A Nico Ballesteros-directed documentary about Kanye West, In Whose Name, premiered earlier this month. It showcases some of his most controversial moments, and was filmed over six years. At one point in the doc, Saturday Night Live's Michael Che confronts the Chicago rapper backstage following his appearance on the show in 2018. At the time, Ye closed the show with a bizarre rant while sporting a MAGA hat.
“You can’t always have, every time you have a Black subject matter like [Bill] Cosby that you have to have a Black comedian talking about him,” he declared. After the show, Che called him out for his behavior. “I work here," he began. "Like, come on, man. We treat everyone that come in like family, and you gonna sell us out? Like, that’s f*cked up, man. We look up to you, we love you. What you got against us?”
"Airing it out like that without letting us be able to reply is kind of foul," Che added. "You wait until the last song and then say that foul sh*t to us?… You’re a hero to us, man! We love you. Seriously, we love you. But it’s foul to do that.”
Kanye West & Michael Che
During a recent appearance on SiriusXM’s The Bonfire, Che reflected on the tense encounter, also revealing that Ye eventually apologized. According to him, he got the apology in 2019 when Eddie Murphy hosted SNL.
“Every Black person in Hollywood was at this show,” he remembered. “I had a lot in that show, and I was running around crazy and people were just in my dressing room kind of using it as their green room. I had no place to really go.”
He ended up running into Ye in the hallway. “And I hadn’t seen him in years. I didn’t even know if he remembered that that happened because he was saying so much sh*t,” Che explained. “And he was like, ‘I owe you an apology.’ And we talked and I never brought it up again.”
