Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. Hope you're doing well.

Right now, what it's about time for is a Kanye update. We pretty much sidestepped addressing his most recent series of Twitter meltdowns, not because there weren't any tweets of note that came out of it, but for the most part, it just seemed like a worsened state of everything that we already discussed on this channel vis-a-vis the Twitter meltdown previous to that.

Basically, more out-of-touch ramblings, more slurs, more swastikas, just more off-the-rails commentary. Also, a really disgusting tweet about Jay Z and Beyoncé's children. Really just too many tweets to cover in the whole shit storm of posts. I guess another reason I didn't really feel any pressure to talk about it is that a lot of my content up until this point really pulling apart Kanye's behaviors and statements and actions over the past year plus.

I will say as uneasy as I was to continue covering Kanye and his music, a big driver for me to continue doing that was that with a lot of what he was saying, the response that I was seeing to it was that there was a very intense and vocal group of fans and supporters that were agreeing with nearly everything that he was saying. And personally, I found that to be really concerning, especially since some of those morons may, in fact, cross over into my views and my algorithm, too.

So I thought it important to debunk and tear down a lot of the stuff that he was saying in normalizing. But I don't know, with that past tweet storm, it seemed like the tide started to really turn for once, and that Ye was really starting to embarrass himself and starting to make some people really second guess whether or not they still needed to be aboard the Kanye train, which I think ultimately is a good thing.

But you know what? The thing about Kanye is that the man, whether you love him or hate him, he is an innovator. And just when you think he has done and said the worst and basically reached the highest peak he possibly can when it comes to destroying his likability, his image, his career, he comes up with a new way to somehow make it worse. Enter this new on-camera interview he has done with DJ Akademiks while dressed fully in a... Can we show this on screen? Can we show this without this getting demonetized?

He's in a landsman robe, hood and all, and it's all black. You can hear him heavily breathing and sweating and just his voice being muffled by the hood throughout the entirety of this damn interview.

"One, no rap album is better than Vultures 1. Last year, let's go song for song for song, and it only got half of me on it."

It goes on for about an hour. I want to pull apart some of the main points he tries to make in this conversation with Ak.

Now, one thing I want to get out of the way before I address anything Kanye says in this interview is this. Remember and let it be known that Kanye willingly and voluntarily decided to have this interview and conversation with a man who is recorded having a sexual conversation, a grooming type conversation with a minor.

Again, remember that before you hear Kanye say anything, which you know he's going to about children and concern for children and other people being creepy around children and, oh, save the children and think of the children and think of the Illuminati, sex trafficking, this, that, and that. You are literally helping to platform a man who had sexual conversations for the whole world to see with a child. The child even called him out on social media.

So already before we step into this conversation, we can pretty much write off any sincerity behind those claims and arguments that Kanye is going to make here.

"The whole plan is that you all going to pull my kids into y'all, whatever the word is, Illuminati system, and I don't have no say so on my kids? And anybody close, whether it's the Jews, whether it's Carti, anybody within my reach, I'm doing everything legally in my power, everything with my fucking mastermind. You get what I'm saying?"

What he's doing here on this camera in this interview in this outfit is for clout. It's for clout.

But to go over, I don't know, the major hits of this dialog here that Kanye has with Akademiks. Kanye makes it clear that he feels like his life is in danger and that he's under a lot of pressure right now because of what he's saying, what he's tweeting, what his beliefs are. It gets quite conspiratorial, and there's even a point at which he theorizes that the kid from Linkin Park or Chester Bennington died because he was speaking on similar things or was also handling himself in a way that was a threat to the music industry or the powers that be.

"I just know that the kid from Linkin Park got killed for expressing some of these same truths."

So not only is he insinuating that Chester died because of that, but also that he's under the same threat that Chester was because of how he's handling himself right now, which I don't know. If you're a Linkin Park fan, that's probably not hitting in a very good way.

He likens himself to P. Diddy, not only in ways that are personal, but like, lining up their situations, respectively, essentially claiming that the only reason that Diddy is under fire right now and in so much trouble is because the industry and the powers that be are looking to get rid of him. The Cassie videos is like 10 years old, why is that even coming up now? I know people have all been in altercations with their girlfriends, so on and so forth.

"I related to Puff, and then they pulled out a video with him and Cassie from 10 years ago. And then it made everybody be like, 'Oh, well, Puff's a woman beater, so he's the devil. He needs to be in jail.' Meanwhile, I don't know somebody who hasn't gotten to altercation with a girl."

That video was literally Diddy going at her with no mercy whatsoever.

So for Kanye, and even though I would like to think this doesn't need to be said, I'm going to say it anyway, to come onto this interview and act like this is just something everybody does and everybody experiences is pretty freaking twisted, though at least he acknowledges the fact that Playboi Carti has similar allegations against him, which is something that, I don't know, I feel like more people generally should care about.

But look, without parsing too much of what Kanye is trying to say during this first leg of the interview, let me paint it this way. The way he comes across with all of his answers and all of his statements is that he truly seems like at this point in his life, and even Akademiks notices is like, 'Hey, don't you have a bunch of assistants or people around everywhere or people who are helping you, team, this, that.'

Ye truly does come across right now as somebody who is just totally cut off, no contact. If anybody who has a personal relationship with him, a truly personal relationship with him as talking with him at this point, I have no idea who it could possibly be, or what they could even be saying to him, because right now, the way he comes across in this interview is like he's a 400 subscriber, webcam YouTuber who constantly makes videos about Flat Earth and the Illuminati. He literally goes on about the Illuminati in the interview.

Now, the thing with Kanye is that the more he talks, as crazy as he comes off sometimes, eventually does get to the heart of what's actually bothering him. And he kind of does this when he brings up the fact that he doesn't own any or even half of the intellectual property that is created off of the backs of his kids like North West.

"When my daughter was put on song, that's when I realized that I didn't own their name and likeness. So watch this. All the brands that I made, I don't got the name and likeness, ownership or at least 50/50 with my kids. So how's it joint custody?"

So if anything that she does in the world of music or fashion or whatever, he doesn't get any money or kickback from it, all of that presumably goes to Kim, and he seemingly is very burnt up about that.

Now, if this were a very normal situation among two celebrity parents with their child, I guess I would understand this concern and gripe as much as at my core, I find it disgusting as a celebrity to find out ways to monetize your children. I find that practice in and of pretty inexcusable.

But in this case, you're talking about it being between Kim Kardashian and a guy who repeatedly crashes out on social media posting swastikas over and over and over, which, I don't know, for the health, safety, and future of that child, maybe the money made off of the IP dealing directly with her is not safe in that guy's hands.

He also, at one point, says that Kendrick Lamar is afraid of him posting a tweet or tweets about him due to how crazy that Jay-Z tweet was, I guess.

"I want Kendrick to always remember that Jay-Z tweet before he ever crossed the line."

I don't know what it is Ye thinks he could tweet about Kendrick that would be so scary to him. Kanye, right now, publicly speaking, is at such a low point in people's eyes. If Kendrick were to drop a diss track against him, I doubt he would have to try very hard in order to turn the chord of public opinion against him.

As Kanye continues on, he tries to contextualize or justify the use of bigoted language that he's been engaging with, be it in his music or on social media. He even has a recent "WW3" track that is out now on streaming, which is so ridiculous and offensive. I don't really know how it's staying up on streaming platforms right now. The song sucks. I don't really want to get into it. It's not worth my or your time.

I'm fast forwarding a bit here, but there's even a point at which he's explaining this hype cycle of rap artists that the music industry is controlling behind the scenes to have smaller artists and hand them over to Live Nation and so on and so forth. And he's doing it all in this white business guy voice.

"And then we're going to get a bunch of small artists, and then you'll be able to make your money off of that. And then if we take, oh, Carti's doing good, we'll make him take the blue pill. We'll have him rap about scams."

And while, again, I feel like, and this is what makes Kanye compelling to some people, there is a bit of truth there in terms of observing business incentives of the record labels, sure. It's easier to exploit a bunch of younger, smaller artists who have very brief hype cycles.

But again, simultaneously, he's painting this as if it's some huge secret and grand conspiracy, and that the reason he is becoming irrelevant and he's enemy number one in the music industry is because Kanye is too old, can't have these rappers hanging around for too long or else they'll start thinking things and acting out and so on and so forth.

Meanwhile, some of the biggest artists in the industry, like Kendrick, Drake, J. Cole, are all sitting on 10 plus years of music industry experience, and their popularity isn't dying out anytime soon. And on top of it, artists who are even older than them, like Nas, for example, has been having an incredible run with his new records, and he's like, roundly respected in the music industry. He even won a Grammy off of one of the King's Disease records.

Also, Andre 3000. People would love a new rap album from Andre. I mean, it's cool that he did that jazz thing, but nobody's telling that guy he can't come out with a new record because he's too old or too wise or too whatever.

There's literally a point in this conversation where he claims that he essentially ended Frank Ocean's career and him having come out with music that is similar but superior to what Frank Ocean did on records like Blonde, is the reason Frank hasn't come out with any new music.

"When I made Moon, it basically ended Frank Ocean's career. He didn't have a song since then. 'Sipping some wine / I want to go to the Moon.' Any genre of music that anyone has, I make a better version of it."

Yeah, Kanye just being such a supremely talented artist is the reason Frank Ocean hasn't come out with any new shit.

There's another point in the interview where Kanye says something that, frankly, in my opinion, is horrible, and that's that he didn't even want to have kids with Kim and that he ended up doing so because it was God's plan, which imagine your children, either now or when they're older, having to hear their dad say that.

I mean, at least he's acting like a psychopath and wearing a Klansman outfit, so you can't exactly say he's in his right state of mind while saying this. But still, nobody wants to hear that or think that.

Plus, I mean, I just hate the way that God and Christianity are incorporated into this convo by Kanye. Does it look like what this man is doing is God's plan? Does it look like God planned this? Is this what it looks like when Jesus has taken the wheel?

There's another super standout moment in the interview where Ak, to his credit, does actually push back on Kanye a little bit and question him on his motivations when it came to him tweeting about his past friend, personally and in the fashion world, Virgil. And despite the public understanding that they had a falling out and they grew apart. And toward the end of Virgil's life, they weren't as close as they were at one point, people are still wondering, Why would you go out of your way to say that? What exactly is the motivation there? What is the reason?

"Why say, Fuck Virgil after he passed? I think a lot of people feel like he's not here to defend himself. It feels like you still have a little bit of animosity there."

"I'm evil."

Now, how much of this is seriously the case and how much of it in his own mind is an act in order to play into his need and desire to go against the grain, go against what he perceives as control of him and his actions and his speech, what he perceives as being a pressure he needs to be a contrarian to at all times. Regardless of what the motivation is there, it doesn't matter because the actions and behavior are the same, meaning the actions and behavior of a terrible person.

He also gives DJ Akademiks toward the end of the video a "White Lives Matter" t-shirt. He also claims that a lot of his motivations behind embracing the the swastika stuff and the Nazi stuff is that he is at odds with Jewish individuals in the music and the entertainment industry, and he sees them as exploiting him, exploiting Black artists, making money off of their pain, so in response to that, he wants to wear and show around their pain through this hateful symbolism.

Pause, because I do want to make one thing clear. Kanye's embrace of Nazism and right-wing talking points does go beyond just mere trolling or going against the grain. On numerous occasions, he has platformed and cavorted with numerous right wing or even Nazi alt-right figures. And there's multiple instances of evidence where he's clearly doing the research in terms of going down the rabbit hole of a Jewish conspiracy and beyond.

So again, as much as we know Kanye to be a contrarian, as much as he tries to justify his rhetoric and his actions with this just being a statement on his exploitation and so on and so forth, clearly on some level, he is feeding into and adhering to some of the worst elements of the most fascist sectors of right-wing thought.

Yeah, this interview is demented, capital D demented. I'm not really sure if there's anything else that I can or I need to say in regards to this conversation, honestly. Let me know in the comments what you guys think about any of this. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano, forever.