On Tuesday, Kanye West went on TMZ Live with conservative YouTuber Candace Owens to share their side of what his recent screeds about free thought and his wearing of the Make America Great Again hat meant.
While West kept to an overall message of free love, here are some quotes that had viewers cringing in their seats:
1. On wearing the Make America Great Again hat...
"You can't tell me what I'm supposed to do ... I don't subscribe to icons. You take the Nazi symbol, if you go to India, it is all over the place, but it doesn't represent that. It represents something different. So to me to wear that [MAGA] hat means I want to make America great in my own way."
2. On slavery...
"When you hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years? That sounds like a choice. You were there for 400 years, and it is all of y'all?
"It is like we are mentally in prison. I like the word prison because slavery goes too direct to the idea of blacks. It is like slavery/Holocaust, Holocaust is Jews, and slavery is blacks. It is like we are one with the human race, we are human beings and stuff."
He later posted several tweets trying to clarify what he meant.
the reason why I brought up the 400 years point is because we can't be mentally imprisoned for another 400 years. We need free thought now. Even the statement was an example of free thought It was just an idea
3. On being labeled...
Kanye West stirs up the TMZ newsroom over TRUMP, SLAVERY and FREE THOUGHT. There's A LOT more that went down ... and the fireworks are exploding on @TMZLive today. Check your local listings for show times. https://t.co/jwVsJCMPiq
"Sometimes I feel like people try to minimize me to 'hip-hop,' 'artist,' 'black community.' Yeah, I am always going to represent that, but I also represent 'world.'
"It is the now. It is 2018. We are in the now, and I represent the now, and I represent what the possibilities of a new peaceful planet. We are get beginning of it."
4. On white supremacy...
"We are going to go and talk — I want to talk to the guys in Charlottesville on both side, on both sides...
"I’m not a white supremacist. I don’t support white supremacy. By the way, white supremacy is a redundant statement in America, whites are supreme in America, that’s what we’re taught."
5. The right to free thought
“People need to start worrying about themselves. If I go and grab some water out of the fridge and I am in the studio, I am not asking anybody if they want water. If you want water, you saw me grab the water. You grab your own water. We need to start worrying about ourselves and not worrying about what other people think, and we have the right to free thought.”
6. On his opioid addiction...
“You know when I went and visited [Trump] the first time right after the election? And then I deleted the tweets. I was drugged the fuck out. I was addicted to opioids.
"Two days after I got off opioids I am in the hospital ... Two days before I was in the hospital, I was on opioids. I was addicted to opioids.
"I had plastic surgery because I was trying to look good for y’all. I got liposuction because I didn't want y'all to call me fat like y'all called Rob [Kardashian] 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 and they gave me opioids [after]. I started taking two of them and then driving to work on the opioids.
"When I left the hospital, how many pills do you think I was given? Seven. I went from taking two pills to taking seven. So the reason why I denounced, why I dropped those tweets and everything, because I was drugged the fuck out, bro. And I am not drugged out.
"These pills that they want me to take three of a day, I take one a week maybe, two a week. Y'all had me scared of myself, of my vision. So I took some pills so I wouldn't go to hospital and prove everyone right."
7. The politics of race and perceived reality
8. TMZ is a hospital?
“We are now in the hospital. TMZ is the hospital to fix the world. Obama was our opioids. It made us feel like everything was good.”
9. On the need to communicate with Trump...
10. On the merits of "crazy shit"...
“I believe that Kim Jong Un didn't believe that Obama was crazy enough to come at him. Sometimes you need some crazy shit to change something.”
11. On free love...
“It is free love. It is a spirit. In the office you had Tupac and John Lennon [paintings] on the wall. I don't want to be the third one, but I am willing to be the third one for free love on that wall.”
12. On class war...
“There is a class war happening right now, too. The class war might be — the class war is one of the reasons why Trump won. Because Obama was so high class that it stopped speaking to the middle and the lower class. He was so classy.”
13. "Love is the strongest force in the universe"
