After a long week of some very, um interesting tweets in which Kanye West offered his controversial opinions on Trump, conservatives and what he describes as “free thought,” the rapper and husband to Kim Kardashian West has officially touched a nerve after he said in an interview with TMZ that slavery, “sounds like a choice” —and, yikes.
In his appearance on TMZ Live Tuesday morning, Kanye touched on everything from his 2016 hospitalization, to Trump, to Yeezy — but it’s what he said about slavery that has a lot of people not very happy with him (to put it lightly).
“When you hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years?! That sounds like a choice,” he told TMZ. “We’re mentally in prison. I like the word prison cause slavery goes too direct to the idea of blacks. Like Holocaust is Jews, slavery is blacks. So prison is something that unites us as one race, whites and blacks being one race. The human race.”
Obviously this didn’t exactly sit well with many TMZ staffers who were present for the interview — particularly Van Lathan, who took the opportunity to call Kanye out for his comments.
“I actually don’t think you’re thinking anything,” Lathan told Kanye. “I think what you’re doing right now is actually the absence of thought. And the reason why I feel that is because, Kanye, you’re entitled to your opinion. You’re entitled to believe whatever you want, but there is fact and real world real life consequence behind everything that you just said.”
Man @VanLathan thank you for saying what you said to Kanye. pic.twitter.com/IxYvA7FYVJ
— Matthew A. Cherry (@MatthewACherry) May 1, 2018
He continued, “While you are making music and being an artist and living a life that you’ve earned by being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats in our lives. We have to deal with the marginalization that has come from the 400 years of slavery that you said, for our people, was our choice. Frankly, I’m disappointed, I’m appalled, and brother, I’m unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something that, to me, is not real.”
Meanwhile, the Internet is equally as outraged as Lanthan:
Van Lathan spoke to Kanye with so much hurt , disappointment and conviction in his voice. I’m glad he spoke up when one one else would not being afraid of the “celebrity” and telling him what everyone is thinking but won’t say to his face
— Taya (@Misstaya12) May 1, 2018
Charlemagne should just go ahead and delete his little 2 hour conversation with Ye. Van Lathan did the job in 60 seconds.
NEXT.
— Livin La Vida Lex (@heyylexik) May 1, 2018
Van Lathan gave what seems to be the most heartfelt reprimand. It wasn’t no dis rap or saucy tweet or call to get buddy beat up. You could hear the concern and disappointment.
— FOST (@GeorgeFoster72) May 1, 2018
To make matters worse, Kanye took to Twitter Tuesday night to throw salt in the wound by defending his comments, and it’s all just not a great look.
to make myself clear. Of course I know that slaves did not get shackled and put on a boat by free will
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) May 1, 2018
My point is for us to have stayed in that position even though the numbers were on our side means that we were mentally enslaved
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) May 1, 2018
Just…no. To echo Van Lanthan’s thoughts, with a platform and fan base as large as Kanye’s, there are no excuses for ignorant comments like these.