Kanye West Talks Trump, Drake, Slavery Comment and More in New Interview
By Jem Aswad
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Kanye West appeared on radio station 107.5 WGCI in Chicago on Wednesday, where he talked about a number of topics including his relationship with Drake, his love for Chicago — and he finally addressed Jimmy Kimmel’s question that left him silent a few weeks ago: “You so famously and so powerfully said ‘George Bush doesn’t care about black people.’ It makes me wonder, what makes you think that Donald Trump does?”
This time, West responded: “I feel that [Trump] cares about the way black people feel about him, and he would like for black people to like him like they did when he was cool in the rap songs and all this. He will do the things that are necessary to make that happen because he’s got an ego like all the rest of us, and he wants to be the greatest president, and he knows that he can’t be the greatest president without the acceptance of the black community. So it’s something he’s gonna work towards, but we’re gonna have to speak to him.”
He also apologized for his comments on TMZ livestream about 400 years of slavery being a “choice.”
“I have never really approached or addressed the slavery comment fully, and it’s not something for me to over-intellectualize,” he said. “This is something about the fact that it hurt people’s feelings and the way that I presented that piece of information. I could present in a way more calm way, but I was ramped up. And I apologize. That happens sometimes when people are—I’m not blaming mental health, but I’m explaining mental health.
“I don’t know if I properly apologized for how the slavery comment made people feel,” he continued. “I’m sorry for the one-two effect of the MAGA hat into the slave comment, and I’m sorry for people that felt let down by that moment.”
He also spoke about the recent war of words between Pusha T and Drake, and his own role in it as Pusha’s producer and friend to both. “It hits me in a really sensitive place,” he said, “Because you, like, hang around people and they come to your house and be around your family and this and that, and then they get mad about a beat and then send you purple demon emojis.”
However, he stressed, “It ain’t no beef… We all got love for Drake. We understand that he got upset about [Pusha-T’s diss track, “The Story of Adidon”]. I feel that it was insensitive for [Drake] to, in any way, stress me out in any way after TMZ, while I’m in Wyoming healing, pulling all the pieces together, working on my music. And you know, we’ll reconcile that one day because we got to, because we got work to do, and these voices is just too powerful.”
