Kanye West voting for Trump, walks back famous Bush comment
"'George Bush doesn't care about black people' is a victim statement," explained the 42-year-old father of four
If you were hoping the Trump administration’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic had somehow caused Kanye West to change his views of the POTUS, you’d be out of luck.
This week, the cover story in the May edition of GQ was published, which features a candid chat between the rapper and editor-in-chief Will Welch. In the sit-down, the two men discuss everything from West’s current politics to his reflections on the passing of Kobe Bryant.
READ MORE: Kanye West compares his support of Trump to racial profiling
“He was the basketball version of me, and I was the rap version of him, and that’s facts!” said the rapper.
“We got the commercials that prove it. No one else can say this. We came up at the same time, together. And now it’s like, yeah, I might have had a reputation for screaming about things—but I’m not taking any mess for an answer now. We’re about to build a paradigm shift for humanity. We ain’t playing with ’em. We bringing home the trophies.”
Rapper Kanye West speaks during a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval office of the White House on October 11, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Oliver Contreras – Pool/Getty Images)
When the conversation turned to Trump, without saying the President’s name, ‘Ye still confirmed that unlike previous years when he chose to skip the elections, in 2020 he’ll be voting to help out his fave.
“No, I’m definitely voting this time,” he said. “And we know who I’m voting on. And I’m not going to be told by the people around me and the people that have their agenda that my career is going to be over. Because guess what: I’m still here!”
READ MORE: Kanye West makes ‘generous donation’ to Chicago free-meal initiative
https://twitter.com/srtalmadge/status/1250400497195982848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1250400497195982848&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.complex.com%2Fmusic%2F2020%2F04%2Fkanye-west-goes-deep-on-kobe-trump-new-music-yeezy-rare-interview
West also brought up his now-infamous 2005 comment that former President George W. Bush “doesn’t care about Black people.”
“‘George Bush doesn’t care about black people’ is a victim statement,” explained the 42-year-old father of four. “‘This white person didn’t do something for us.’ That is stemmed in victim mentality. Every day I have to look in the mirror like I’m Robert De Niro and tell myself, ‘You are not a slave.’ As outspoken as I am, and the position that I am in, I need to tell myself.”
West also describes himself as a “functioning alcoholic.”
“One day I was in my office working on the couture collection, and there was some Grey Goose in the fridge and I was just going to get a daytime drink, and I looked and thought, ‘Devil, you’re not going to beat me today,'” he recalled.
“That one statement is like a tattoo. I haven’t had a drink since I realized I needed to take it day by day, but I never owned up, or was even told, ‘Hey, you’re a functioning alcoholic.’ People have called me a crazy person, people have called me everything—but not a functioning alcoholic. And I would be drinking orange juice and Grey Goose in the morning.”
