How would you try to track down Kanye West? If you are John Safran, you just go to knock on his door. Having flown from Melbourne to Los Angeles with a vague interest in the rapper’s antisemitic remarks, Safran – a Jewish Australian comedian-journalist with a history of outlandish stunts, often mentioned in the same breath as Louis Theroux and Jon Ronson – arrived outside one of West’s properties, a mansion in Calabasas, California. He poked around until he found an old water bill addressed to West and, having gotten his bearings, set about meeting his neighbours.
“Is it fun living next to West?” Safran asks Ernie across the road. “No, it’s terrible,” Ernie says, rattling off a laundry list of quibbles over planning permissions and cars blocking traffic. But Gregg doesn’t mind him so much: West’s people invited his family to one of his church services, which “was really, really nice”.
