Throughout his career, Kanye West hasn’t shied away from controversy. In fact, he has a tendency to stir the pot.
Whether he’s speaking his mind or calling out a fellow celebrity for something he doesn’t agree with, West is nothing if not vocal about his beliefs.
When it comes to OMG moments, the designer, who shares four children with Kim Kardashian, is often front and center.
At the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, West left his mark after he infamously interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for Best Female Video.
The rapper jumped on stage and took over the mic, saying, “I’m going to let you finish,” before declaring that Beyoncé “had one of the best videos of all time.”
A decade later, West stood by his claim, telling Nick Cannon in September 2020 that “If God didn’t want me to run on stage and say, ‘Beyoncé had the best video,’ he wouldn’t have sat me in the front row.”
In May 2018, the Georgia native shocked fans when he made comments about slavery. “You hear about slavery for 400 years. 400 years? That sounds like a choice,” he said during a TMZ Live interview. “Like, that was there for 400 years and it’s all of ya’ll? It’s, like, we’re mentally in a prison. I like the word ‘prison’ because slavery is too direct to the idea of Blacks.”
West again surprised fans when he made controversial statements about Kardashian and abortion in July 2020 as a part of his first presidential rally campaign.
During his South Carolina political appearance, the artist revealed that when the KKW Beauty founder got pregnant with their eldest child, North, the pair almost terminated the pregnancy. “We talked about her not having this child. She had the pills in her hand,” he recalled. “I called my wife and she said, ‘We’re gonna have this baby.’ I said, ‘We’re gonna have this child.’”
He followed up the presidential candidate speech with a tweetstorm of accusations directed at his family, claiming, “Kim was trying to fly to Wyoming with a doctor to lock me up like on the movie Get Out because I cried about saving my daughter’s life yesterday.” He also called Kris Jenner “Kris Jong-Un” in a since-deleted tweet and told her she was “not allowed around my children.”
As the drama made headlines, Kardashian publicly addressed the Grammy winner’s mental health struggles and a source exclusively told Us Weekly that the reality star was meeting with lawyers to discuss ending her marriage. In February 2021, Us confirmed that Kardashian filed for divorce after almost seven years of marriage.
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Scroll down to see some of West’s most outrageous moments throughout his career.
