Kanye West returned home to Chicago this week to work alongside Chance the Rapper on his upcoming album and decided to reconnect with some old friends. Yeezy stopped in for an all-encompassing radio interview with the morning crew over at 107.5 WGCI Chicago on Wednesday (Aug. 29).
The 41-year-old touched on a multitude of hot-button topics, including hopes to eventually reconcile his relationship with Drake, never voting in his life, apologizing for his slavery comments on TMZ, Donald Trump and much more. Ye got shook up a bit when he admitted that his downfall is directly related to not having longtime friends like designer Don C around him when he needs them most.
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Here are six things we learned from Kanye West’s emotional radio interview in his Chicago homecoming.
He Didn’t Feed Pusha-T the Info for “The Story of Adidon”
Speculation ran rampant following Pusha-T’s scathing “The Story of Adidon” diss that Kanye West fed his G.O.O.D. Music labelmate the intel that Drake indeed was hiding a child from the public after the pair of superstars linked up at West’s Wyoming sessions earlier this year. The noise was amplified thanks to a close collaborator of West’s, Malik Yusef, who hinted at Drake possibly divulging private information to Kanye.
The Chicago native straight-up denied any wrongdoing. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “Don’t pull me into this conversation. I got major things to do other than telling [Pusha-T] some information about Drake. I honestly don’t care that much.”
Eventually Repairing his Relationship With Drake
Even though Drake and Kanye exchanged subliminal shots on Ye and Scorpion, Yeezy hopes to one day mend his fractured relationship with the 6 God. “People be around your family and be in your house and this and that, then they get mad about a beat and send purple demon emojis,” West explained. “I don’t play like that, I don’t play in that place. It’s like, look, it ain’t no beef. We’ll reconcile that one day because we got to. We got work to do because these voices are just too powerful.
“We all got love for Drake,” he continued. “We understand he was upset about [‘The Story of Adidon’], and I felt it was insensitive of him to stress me out in any way after TMZ while I’m in Wyoming, healing and pulling all pieces together.”
Apologizes for his Slavery Comments on TMZ
Kanye finally expressed remorse for his controversial slavery sounding like a choice comments at TMZ from earlier this year. He went on to openly apologize for hurting anyone in the process. “I have never really approached or addressed the slavery comment fully. And it’s not something for me to overly intellectualize,” he began. “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 it in a way more calm way, but I was ramped up. And I apologize.”
West continued: “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.”
The Need for Having Don C Around
Things took an emotional turn following Kanye’s apology, as morning show co-host Kendra G was noticeably sobbing on-air while thanking Yeezy for his remorse. The Chicago-bred rapper eventually had to fight back tears himself when explaining that “the downfall of Kanye West is directly related with Don C not being around.” Kanye admitted that he called his longtime friend to accompany him on this Chicago trip because he “needed him.” Virgil Abloh and the Just Don creator were actually spotted hanging out with Drake during his day party in Brooklyn on Sunday.
Reinventing Himself as a New Ye
After executive producing an exhausting five albums this summer and facing much public backlash, the 41-year-old has seemed to recalibrate himself creatively and promises fans that they will be introduced to a “new Ye” very soon. “Thank you for riding with me. I need y’all as a city to have my back,” says Kanye. “I promise you, you’re going to see a new Ye. You’re going to feel the impact of the new relationships and the new ideas and the exposure that I’ve gathered. It’s about to be applied now.”
He also expanded on battling the pressures of living up to the standard he’s set for himself in fashion and music. “I’m dealing with people trolling me. There’s a lot of pressure,” West admits. “I’m pitted in competitions directly with Drake, competitions directly with Virgil at the same time. I literally have to have the shoes popping to the Off-White, Nike, Louis Vuitton record and the record to the [‘In My Feelings’] level,” he continued. “Sometimes I don’t feel the love — like when I come to Chicago and I hear three Drake records and no Ye records.”
Believing That Donald Trump Cares About the Way Black People Perceive Him
Kanye West stared down a question similar to what Jimmy Kimmel asked him earlier in the month. After another long pause, West approached what makes him believe Donald Trump cares about the black citizens of America.
“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 said. “[Trump] 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.”