Kanye West has it in for US president Barack Obama.
The outspoken rapper issued a veiled threat to Obama in an interview with author Bret Easton Ellis, warning him against saying unkind things about his baby mama Kim Kardashian.
“I don't care if you're the president. I bring joy to people,” said Kanye.
“He shouldn't mention my baby mama name, ‘cause we both from Chicago’.
Despite having Kanye’s creative partner Jay-Z as a friend, president Obama has been less than complimentary about Kanye in the past. He famously called the rapper a “jackass” after Kanye infamously interrrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV VMAs in 2009.
In an interview in which he discussed the obsession with reality TV and accumulating wealth among today’s youth, Obama said that in his day: “Kids weren't monitoring every day what Kim Kardashian was wearing, or where Kanye West was going on vacation, and thinking that somehow that was the mark of success”.
The Kardashian clan didn’t take too kindly to the president’s remarks, with Kris Jenner suggesting that Obama was a bit of a hypocrite.
“I bet the President has some friends with 10 000 square foot houses and that he wouldn’t mind going over there… when [he was] asking them to have a party for [him] while [he was] campaigning for dollars to run for president,” she said.
Perhaps, because the Kardashian clan feels its being targeted, or because he isn’t getting the respect he feels he deserves, Kanye used his interview with Ellis to compare himself to the main character in the upcoming slavery movie, 12 Years a Slave. The harrowing film chronicles the passage of time in the life of a man who is tricked into slavery.
“I felt like the main character, in what I'm dealing with as even as a mega popular rich celebrity (even though you might think f*** you, who are you to complain about anything) attempting to create in other fields, in clothing.
“It started with my song, New Slaves, when I was sitting in Paris with these companies knowing that these things would sell on Barneys floor because I'd wear it or Jay-Z wears it.
“And then you say I want to be a part of the creative conversation, to make money from that and they cut you off.
“It'd be something I discovered four years ago and I put it on trend.
“Then they gave me one-offs, Louis Vuitton I did one shoe, Nike I did two and they had the most impact possible.
“So I felt as a creative what it's like to be free, then when it was taken away I felt as a creative what it is to be enslaved... To have all of these ideas, these ideas for products.” - Tonight Reporter