For Pusha T, hearing about Kany West’s blatant antisemitism has been nothing less than “disappointing.” In a new interview with Los Angeles Times, the rapper spoke about his working relationship with Ye after collaborating on It’s Almost Dry and how he felt after hearing about West’s hateful comments.
“It’s definitely affected me. It’s been disappointing,” Pusha said when asked about his reaction to “everything that’s happened with [West]” in the last several months. “As a Black man in America, there is no room for bigotry or hate speech.”
“So yeah. It’s been very disappointing, let’s talk straight,” he added.
Pusha said it was always “a very special thing” to work with West, who is featured as a collaborator on several songs from his album It’s Almost Dry, including “Dreamin of the Past,” “Rock n Roll,” and “Diet Coke.”
“Creatively, Ye has meant freedom to me. A lot of times, people would try to get me to change certain things about my process, change certain things about me lyrically, change certain things about the content. He never has been like that,” Pusha said about the creative side of the controversial musician. “He always saw me for who I was and knew how to take it to the next level.”
“We actually have a lot of the same taste, we love just barred-out rap,” he added. “He would tell me things like, ‘Man, you just be the extreme version of yourself. And I’m gonna be the extreme version of myself.’”
The new interview with Pusha comes amid a continued problematic time for West, with even Donald Trump calling the rapper a “seriously troubled man” after he visited Mar-a-Lago and announced his campaign for the presidency in 2024. “I told him don’t run for office, a total waste of time, can’t win,” Trump said Saturday.
Aside from his announcement about running for president, West has faced heavy criticism for making antisemitic comments on social media and during live interviews.
And earlier this week, Rolling Stone reported that multiple former Yeezy employees said West played pornography to them and showed them inappropriate pictures of Kardashian, among other alleged tactics of intimidation and control. On Thursday, Adidas — who dropped the Yeezy line in late October — confirmed that it is conducting an internal investigation into West’s management tactics.