Kanye West caused a stir during his appearance Tuesday on “TMZ Live” — but it’s perhaps a lesser-known show employee, Van Lathan, who dropped the mic.
West, the rapper and entertainer who brought renewed attention to himself over the past week with his controversial tweets — which included his feelings on President Trump — surprised TMZ employees with a particularly polarizing thought: that American slavery was a “choice.”
“When you hear about slavery for 400 years — for 400 years?” West said. “That sounds like a choice. Like, you was there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all? It’s like we’re mentally in prison.”
“Do you feel like I’m thinking free and feeling free?” West later asked TMZ employees.
That’s when Van Lathan fired back with an answer that embodied what many confused and disappointed fans have been thinking in the days since West returned to Twitter, where he’s posted a nearly constant stream of abstract musings, many outlining his support for Trump, whom the rapper called his “brother.”
“I actually don’t think you’re thinking anything,” Lathan said.
“I think what you’re doing right now is actually the absence of thought. And the reason why I feel like that is because, Kanye, you’re entitled to your opinion. You’re entitled to believe whatever you want,” he said.
Lathan continued: “But there is fact, and real-world, real-life consequence behind everything that you just said. And while you are making music and being an artist and living the life that you’ve earned by being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives. We have to deal with the marginalization that has come from the 400 years of…
