Kanye West's foray into the political spectrum has been tumultuous, to say the least. Not only is he currently risking an election-fraud investigation, but the nature of his chosen subject matter has ruffled the feathers of many concerned, frustrated, and straight-up annoyed observers. In the latter group stands comedian D.L. Hughley, who recently connected with Fanroom Live to promote his upcoming book Surrender, White People!: Our Unconditional Terms of Peace.
Before long, Hughley was fielding questions on Kanye West and his general thoughts on the controversial figure. Hughley prefaces by saying that the black community has a difficult relationship with mental health, citing a "lack of trust" as one of the primary factors. "There's a lot of distrust between our community and the medical community," explains D.L. "The things that have been attributed to us, like strength is suffering alone, and we think we can pray everything away. So I do understand how devastating it has been to our community."
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"There is no doubt that Kanye West suffers from some level of mental illness," he continues. "But it isn't why he's misogynistic, it isn't why he's disrespectful to our history. Kanye West, you don't to be mentally ill to put an asterisk on slavery. And he consistently does it, whether it's Harriett Tubman when he denigrated her, or whether he's talking about slaves. He's not so mentally ill that he'll talk about any other group of people, he talks about people he knows he can get away with. He's not so ill that he's trying to be a disruptor in the political form. He's not so ill that he took five million dollars in PPP payments."
"He seems to be conveniently ill when it suits his purpose," explains D.L. "To me, Kanye West is exactly like Donald Trump, so it would make sense that they're attracted to one another. "They're both amoral, their both demagogues. You know what's funny? Generally when you say the things he does, you don't live in Wyoming on a sprawling ranch -- you live on an underpass and you walk around with signs that say 'Jesus is coming, repent.' And people don't pray for you."
Maintaining that Ye has the ability to get the help he needs but willingly rejects it, Hughley seems frustrated at how people tend to reward the dubious behavior. "He even made money designing clothes to look like homeless people and Americans bought it for hundreds of dollars," he says. "While we're praying for people who can help themselves, let's save a little prayer for people that can't."
