Insiders try to explain Kanye’s rants.
People close to Kanye West believe that some of the wild comments he’s made in interviews published Tuesday, including his assertion that slavery “is a choice,” could be the result of the rapper and professional provocateur going off his prescribed medication, TMZ reported Wednesday.
West said in a scattered, rant-like interview at TMZ’s headquarters Tuesday that he had been shunning doctors who ordered him to take three pills a day, following his 2016 hospitalization for what he described as an opioid addiction. He said the medication dulled his “vision.”
“These pills that they want me to take three of a day, I take one a week maybe, two a week,” he said. “Y’all had me scared of myself, of my vision.” West, 40, then decried the extent to which Americans are “drugged out,” presumably on medication to treat various mental health disorders.
West didn’t disclose what medication he was prescribed or for what condition. He suggested it could be related to opiate withdrawal, but it also could be related to the paranoia and depression he was said to be suffering before he called an end to his Saint Pablo tour in November 2016 and checked into UCLA Medical Center for eight days.
“So I took some pills so I wouldn’t go to the hospital and prove everyone right,” West said on TMZ Tuesday. “We are drugged out. We are following other people’s opinions. We are controlled by the media. And today it all changes.”
West also revealed that he was “drugged the (expletive) out” when he went to meet President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in December 2016 after he was released from the hospital. The rant about being drugged out immediately followed his other gripe about how he got addicted to opioids in the first place because he underwent liposuction.
He attributed his need to get plastic surgery to the media’s obsession with celebrities’ looks, especially with their weight. In fact, he directed his gripe to the staff at TMZ.
“I was trying to look good for y’all,” he declared. “I got liposuction because I didn’t want y’all to call me fat like y’all called Rob at the wedding and made him fly home before me and Kim got married. I didn’t want y’all to call me fat so I got liposuction, right?”