Kanye West has always had a knack for stirring the pot, but at the beginning of October, he’s taken his controversial statements to a new level.
Though Ye has been vocal about his conservative, pro-Trump opinions for years, his latest controversies started Oct. 3 when photos from his Yeezy Paris Fashion Week show showing some of his models wearing shirts printed with the phrase “White Lives Matter” started circling online. West himself had also worn one of the shirts to the show, and even stopped to take a photo with conservative commentator Candace Owens, who was also sporting “WLM” attire.
The situation was then exacerbated by West’s subsequent Instagram posts targeting fashion editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, who’d previously shared her horror at the shirts on her own account. These were followed by additional posts attacking stars who’d came to Karefa-Johnson’s defense, such as Gigi Hadid and Hailey Bieber.
He went on to defend his statements on Tucker Carlson‘s Fox News show, saying he used “White Lives Matter” — classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “racist response to the civil rights movement Black Lives Matter” — simply because he thought it was “funny.”
Before that controversy even had the chance to die down, Ye started up another one — this time against Jewish people. After posting aggressive, explicitly anti-Semitic sentiments over the weekend of Oct. 8, he was temporarily restricted from using both Instagram and Twitter.
As a result, stars such as Ariana Grande, John Legend, Diddy, Jack Antonoff and more have all come forward to condemn the rapper’s views. Keep reading to see who’s weighed in.
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Jaden Smith
Jaden Smith was in attendance at Kanye’s Yeezy Paris Fashion Week show, meaning he was on ground zero of the “White Lives Matter” debacle. After seeing that Ye and his models were sporting the phrase on their shirts, he left.
“Black Lives Matter,” the 24-year-old rapper tweeted later.
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Boosie Badazz
Boosie Badazz got heated with Kanye in a series of explicit, all-caps tweets about the “WLM” shirts. In one, Boosie wrote: “AFTER ALL WE BEEN THROUGH AS A RACE YOU PUT THIS DISRESPECTFUL SHIT ON?”
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Diddy
Diddy first shared his disapproval of Kanye’s “WLM” shirts in a candid Instagram video, in which he said he would “always support my brother Kanye as a freethinker, but the ‘White Lives Matter’ T-shirt, I don’t rock with it.”
“All America has planned for us is poverty, incarceration and death,” he continued. “So before I can get to any other lives matter … Black lives matter, don’t play with it.”
Later, Ye posted screenshots of a text argument he was having with the “I’ll Be Missing You” rapper over the shirts. In their messages, Diddy tries to arrange a face-to-face meeting to talk through the disagreement with Kanye, who refuses.
“This ain’t a game,” West addressed Diddy in a subsequent post, before looping in his anti-Semitic views. “Ima use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me. I told you this was war. Now gone get you some business.”
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Tom Morello
Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello denounced Kanye’s “WLM” shirts and voiced his support for Black Lives Matter by retweeting a video posted to Fanbase CEO Isaac Hayes III’s Twitter account. In the video, a man holding up a BLM sign endures harassment from racial slur-dropping citizens in Harrison, Ark., near where the Ku Klux Klan is headquartered.
“@kanyewest this is who you placate for and want acceptance from,” reads the caption.
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John Legend
John Legend took to Twitter to denounce his former friend, whose political views caused a rift between the two musicians. “Weird how all these ‘free, independent thinkers’ always land at the same old anti blackness and anti semitism,” the “All Of Me” singer wrote Oct. 9.
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Garbage
Shirley Manson, Duke Erikson, Steve Marker and Butch Vig of the band Garbage put out a united statement clarifying that while Kanye may be sharing his prejudice with his fans, Garbage stands for the very opposite.
“For the record: we as a band are utterly opposed to racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, misogyny, sexism, ableism, transphobia and any other intolerance directed upon others,” read a post on the band’s Twitter account. “It is all shamefully indefensible.”
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Jack Antonoff
Bleachers frontman and super producer Jack Antonoff kept it short in his Twitter message to Ye: “Kanye a little b—h.”
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Diane Warren
Grammy winner Diane Warren had a few words for Kanye, calling out both the rapper and companies continuing their business partnerships with him in spite of his anti-Semitic rhetoric. “Let’s see if all these corporations doing business with anti Semitic f——d Kanye drop him,” tweeted the songwriter. “Naaa no one makes a big deal when it’s Jews under attack.”
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Ariana Grande
Ariana Grande’s opinions on Kanye were made clear after she shared two posts on her Instagram Story Oct. 11 highlighting the dangers of the rapper’s anti-Semitism. The first was a video of Jamie Lee Curtis speaking on the subject in an emotional interview with the TODAY show, and the second was a collection of posts from others reacting online.
“As someone who also has mental health issues, one of my top priorities in treatment is working to make sure my s–t doesn’t negatively affect people around me,” read one of the reactions. “Kanye has unlimited resources for care & treatment. Resources almost no one else has.”
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50 Cent
The “In Da Club” rapper shared his thoughts about Ye’s antisemitic statements during an Oct. 18 interview with Ebro in the Morning. “I think he’s in a dangerous area,” 50 said. “I forgive him for the things that he said, because I’ve already identified when something’s going on that I don’t understand.”
The artist born Curtis Jackson also pointed out Ye’s “White Lives Matter” T-shirts as an example of West’s attempt to provoke and stir the pot.