Kanye West Hits Back at Media For Sensationalizing Everything He Does, Including His Encounter With a Fan in a Wheelchair

Kanye responded to that strange story about his encounter with a disabled fan.

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Complex Original

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Kanye West's speaking tour/rodeo/live concert experience hit Brisbane, Australia on Monday. As he's done dozens of times around the world this past year, Kanye took a few minutes during his set to deliver his oral blog. The topic on hand today: The media (again), and how certain outlets and media types keep on trying to drag Kanye's name through the mud. This latest trip came after a Fox News story about Kanye reportedly singling-out a wheelchair-bound fan to stand up during a song. 

The headline for that Fox News story, "Kanye West tries to shame man in wheelchair into standing during Sydney concert" is what really went viral, not the details or facts within the non-story itself. Here's what happened: Kanye was performing, and he wanted everyone to stand up and clap and have an awesome time.

When he noticed that two fans weren't standing, he felt some type of way about it, and implored them to stand. Unfortunately, the fans were disabled, but Kanye couldn't really tell, so he egged them on to stand until one of the disabled fans held up a prosthetic limb—an obvious visual call for Kanye to stand down. It was a weird misunderstanding that got flipped into being judged as a heinous mistake by some media outlets. 

Watch what Kanye had to say above, or read a transcript of it below.


Hey Mike, stop the piano, turn the auto tune off, turn your camera phones off. what I want you to do is just run the video that everyone's talking about where I so called scream at somebody and everything. I want you to run that right since this is such big media press news and obvious shit where you try to demonize people. It's like, "Welcome to today's news ladies and gentlemen, we got Americans getting killed on TV, kids getting killed every weekend in Chicago, we have unarmed people being killed by police officers, and we have Kanye West buying ice cream—and also that squirrel can jet ski."


You know it makes you just WANT TO reflect on the things that are a little more sensationalized than others. I want to take this platform. If I didn't have this last concert maybe I would have tweeted or something. Maybe I would have put a statement with a publicist, but I can talk directly to you, my fans, because they got this thing where they want the masses, the people who have never even heard one of my albums to somehow read a headline that reads negative and to think I'm a bad person or something. But the thing is, I'm not judging anybody, but I'm going to tell you who I am: I'm a married Christian man.


If you take someone that can go from being a rock star across the globe, pick one woman, raise a family which anyone that is here that is married or is in a relationship knows that there is enough things working against you. What I'm saying is, you've got like 12 years that we've put in positive music. How many people here ever heard one of my songs on their way to work or they heard it and it made them feel better? And in these songs that made them feel better, don't I say offensive shit here and there? Oh so wait a second, that's like my brand. I curse and I say like really offensive—wait a second—that's why when I did "Runaway" earlier I said, "I sent this bitch a picture of my dick" what did ya'll think when you heard that? It's not G rated. It's rap fucking music. It's real music. it's real expression. This is real artistry.


An artist's career doesn't happen in the cycle of one week of news an artist's career happens in a lifetime and if you're a true artist you're willing to die for what you believe in, and I don't know if you feel like this, but do you get this feeling after the 10, 11, 12 years—does it seem in anyway that I might just be a true artist? I heard it's going to the Today show, I'm not sure if I keep up with the news but if Michael Strahan is still at GMA, if it goes to The View, Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Walters, I don't know wherever y'all send. If y'all run this—look at me for a second—and take a step back for a second and look at this: I'm a married Christian man with a family. At my concerts I make sure everybody has good of a time as possible, so all this demonizing me, it ain't going to work after awhile. Pick a new target, pick a new target cause I'm not one of these dumb ass artists that you're used to. You come at me and I'm gonna take my platform and break this shit down for real intelligent people every night so they can understand, then we get back to the music.

UPDATE: Kim Kardashian has shared a video of Ye's performance from the show and offered her comments on the situation, which you can read below.

What an amazing Australian tour! Its frustrating that something so awesome could be clouded by lies in the media. Kanye never asked anyone in a wheel chair to stand up & the audience videos show that. He asked for everyone to stand up & dance UNLESS they were in a wheel chair. #JustWantedEveryoneToHaveAFunNight #TheMediaTwistsThings

 

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