On Wednesday morning, Kanye West was in his hometown of Chicago, Ill., and made a radio appearance on 107.5 WGCI Chicago where he spoke about recent incidents, including his MAGA hat, Donald Trump and getting his mental health in order. And yes, as the title states, he did shed a few tears.
The hosts of the morning show didn’t hold back on their questions and quickly jumped to getting clarification on the Drake and Pusha T beef, especially since there were allegations that West was feeding Pusha T information about Drake. Of course West denied the accusations in the most Kanye way ever, “Who has time for that?” Exactly. What he did have time for was discussing his Trump antics and his mental health.
Earlier this month during an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Kimmel asked West: “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?”
West never responded to Kimmel, but answered the question during Wednesday’s interview. “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 continued, “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.”
West also spoke about the comments he made on TMZ about slavery being a choice, which of course caught backlash:
The thing about being called crazy, the biggest stigma that has to be broken is that you instantly get written off. But you might be the only one who knows what they’re talking about. Also what I wanna say to everyone listening right now—I have never really approached or addressed the slavery comment fully. And it’s not something for me to overly intellectualize. 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. 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. And I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to talk to you about the way I was thinking and what I was going through.
Further in the interview (8:05 mark below) West breaks down into tears when he talks about his “downfall” and the main causes of it, which included losing some of his closest friends who kept him grounded, particularly his long time collaborator Don C.
“Don is actually in town right now, because I told him I need him to be there for me so shit like this don’t happen to me,” Kanye said before breaking down into tears.
Was this West’s redemption interview? Who knows, but let’s just say he may have caused a few other people to shed some tears as well. Especially those who struggle with mental health issues.