Pablo Luna
Billionaire rapper and entrepreneur, Kanye West, has dared people to greenlight him for wearing the “White Lives Matter” T-shirt. Kanye, who prefers to be called “Ye” now, told Tucker Carlson of Fox News, that he doesn’t care what people think about what he wears, including red trucker hats with Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” mantra written on them.
Kanye said that whether he wears shirts with “White Lives Matter” or caps with “MAGA” emblazoned on them, it is no one’s business, even though people perceive him as “legitimizing extremist behavior.” He said he wears whatever he wants or promotes whatever ideals appeal to him because he wants to, and not because someone tells him not to. He said someone even called him to warn him against wearing shirts with White Lives Matter written on them.
“I had someone call me last night and said, ‘Anybody wearing a ‘White Lives Matter shirt is going to be green-lit.’ That means they are going to beat them up if they wear it,” he told Carlson. “I’m like, you know, ‘Okay, green-light me, then.’”
On Monday, Kanye and his models wore T-shirts with White Lives Matter written on them on his Yeezy Season 9 runway during Paris Fashion Week. Vogue editor and stylist Gabriella-Karefa Johnson declared that she found the idea “deeply offensive, violent and dangerous,” but Kanye attacked her by saying her personal style is even more ridiculous.
Gabriella-Karefa, Gigi Hadid, Hailey Baldwin, and Jaden Smith among several other fashion promoters at the event walked out of the show after this exchange. However, controversial host Candace Owens showcased the WLM ideal by donning the shirt herself at the Yeezy show. Kanye said the social attack he got over the idea was promoted by “liberal Nazis” and a “group mob” that is bent on destroying him.
“[They] said that I like Trump, that my career will be over, that my life would be over,” he told Tucker Carlson. “They said stuff like people get killed for wearing a hat like that. They’re looking for an explanation — as an artist, you don’t have to give an explanation, but as a leader, you do.”
Kanye said he asked his father, Ray West, who was a Black Panther and reportedly suffered social discrimination because he was Black if wearing a White Lives Matter shirt mattered anything. He said his father said it was “just a Black man stating the obvious.”
“So the answer to why I wrote ‘White Lives Matter’ on a shirt is: They do. It’s an obvious thing,” he stated.
