He's known for saying some truly outlandish things, but during the recent podcast with Bret Easton Ellis in which he insulted (and received a retort from) Zappos, Kanye West offered up yet another controversial statement by comparing himself and his creative struggles to slavery.
"I felt like the main character [in '12 Years a Slave']," the rapper said, according to The Hollywood Gossip. "And what I'm dealing with even as a mega-popular rich celebrity, you know, 'F**k you, who do you think you are to complain about anything?' situation that I'm in."
The critically acclaimed film by Steve McQueen has become a box-office smash this year, a brutal and unflinching look at the life of Solomon Northrup, a New York man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the 1800s. While West's life of luxury is arguably a far cry from the day-to-day horrors slaves experienced, that didn't stop the superstar from drawing a bizarre parallel between his own life and Northrup's.
"You start doing more research and say, 'Hey, I want to be a part of the creative conversation and be able to make money off of that also.' They stop you right there and say, 'You can't be a part of that conversation,' or they'll give you a one-off," West added. "At Louis Vuitton I did one shoe. At Nike I did two shoes but they spread them apart over four years and they had the most impact possible. I kind of saw that side of what it was, as a creative, to be free, the parallel to the main character in '12 Years a Slave'. When it was taken away from me, it felt like what it felt like as a creative to be enslaved."
West also caught flack when he made a remark back in 2011 claiming that people look at him like "he's Hitler," and for calling himself the "Michael Jordan of music" over the summer. Most recently, his latest music video for his single "Bound 2" was mocked by James Franco and Seth Rogen in a goofy remake called "Bound 3," in which Rogen plays the role of Kim Kardashian...topless, of course.
