It goes without saying, but Ye (formerly Kanye West) and Taylor Swift have had a famously contentious relationship since the infamous stage-crashing incident at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. Now, Ye has revealed that the situation really impacted him, so much so that during the aftermath, he fled to Japan.
The second part of Ye’s recent Drink Champs interview is out now, and in it, he revealed (as Pitchfork notes) that after the VMAs, he “did a personal exile” with Virgil Abloh in Japan because “all of America hated” him. He also said, “Everyone was like, ‘You wrong for this one, you won’t win this,’ by telling me, ‘You shouldn’t have ran on stage, you were rude,’ God forbid.”
He also addressed the VMAs in the previously released first part of the interview, saying, “I was actually talked in to going to the awards show. At that time, it was [my manager] Don C.’s job to talk me into stuff. They find new people whose job would be to talk me into doing something that I don’t want to do — influencers, people around you. So that night, I said, ‘Man, I’m not going to this awards show. I’m not sitting through this no more.’ And the very first award, they sit me in the front row. You got [Beyoncé’s] ‘Single Ladies’ video… this is one of the best videos in history. So it’s not that it’s just for her when the artist does something that’s that compelling and incredible. We got to respect it.”
Watch the new Drink Champs episode below.
