Kanye West seems to revel in being a provocateur. It’s almost as if he can’t exist in a state of just being; he has to be pushing a limit somewhere. It produces a horrible balancing act between the beloved artist and the cultural troll that we all wish would just chill out. We’ve all watched what feels like a downward spiral in recent years, to the point that as ex-wife Kim Kardashian was ending their marriage, she pleaded with her audience to show him compassion while trying to understand his struggle with bipolar disorder. But with his erratic behavior on social media and in his music, many have expressed concern for Kardashian’s safety. Last night, Trevor Noah perfectly encapsulated the problem with Ye’s behavior towards his ex-wife and her boyfriend, comic Pete Davidson, and how it is a high-profile example of the insidiousness of domestic abuse.
Noah starts by pointing out that the highly-publicized love triangle has evolved past meaningless celebrity gossip. He mentions the fact that Ye made a claymation music video last month for his song “Eazy” in which he buries Pete Davidson alive and decapitates him. Ye also made another animated video for the song in which a skinned monkey beats up “Skete,” as he calls him, because one video threatening violence against his ex’s new partner wasn’t enough. And on “City of Gods” with Alicia Keys and Fivio Foreign, he makes references to sending “goons” to SNL to beat up Davidson and possessively references Kim as still being his wife. Trevor Noah points out that even though Kim has gone out of her way to court the public eye since the dawn of her career, she doesn’t deserve this kind of harassment.
