, God, for humbling me and letting me know how I really feel. Because how could the richest black man ever be humiliated other than being made to not be a billionaire in front of everyone from a comment.

West also spoke of his “exhaustion” caused by the reaction he had to wearing a MAGA hat which was “misdiagnosed” as a mental health disorder and his refusal to take medication which he said would ” one pill” from Michael Jackson or Prince. .

“At a time like this, if I was on medication right now, then a pill could have been swapped, and it would have been Michael Jackson or Prince again,” West said.

He also compared himself to Emmett Till, who was brutally lynched in 1955 aged 14, and said he sometimes felt like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

“I’m just not worried. Period,” West said in response to someone in the crowd who asked if he feared he had ruined his legacy. “God is alive.”

Anti-Semitic protesters referenced West in signs put up in Los Angeles last weekend and in Jacksonville, Fla. this weekend. In the video, West did not apologize for his anti-Semitic remarks but appeared to try to distance himself from any “hate groups”.

Video shows anti-Semitic messages projected outside soccer match

“I have no association with any hate group,” West said, closing his remarks with prayer. “If a hate happens to a Jewish person, it is not associated (waves to himself) because I demand that everyone walks in love.”