Here’s Who Has Defended and Opposed Kanye West Following His Most Recent Controversies
Kanye West, now known as Ye, has been grabbing headlines for all the wrong reasons for the last month. On Oct. 3, his Yeezy Season 9 fashion show was just the beginning of the tumultuous days head. At the event in Paris, he donned a shocking “White Lives Matter” T-shirt, which is officially part of the new collection. Subsequent anti-Semetic comments, thoughts on his relationship with the late Virgil Abloh and disputing the cause of George Floyd’s death came after. Understandably so, West has ignited outrage among fellow celebrities and musicians.
Jaden Smith was one of the first people to speak out against Kanye. Smith actually got up and left Ye's fashion show after seeing the back of Yeezy's shirt. Later, Smith tweeted messages like, "I Don’t Care Who’s It Is If I Don’t Feel The Message I’m Out" and “Black Lives Matter." Boosie BadAzz was surely in agreement. One day after the showcase on Oct. 4, Boosie called out Ye for using his platform to "shit on his own race."
A lot of people were outraged and as a result, each 24 hours saw the pile of complaints against Ye grow. One by one, several platforms reacted by censoring him. First came Instagram. After posting text screenshots of an argument that Kanye was having with Diddy regarding the WLM shirts and dropping more anti-Semitic ideology in the process (among other occurrences) the Instagram team had enough and banned him on Oct. 8.
After that, he instantly made his return to Twitter that same day for the first time since November of 2020. Out of many posts he made, Kanye’s "going death con 3 on jewish people" tweet marked the lowlight of a week that seemed to grow more disheartening for fans. Ye was locked out of his account on Oct. 9. Soon after the next day, political commentator Candace Owens defended Kanye’s tweet. "If you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was anti-Semitic," she said in a Dailywire post she wrote. "This is not the beginning of a holocaust."
Though he’s been banned on social media, Kanye has been doing interviews over these last few weeks to get his thoughts off. However, Fox has taken a stand by omitting clips from the recent discussion with Tucker Carlson, Uninterrupted’s The Shop refused to air an episode that featured Ye—citing his use of "more hate speech and extremely dangerous stereotypes"—and Revolt TV pulled their episode of Drink Champs following the backlash that Kanye West received for saying that George Floyd actually died from fentanyl and not from former officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck. The latter situation also spawned a national apology from the show's cohost N.O.R.E.
Over the last couple of headline-grabbing weeks, many of Ye’s peers have turned to adversaries while support for him has dwindled. So with that in mind, here, XXL takes a look at the most prominent celebs that have denounced the Chicago rapper, and the few who have still stuck by his side. Take a look below to see the public opinion on Ye.—Thomas Galindo