On Februrary 4, Kanye West ("Ye") appeared on Justin Laboy's The Download podcast to discuss all matters concerning his creative process, his recent love for generative AI, and his controversial actions and publicity stunts in recent years. When discussing his erratic behavior, the artist revealed that he was actually misdiagnosed with Bipolar Disorder in 2017. Instead, he claimed, "it's really a case of autism that I have."

The full interview is provided below:

Bipolar Disorder, as defined by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), "causes clear shifts in a person’s mood, energy, activity levels, and concentration." People with this disorder can experience waves of extremely energized behavior ("manic episodes"), often followed by waves of sad or hopeless moods ("depressive episodes").

Autism, on the other hand, is a much more broadly-defined neurological condition that mainly affects how one behaves, communicates with others, and learns, according to the NIMH. Symptoms also vary from person to person.

Kanye West first opened up about his struggles with mental health in 2018. After being hospitalized during the Saint Pablo tour in late 2016, as CBS News reported, he began raising awareness to end destigmatization of people struggling with Bipolar Disorder. In a series of now-deleted tweets written in 2018, he wrote, "I am able to experience first hand how people who have mental health issues get written off by society," as reported by NME. "I don’t blame people for not knowing how to handle this that said we as a society will learn together."

Kim Kardashian, West's wife at the time of his first diagnosis, also made a great effort to help the public understand the more difficult consequences of his behaviors. After he made the controversial claim that Harriet Tubman "never actually freed the slaves" during a 2020 campaign event, she posted on her Instagram Story that his struggles with mental health are still something he was working through privately, even if his compulsions have real, public, and justifably criticizable effects. As quoted by NBC News, she wrote:

"People who are unaware or far removed from this experience can be judgmental and not understand that the individual themselves have to engage in the process of getting help no matter how hard family and friends try. He is a brilliant but complicated person who on top of the pressures of being an artist and a black man, who experienced the painful loss of his mother, and has to deal with the pressure and isolation that is heightened by his [Bipolar Disorder.]"

West has also denied his Bipolar diagnosis before. Months after he publicly announced that he struggled with this disorder in 2018, he claimed that he was "misdiagnosed" during his infamous Oval Office visit with President Trump. "I wasn’t actually bipolar," he said. His doctor at the time allegedly told him that "I had sleep deprivation which can cause dementia 10 to 20 years from now when I wouldn’t even remember my son’s name.”

Now, however, Ye claims that he was recently re-tested, never actually struggled with Bipolar Disorder, and now identifies as a person with autism. He credits his second wife, Australian model and architect Bianca Censori with encouraging him to seek a new diagnosis: "My wife took me because she said, ‘Something about your personality doesn’t feel like it’s bipolar, I’ve seen bipolar before.’”

Reflecting on the aforementioned Oval Office meetup with President Trump, as well as his MAGA obsession in 2020, West told Laboy that his recent autism diagnosis provided much clarity on explaining his behavior.

"Autism takes you to a 'Rain Man' thing, where you're like, 'Aw man, I'm gonna wear this Trump hat because I like Trump in general’. And then when people tell you to not do it, you just get on that one point. And that’s my problem when fans tell me to do my album a certain way. I'll do it the opposite way...A lot of what was sending me into these episodes...The constant feeling of not being in control spun me out of control."

He also revealed that he is no longer taking his Bipolar medication in light of the re-diagnosis. "I haven’t taken the medication since I found out it wasn’t...the right diagnosis." When asked if he thought medication helped him sometimes, he responded, "It’s finding stuff that doesn’t block the creativity—obviously that’s what I bring to the world. It’s worth the ramp-up, as long as you get the creativity.”

The analogy Ye used to describe his "episodes" might also be helpful to understand Bully, his forthcoming record that will proudly use generative AI for its creation. "People were like, 'Stay away from AI! Stay Away from AI!'" he told Laboy and The Download. "It's a more negative reaction than autotune, and I remember I did autotune because people [thought it was trash at the time.]" He previously faced backslash after many speculated that tracks on Vultures II feautred AI-generated vocals and visuals, but he intends to make AI more accepted in the music industry, according to Hot New HipHop and the NFR Podcast.