Kanye West’s admiration of Adolf Hitler began long before his recent antisemitic remarks, according to multiple former collaborators.
A new Rolling Stone report alleges the Chicago rap icon has been quietly professing his love for the Nazi leader as early as 2003, back when he was an up-and-coming artist and producer working on his debut album, The College Dropout.
The publication spoke to almost half a dozen individuals who worked with Ye, whose affinity for the infamous German dictator is described as a “well-known but well-kept secret” within his inner circle.
One music industry source claimed Kanye would discuss Hitler and Nazis in the studio on a “daily” basis, and even quiz others on their thoughts. They said the Roc-A-Fella signee would “ambush” collaborators and industry executives with questions such as, “So what do you think about the Holocaust?”
West would apparently persist until the other person relented and acknowledged the “good” that Hitler had done. However, such conversations would “sometimes became heated depending on the person,” the source said.
One longtime music collaborator recalled having a “brief, tense” conversation about Hitler with Kanye in 2014. “I think my exact words were, ‘So what if Hitler did some good shit. So what?’” they remembered.
Those who did push back, however, risked being fired, according to the musician. “When these things happened, if you still wanted a place in this group, you stuffed down your concerns, kept a smile on your face, and moved forward as if nothing bad had happened,” they said.
Other sources claimed Kanye West took his affinity for Hitler one step further and sought inspiration from Nazi techniques and power-gaining tactics to chart his own path to fame and success.
“I feel like he used those techniques to get to where he is, to be honest,” one former collaborator said. “He was just so fascinated by [Hitler] — someone that can have complete control over people and how he did it.”
“I think [West] started to almost correlate how he could manipulate things to be, not the same level, but how he could try to get people to be his ‘army,’” they added, revealing that Ye would frequently talk about “building an army” and describe the work they were doing as “war.”
“It’s not a stretch to now compare Kanye’s ‘by any means necessary’ methods and tactics with Adolf Hitler’s,” another source offered. “To know that a Hitler/[Joseph] Goebbels playbook has been a central inspiration to Kanye’s own media playbook helps bring a great deal of clarity to the exact types of moves he’s been making over his career.”
Kanye West’s love for Hitler has come into sharp focus in recent months, with numerous stories highlighting the depth of his admiration of the notorious Nazi leader.
Former TMZ staffer Van Lathan claimed in October that the G.O.O.D. Music founder professed his love for Hitler and the Nazis during his infamous appearance on the channel in 2018, where he said 400 years of slavery sounded like a “choice.” His comments were ultimately cut from the broadcast.
It was later reported that West planned to call his eight studio album, which dropped in June 2018, Hitler before settling on ye.
Kanye left little doubt in people’s minds about his neo-Nazi affiliation when he openly praised Hitler during an appearance on right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ InfoWars podcast last month.
When Jones suggested the rapper’s recent series of antisemitic comments inaccurately painted him as a Nazi, Ye replied: “Well, I see good things about Hitler also. I love everyone and Jewish people are not gonna tell me [who I can love].”
He added: “I’m done with the classification. Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler.”
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