Pusha T has distanced himself from one of his longtime collaborators, telling the Los Angeles Times that Kanye West’s string of antisemitic comments has been “very disappointing.”
“It’s definitely affected me,” King Push said. “It’s been disappointing. As a Black man in America, there is no room for bigotry or hate speech.”
Pusha T most recently worked with Ye on 2022’s It’s Almost Dry, which pitted West’s beatmaking against the musicality of Pharrell Williams to create a kind of coke rap dialectic. “Creatively, Ye has meant freedom to me,” Push said. “A lot of times, people would try to get me to change certain things about my process, change certain things about me lyrically, change certain things about the content. He never has been like that. He always saw me for who I was and knew how to take it to the next level.”
He added, “Writing and recording with Ye is a very special thing for me. We actually have a lot of the same taste, we love just barred-out rap. He would tell me things like, ‘Man, you just be the extreme version of yourself. And I’m gonna be the extreme version of myself.'”
But now he views West differently, saying of the bigotry and antisemitism, “It’s been very disappointing, let’s talk straight.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Pusha T compared his commitment to coke rap to a beloved director of gangster films. “I’ve spoken about being the Martin Scorsese of street raps,” he said. “I want the music to be as colorful and creative as it can be. Expand where reality meets imagination. I’m here to entertain those who love this, and there’s a lot of people who love this.”
As for West, he’s even lost the support of former president Donald Trump, who called the rapper “seriously troubled” and said his 2024 presidential bid is a “complete waste of time.”
