Kanye West is an open book with his mental health. The rapper revealed in a new interview that he was “diagnosed with a mental condition” at the age of 39.
“I think everybody got something,” West, 40, told Big Boy TV after a listening party for his newly released eighth album, Ye. “But like I said on the album, it’s not a disability. It’s a superpower.”
The 21-time Grammy winner didn’t disclose his exact diagnosis during the interview, but he did reveal on the Ye song “Yikes” that he has bipolar disorder. In addition, the cover art for the project features a photo of a Wyoming mountain range with “I hate being bipolar it’s awesome” written across it.
West also revealed to Big Boy TV that he “completely redid the album” after he sparked outrage in May for suggesting during a TMZ Live interview that slavery “sounds like a choice.”
“We just sat there and, like, really honed in on the words,” he explained. “We know now it’s all headlines, every bar can be used. There’s even bars that we had about that [slavery comment]. I took a bar off the album. It was just too sensitive. … I feel like the best thing I can do is sit there and go in that studio and keep chopping that thing [like] only I know how to do.”
The “Gold Digger” MC didn’t completely ignore his controversial remarks on Ye, though. On the song “Wouldn’t Leave,” he addresses the backlash he received from fans and his wife, Kim Kardashian.
“I said, ‘Slavery a choice’ / They said, ‘How, ‘Ye?’ / Just imagine if they caught me on a wild day,” he raps. “Now I’m on 50 blogs, gettin’ 50 calls / My wife calling, screaming, saying, ‘We ‘bout to lose it all!’ / Had to calm her down ‘cause she wouldn’t breathe / Told her she could leave me now / But she wouldn’t leave.”
West was hospitalized in late 2016 for a mental breakdown that forced him to cancel the remaining dates of his Saint Pablo tour. He told Charlamagne Tha God in May, “I think I’m in a stronger place than I ever was after the breakdown or, as I like to say, the breakthrough.”
For the latest celebrity news and interviews subscribe to our new podcast ‘In Case You Missed Us’ below!
