- [Audience Member] Why, why are you beefing with Ye?
- Say, say again.
- I said, "Why are you beefing with Ye?"
- Why am I beefing with Ye?
(audience laughs)
- That's a...that's, that's an interesting way
to...to phrase it.
(audience laughs)
- because a beef has to go both ways.
- [Audience] Ooh.
- No, it does, it genuinely does.
I think, first of all, you know,
in my limited understanding of the world,
beef has always been something that generally will happen
between two hip hop artists.
I was never beefing with Kanye West.
I was concerned about Kanye West,
(audience laughs)
- and no, and genuinely
I mean this because if somebody says to me
or to anyone that they have a mental health issue,
and they say to everyone
that when they don't take their medication
they're unable to control themselves,
and then everyone ignores
when that person is having an episode
and they haven't taken their medication,
and then they platform the person,
and then they put them out.
I sometimes think it's a little...
it's a little shitty to be honest with you, you know?
Like my grandfather was bipolar
and one thing we knew in the family was...
and I'm not saying Kanye is by the way,
I'm just saying my grandfather was bipolar.
And one thing we knew was, you know
when he was having one of his episodes
he could act in a certain way, could do certain things,
he'd take the family car, he'd be gone, he'd be driving off.
But our job was to support him.
We're going, did he take his medication?
What is he saying? What is he not saying?
I said, it would be weird if I was there going,
"Oh, my grandfather's bi...you know,
he is having an episode again.
Oh, I'm going viral tonight."
It's, I think it's, I think it's a little bit strange.
And so it's interesting how,
you, what you're asking me, makes sense,
because that's how you see the framing.
Somebody be...having beef.
Even if you see in any of the comments I said about him,
is I...concern definitely.
I grew up loving Kanye.
There are a few hiphop artists who have shaped
how I see music.
The punchlines that he had in every single song,
it was like listening to comedy, the sketches that he had,
he loved standup comedy.
Do you know what I mean?
His mom, you know, his mom's influence on him
his influence on hiphop culture, his influence on fashion,
how he changed the paradigm.
I grew up loving this man.
I still love him, despite the shit that he talks.
And so for me, it's not a beef.
But one thing I'll tell you is when I grew up
in South Africa, one thing I loved was,
you grew up in a space where people would say,
(speaking in foreign language)
we're gonna tell you to your face.
(audience applauds)
- You know what I mean? We're not gonna...
we're not gonna sit by and see you doing something
and just act like, "Oh no, we didn't see it."
I sometimes feel like Americans enjoy doing that.
They, they see it, they see it, they see it
and then something really bad happens and they're like,
"Ah, I wish we had spoken about it.
I wish someone had said something."
Yeah. I'm like, No.
So for me, you know, I think there are elements of Ye,
where he knows, he knows when he's being an asshole,
and he's admitted this,
he knows, he knows when he's pushing the envelope
and he's trying to say...
But there are moments where I go,
"People, what is happening here?"
Like, what...you know what I mean?
So it's not beefing with somebody.
I don't have beef with a human being
who has expressed openly
that they're dealing with a mental health issue.
I don't have beef with that human being.
What I have beef with,
is as a society not coming together
around a person and going like,
"Hey, hey, hey maybe this is not the moment
to put a microphone in your face,
so that you just go off saying everything."
"If this is what you wanna say when
you're on your medication, then that's a different story.
But because you've told us that,
I'm not gonna sit by and say that."
So if he wants to process it as beef, I understand it.
I've never had beef with him.
I'm still playing college dropout.
I'm still playing the music.
I still love the man that I think he is,
and I understand that he's gone through a lot, you know,
and I don't take that for granted.
But yeah, I've promised myself,
I'll never be the person who just sits by
and gleefully says things about people that I care about
and then also joins the group of mourners afterwards
and acts like I wasn't part of it.
Too many people like to mourn you when you're dead
and they don't say anything to you when you're alive.
So I don't know where it'll end or where it won't.
(audience applauds)
- But that's me.
(theme music)