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Kanye West Reveals He Scrapped His Album And Started From Scratch Following Slavery Comment

In case you’ve been sleeping under a very large rock, Kanye West dropped his highly anticipated eighth studio album Ye and naturally it’s been drenched in controversy.

On the record he addresses many things – Stormy Daniels, #MeToo, his mental health – but the one thing many were holding out for was if he would address his highly controversial statement about slavery to TMZ last month.

“When you hear about slavery for 400 years — for 400 years?! That sounds like a choice,” he said.

“Like, you was there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all? It’s like we’re mentally in prison.”

Well, he barely addressed it on the album, mentioning it once on the track ‘Wouldn’t Leave’ where he says, “I said, “Slavery a choice”—they said, “How, ‘Ye?/Just imagine if they caught me on a wild day.”

While we pray that wild day never comes, in an interview with radio personality Big Boy on the night of his album listening party in Wyoming, West revealed that the TMZ incident made him re-do the album entirely.

“I completely re-did the album after TMZ. We just sat there and really honed in on the words because now it’s all headlines, it’s like every bar can be used… you know, there’s even bars we had about that… I took a bar off the album,” he said. “It was just too sensitive. It was about that topic. And I just let go. ‘I’m gonna just chill right now, let’s just keep making some music.

“You know, I feel like, as a son, and as a family member of the world … that’s the reason why the world won’t let me go because I’m just a family member. They might disagree with me, but I’m family. I’ve been here for 15 years, 18 years, and you know, I feel like the best thing I could do is sit there, and go in that studio, and keep chopping that thing that only I know how to do and only me and my crew know how to do.”

He also addressed his mental health, which is something that many have been wondering about given his erratic behaviour.

“Think about people that have mental issues that are not Kanye West, that can’t go and make that, and make it feel like it’s all good,” he said. “Think about someone who does exactly what I did at TMZ and they just do that at work, right? But then Tuesday morning, they come in, and they lost their job … and they can’t go back and make that.

“That’s why God put that on me at age 40. I had never been diagnosed until 39 years old. I think everybody’s got something. I think everybody got something, but like I said, on the album, I said that it’s not a disability, that it’s a superpower.”

While he doesn’t reveal what exactly he was diagnosed with, he mentions living with bipolar disorder on Ye track ‘Yikes’. The album cover also references it.

Watch the full interview with Big Boy below.

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