Kanye West has said he believes his music career was impacted following his storming of the stage during Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009.
The rapper shared a video interview, recorded on March 18, with US radio DJ Charlamagne tha God on Twitter, in which he was asked about having a “mental breakdown” in 2016.
He also spoke about how the robbery of his wife Kim Kardashian West in Paris in 2016, during which she was held at gunpoint at a private residence, affected him.
When asked where he is mentally, West told Charlamagne: “I think I’m in a stronger place than I ever was. After the breakdown, or I like to say, the breakthrough.”
On what he thinks caused it, West said: “Fear, stress, control, being controlled, manipulation, like being a pawn in a chess piece of life, stressing things that create, like, validation, that I didn’t need to worry about as much.”
He said that competing against other music stars, such as rapper Drake, and having his recent music not getting as much radio airplay as his older work had an impact on him.
“Really, ever since the Taylor Swift moment, it had never been the same, the connection with radio,” West said.
At the MTV VMAs nearly 10 years ago, West interrupted singer Swift while she collected her trophy for best female video, telling the audience that singer Beyonce deserved the prize.
West, 40, continued: “It’s like, whatever powers that be, it was much harder after that.”
https://t.co/Br5kIafXtG Charlamagne interview also on YouTube
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) May 1, 2018
During the interview, which lasted for one hour and 45 minutes, West later said: “There’s like, the situation with my wife in Paris, and all of the elements, you’re feeling helpless, like, what can you do?
“I went to Paris on that trip to protect her. Not protect her physically, but to go and help her with her looks because she’s in Paris, so I’m like, let me put my eye on it personally… and one of the things that she said she heard is that, they were coming to rob her and they had to wait until I had left.”
West recently returned to Twitter after a long absence, and he told Charlamagne that he returned because he “felt the need to speak at this point”.
“When you look up at five years from now, or 10 years from now, I’ll have even more experience. I’ll be in an even better place than I was today,” he added.
“But there’ll be mistakes, there’ll be flaws in the way I communicate, we’re human beings.
“I’m not media trained, I’m not studied in that. I’m not trying to say the right thing. I’m just trying to say exactly what I feel out of love.”