After a year of saying things, Kanye West has said yet another thing. This time, the Chicago rapper who used to talk about poverty, race relations, and generally give more of a shit about things, has chosen to apologise for some of his outlandish behaviour earlier in the year.
Back in January, Kanye stopped by the TMZ office for a completely not staged visit (just before his album release) to praise Trump and say that slavery was a choice. Now, he’s said something close to an apology, or at least as close to an apology as he has given so far – it’s more of an admission of regret for the effect of his comments, not a retraction of them. “I don't know if I properly apologised for how the slavery comment made people feel,” he said on an appearance this morning on WGCI, a radio network in Chicago. “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.”
He continued: “I have never really approached or addressed the slavery comment fully. And it's not something for me to over-intellectualise. This is something about the fact that it hurt people's feelings, and the way that I presented that piece of information.”
At the time, the rapper tweeted that he “loves” the way that right-wing commentator Candace Owens thinks, and loves Trump, because Obama was in office for eight years and “nothing in Chicago changed” – plus, he said that the current POTUS has “dragon energy.”
His recent comments were a little more level. “I could present in a way more calm way, but I was ramped up,” he said. “And I apologise. That happens sometimes when people are – I'm not blaming mental health, but I'm explaining mental health.”