By Kathryn Otis // Controversy // EEW Magazine Online

Kanye West explains his rationale for donning a White Lives Matter shirt (EEW Magazine)

Kanye West, now known as just Ye, got the whole world talking when he donned a White Lives Matter shirt in Paris.

Many asked why, and he finally revealed the mystery during a viral sit-down interview with Tucker Carlson of the conservative television network, Fox News.

The Grammy-winning Christian rapper, 45, who explained to Carlson, 53, that he thought rocking the controversial tee was “funny,” also said, “I really don’t care about people’s response. I perform for an audience of one and that is God.”

Kanye West sits down for an interview with Tucker Carlson of Fox News (EEW Magazine)

“I thought the shirt was a funny shirt. I thought the idea of me wearing it was funny,” said Ye, who in the same interview touted his staunchly pro-life stance.

“I care about the fact that there are more Black babies being aborted than born in New York City at this point, that 50 percent of Black death in America is abortion”—something that is no laughing matter to Ye.

Conversely, when it comes to the conversation about the now infamous shirt, he doesn’t take that issue seriously. In fact, he referenced a light-hearted conversation he’d recently had with his 73-year-old father—also a Christian—regarding the t-shirt slogan that stirred many people’s emotions, particularly Black folks.

“Dad, why did you think it was funny?” Ye asked his father who replied, “Just a Black man stating the obvious.’”

Simple as that.

“People are, they’re looking for an explanation, and people say, well, as an artist, you don’t have to give an explanation but as a leader you do,” Ye said. “So, the answer to why I wrote White Lives Matter on a shirt is because they do. It’s the obvious thing.”

His general point? White lives matter just like unborn babies’ lives, Black lives, and all lives.

West said, he thinks that wearing the slogan on a shirt was controversial “because the same people that have stripped us of our identity and labeled us as a color have told us what it means to be Black and the vernacular that we’re supposed to have.”

But since the “Jesus Walks” lyricist is an intentional boundary-breaker determined to express what it means to be Black on his own terms, he refuses to be stuffed into an ideological box of conformity.

“I think I started to really feel this need to express myself on another level when Trump was running for office, and I liked him,” said Ye. “And every single person in Hollywood, from my ex-wife to my mother-in-law, to my manager at that time, to my so-called friends/handlers around me told me, if I said that I liked Trump that my career would be over, that my life would be over. They said stuff like, ‘People get killed for wearing a hat like that.’”

Ye told Carlson, “They basically said that I would be killed for wearing the hat. I had someone call me last night and [they] said, ‘Anybody wearing a White Lives Matter shirt is going to be greenlit,’” meaning, “they’re going to beat them up if they wear it. And I’m like, yeah, okay, greenlight me, then.”

Obviously not one to fear people, Ye sees his mission to buck the status quo and defy so-called gatekeepers as a divine one.

“God builds warriors in a different way. I don’t know if it’s because of me being born in Atlanta and growing up on the Southside of Chicago,” Ye mused, adding, “He made me for such a time as this.”

The phrase, such a time as this, is lifted from Scripture (Esther 4:14). It focuses on an intense conversation between Queen Esther and Mordecai, the uncle who raised her. In this passage, the queen feared the potentially fatal consequences of revealing her Jewish heritage to the king to save her people from genocide.

But Mordecai told his niece in one of the most notorious lines from the entire book of Esther, “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

Ye, sounding every bit the gospel preacher during the Fox News interview referenced another inspiring Bible hero, David, and his epic showdown with the giant, Goliath.

“It’s like David. He tended to the sheep, but while he was out there, he had to fight all kinds of animals. So, when it was time for Goliath to come, he (Goliath) thought because he (David) was a sheepherder that he didn’t have the skill-set to take down Goliath,” said Ye.

He then added, “And the thing that I have is the position, I have my heart, but the number one thing is we have God on our side.”

Whether one agrees with Ye’s mission and method is not important—at least not to him. The conservative billionaire firmly believes that he answers only to the highest power, thus rendering the thoughts, opinions, and protestations of mere mortals powerless to change his mind.

Watch the interview below.