Kanye West talks Trump, mental health, and porn during interview with Jimmy Kimmel

Kanye West’s interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live! weaved around mental health, President Donald Trump and porn.

Jimmy Kimmel was absolutely right when he tweeted a preview for his interview with Kanye West for Jimmy Kimmel Live! A hurricane of revealing quotes came from the rapper during his appearance on the late night show, following an already stinging wave of controversial comments.

Now, for those who aren’t familiar with the epic saga of Kimmel vs. Kanye, E! Online has a useful recap. Long (and dramatic) story short: Jimmy Kimmel made fun of Kanye being Kanye; Kanye shockingly didn’t take it too well and subsequently lashed out at Kimmel; Kimmel made light of the situation; Kanye appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live!  a month after the “rap beef” went down and all seemed okay, sort of? Five years later, Kimmel spoke with GQ about the feud for their February cover, saying “I live for moments like that. When I got in a Twitter battle with Kanye, I was so happy.”

We’ll see how happy Kimmel is after seeing reactions to Thursday night’s interview with West, who many on social media described as cringe-worthy, awkward, upsetting, and honestly, odd.

Kanye West’s support for President Donald Trump

The 41-year-old rapper defended his reasons for supporting Trump, with a key reason being well, he just doesn’t care what people think about what he says or does.

"As a musician, African American, a guy out in Hollywood — all these different things — everyone around me tried to pick my candidate for me, and then told me every time I said I liked Trump that I couldn’t say it out loud or my career would be over, or I’d get kicked out the black community."

West added that there’s a pretty easy way to stop the political chaos in our country right now. “When I see people just even like go at the president, it’s like, why not try love?” He added that of all things, hugs can be an answer, telling people to hug “the way that Alice Johnson hugged her family when she got out of jail. We can defuse this nuclear bomb of hate by thinking of everyone as our family.”

Kimmel, while agreeing that he understood where West was coming from, pressed that it isn’t that simple. The host reminded West of the current administration’s “zero tolerance” policy and the ongoing issue of migrant family separations. It was when the late-night host brought up the infamous George Bush quote that West was, for a moment, silent. 

“You so famously and so powerfully said ‘George Bush doesn’t care about black people,'” Kimmel reminded West. “It makes me wonder: What makes you think that Donald Trump does, or any people at all?”

West looked upwards, said nothing, and thus Kimmel went to commercial.

Speaking his mind

Following his 2016 hospitalization, where he says he “lost his confidence,” West says it wasn’t until over a year later that he felt he could truly be himself and say what he felt.

"I said it [backing Trump] right before I went to the hospital, and I expressed myself, and when I came out I had lost my confidence so I didn’t have the confidence to take on the world and the backlash. And it took me a year and a half to have the confidence to stand up and put on the hat no matter what the consequences were, and what it represented to me is not about policies, because I’m not a politician like that, but it represented overcoming fear and doing what you felt no matter what anyone said, and saying you can’t bully me, liberals can’t bully me, news can’t bully me, the hip-hop community can’t bully me. Because at that point if I’m afraid to be me I’m no longer ‘Ye. That’s what makes ‘Ye. And I actually quite enjoy when people are mad at me about certain things.”"

Those comments about slavery

Kimmel continued with the hot Kanye West topics, bringing up the artist’s controversial statement that slavery was a choice. West dodged the question, saying people focus “too much on the past and focus too much on regret.” He continued with a mind-boggling rant about how we all live in a simulation and that the audience needed to hold their applause for all the genius that was about to be spoken by him.

"We get too caught up in the past and what everyone’s saying and what everyone’s tweeting, and sometimes you just have to be fearless enough to break the f—ng simulation. And when I say simulation — sorry I know you guys wanted to clap but everything I’ma say’s gonna be amazing."

Women and objectification

Kimmel mentioned that on West’s album, there is a song where he imagines his daughter North as an adult, dating men. On the song “Violent Crimes,” West raps on how he wants to protect North from men with bad intentions, and some of the lyrics are pretty mature.

When asked has his attitude about women and objectification changed since having daughters, West replied, “Nah I still look at Pornhub.”

Mental illness and designing his own tombstone

While Kimmel seemed to try to weave the conversation back into lighter topics, West brought up darker tracks from his new album, Ye, including when he touched on murder and suicide. That’s also when the artist discussing the design idea for his own tombstone.

"I was inspired after seeing this Alexander McQueen film because this was a beautiful, amazing artist that killed himself and he always would talk about it — he even designed his own casket, and I’ve thought about casket design and I’ve thought about a tombstone that says: ‘Are you happy now?’"

Kimmel, understandably concerned, told West, “It’s funny but not funny… When you have thoughts like that you have to be careful and talk to people.”

West replied, “Yeah but you have to — well, not be careful just be expressive.”

Later in the interview, West had an actually poignant discussion about mental health in the black community.

"I think it’s important for us to have open conversations about mental health, especially with me being black because we never had therapists in the black community, we never approached, like, taking medication, and I think it’s good when I had my first complete blackout aged five that my mum didn’t fully medicate me because I might have never been ‘Ye.… I’m 41 years old and I don’t know anyone that has f—d up as much as I have and is still as successful, so I wanna prove that you can get fat, you can say the wrong thing, you can piss a whole city off."

To which Kimmel ended the 21-minute interview with, “And you can be President of the United States.”

Watch West’s full appearance on Kimmel below:

What did you think of Kanye West’s appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.