It was announced a few days ago that Kanye West would appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, but given his history with canceling on late show hosts (and his unpredictable nature in general), that wasn’t a sure thing. Kimmel aired last night, though, and sure enough, Kanye was on it, talking about a breadth of topics.
The interview starts simply, with Kanye talking about all the doubt and criticism he’s faced over the course of his career. Beyond that, Kanye touches on many subjects during the 21-minute conversation. One of the first things Kimmel asked about was Kanye’s support of Donald Trump, and Kanye responded at length, talking about being an independent thinker and regaining his confidence:
“As a musician, African-American, a 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 that I couldn’t say it out loud or my career would be over, I’d get kicked out the black community, because Blacks are supposed to have a monolithic thought, we can only be democrats.
I said it right before I went to the hospital, and I expressed myself, and when I came out I had lost my confidence, so I didn’t have the confidence to take on the world and the possible backlash. And 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 what it represented to me is not about policies, because I’m not a politician like that, but it represented overcoming 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 can’t bully me. Because at that point, if I’m afraid to be me I’m no longer ‘Ye. That’s what makes ‘Ye. And I actually quite enjoy when people actually are mad at me about certain things.”
Kimmel left Kanye speechless after asking, “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 or any people at all?” Kanye sat staring into the distance with a contemplative look on his face before Kimmel cut the tension by throwing to a commercial, clearly much to Kanye’s relief.
Not sure how @jimmykimmel was able to sit there and listen to Kanye's bullshit, but at least there was a glorious payoff at the end. pic.twitter.com/FMLt4XeynS
— Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina) August 10, 2018
Elsewhere in the conversation, Kanye discussed mental health:
“I think it’s important for us to have open conversations about mental health, especially with me being black because we never had therapists in the black community, we never approached, like, taking medication, and I think it’s good when I had my first complete blackout aged five that my mum didn’t fully medicate me because I might have never been ‘Ye.”
He also talked about his porn preferences: Kimmel asked, “Has your attitude changed since having daughters,” and Kanye responded, “Nah, I still look at Pornhub,” before getting into specifics about his favorite types of videos: “What’s the point in being Kanye West if you can’t break down the porn categories?”
Watch the full interview above, and individual segments below.
