For the most part, Kanye West has kept silent since his 2016 breakdown and hospital stay. OK, maybe not on Twitter and that one time he called slavery “a choice,” but West doesn’t do many interviews. The idea of West sitting down for three entire segments of Jimmy Kimmel Live—an interview the artist requested—makes it feel as though Yeezy has something significant to tell the world.
West and Jimmy Kimmel covered a slew of different topics in the almost 21-minute interview. West gave his thoughts on music and fashion, his wife Kim Kardashian’s trip to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Donald Trump, the two most significant motivating forces in the world, and overcoming fear.
The conversation turned to Trump almost immediately, and Kimmel asked the 41-year-old father of two about his support of the president. West explained:
As a musician, African-American, everyone around me tried to pick my candidate for me. And then told me every time I said I liked Trump that I couldn’t say it out loud or my career would be over. I’d get kicked out of the Black community because Blacks—we’re supposed to have a monolithic thought, we can only like, we can only be Democrats and all.
West explained that wearing the Make America Great Again hat in public wasn’t necessarily about supporting Trump and his policies but about overcoming fear and the negative backlash he knew would follow. The hat was a symbol that no one “owns” West as an artist or a person and he refused to be bullied by either side of the political aisle or anyone else.
When pressed about Trump’s policies and how West once said that President George W. Bush doesn’t care about Black people but that it doesn’t seem as though the current president cares about any people, the outspoken West paused for longer than a moment, and Kimmel decided to send the show to commercial.
Here’s West’s entire appearance in which the rapper, producer, designer, and all-around icon discusses his shoes, porn choices, wife, and the president.
