Why the UK banned Kanye West

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:09Today, what happened to Kanye West?

0:19A warning before we start, this episode does contain anti-Semitic and offensive language. He was once hailed as an American genius, a prime example of black excellence. He revolutionized rap, became a hip-hop billionaire, all the while influencing the world of fashion, art, design. Kanye West had a grip on the culture like few before him. Until... Kanye West has posted on a variety of topics, including President Trump, whom he calls his brother. He's been locked out of his Twitter account now, the platform suspending him after an anti-Semitic tweet. That tweet said, quote, when I wake up, I'm going death con three on Jewish people.

1:04This is what I'm trying to tell you. Jesus Christ, Hitler. Yay. We don't have to bow to this shit. OK, it's 60 million.

1:14He hadn't played a show in the UK for over a decade, And he was booked to headline three nights this summer at Wireless Festival in London. But then the government intervened. From The Guardian, I'm Noshin Iqbal. Today in Focus, why the UK has banned Kanye West.

1:38Lennar-O-Bakare, you're The Guardian's arts and culture correspondent. and I think it's fair to say you're pretty steeped in Kanyeology, for want of a better word. And, you know, this does mean, of course, you've had to track a catalogue of outlandish, offensive, hateful things that he's said and done over the years. There is no shortage of it. But to the story at hand, last week it was announced that Kanye West was booked to play London's Wildest Festival this summer, headlining three nights in a row. By the weekend, the Prime Minister had made a statement and the story has dominated your beat and beyond where did this all start well it started where as you just flagged there he's

2:18Lanre Bakare:booking at wireless so wireless is a three-day festival held in finsbury park every year and they book r &b and rap artists so huge artists have played there it's at rocky sceptre doja cat and last year drake played and they changed the format so last year drake played three days in a row which was a change of format which makes booking that festival a bit more difficult you You need someone who is absolutely A-list to carry that. And there aren't that many artists in the world who could do it. Kanye West is definitely one of them, but obviously comes with this huge amount of baggage. And it seemed as if Wireless had made a calculation that while there's all this baggage, he's this huge A-list person who can sell out the event and will bring a lot of media attention and it will be one of the biggest cultural moments of the year, probably the cultural moment of the year for some people.

3:06Lanre Bakare:But it's fair to say it's about a fight spectacularly. There was an incredible quote after they announced it. They said that West's UK comeback will be an extraordinary chapter in Wireless' story, which is to tell that to be incredibly prophetic, but for all the wrong reasons, because there isn't going to be a festival this year because it's been cancelled. Okay. Okay. Before we get to the cancellation, just summarise the bonkersness of the last few days. On the 30th, he was announced as the headliner. He immediately received backlash. So Jewish group said he should not be performing in London.

3:36Lanre Bakare:It should be a problem in the UK because of his previous anti-Semitic remarks. Sadiq Khan said it wasn't a good idea. Then Ed Davey came out, the leader of Liberal Democrats. The Australian government has earlier banned him from going to Australia for his anti-Semitic hate speech. And we should too. Since then we've had different cabinet ministers come out. So you had Bridget Phillipson. The comments that he has made in the past are completely unacceptable and absolutely disgusting. I don't think he should be performing at the music festival. Where Streeting came out really strongly. He released a song called Heil Hitler.

4:10He plastered it across T-shirts. Anti-Semitism is on the rise and it can be deadly. The idea that you platform someone after this pattern of behaviour, I think is appalling.

4:22Lanre Bakare:Keir Starmer also got involved. So this became this huge political football, which transcended culture. It's not really a cultural story. It's about Labour and about their position on anti-Semitism and the fact that they've got someone who is, described as a neo-Nazi coming to perform in the UK and what do you do about it? And Labour obviously came out and shut it down essentially. I mean, at one point he did have a visa, right? And that was rescinded by the Home Office, as he said. But, you know, in the midst of all this pressure piling up, West then issues this statement in which he offered to meet and listen to members of the UK's Jewish community and insisted in his words that he wanted to come to London, and I quote, to present a show of change, bring unity, peace and love through music.

5:06How did that go down?

5:09Lanre Bakare:Badly, incredibly badly. Because I think a lot of his critics and people who pay attention to the story understand that he'd been on a campaign of four or five years of anti-Semitic trolling, essentially, embracing neo-Nazi imagery, pushing out far-right conspiracy theories about Jewish people. And this was just a consistent type of behaviour. It wasn't one or two outbursts that we've seen before from Kanye West. This seemed to be an ideology that he completely embraced. So when he releases this statement, which kind of reads like something Michael Jackson would have said from a stage in the 1990s about wanting to bring peace to the world, it rang incredibly hollow for a lot of people.

5:43Lanre Bakare:And also the timing of it looks really cynical. He takes out a full-page apology in the Wall Street Journal and apologizes for his behavior. I think the issue with that for a lot of people is the timing of it. So that's released in January, and then you look at what's coming up for Kanye West, and he's got a new album coming out called Bully. He's going to play two shows in LA and then he had the wireless show obviously planned and coming up. So if you look at that from the outside, you can see that as an incredibly cynical move. It's a curry favour and I suppose remove some of the negative feeling about him and enable him to release the album, go and tour it and continue with his life as a creative person.

6:21Slash make loads of money.

6:23Lanre Bakare:Slash make him a lot of money and everyone else a lot of money as well. So to summarise, West has his visa rescinded. He is effectively banned from the UK, wireless festivals cancelled. It seems as big a deal as it gets for an artist if the government of the day in one of their biggest markets is stepping in and saying, no way, we simply won't allow you in. Landry, what's the precedent here? Who else has the Home Office blocked? There's a long list of people who've been banned from coming to the UK. There's actually a load of rappers. So you have Lil Wayne, who's banned. You have Snoop Dogg, who was banned and then was rescinded.

6:57Lanre Bakare:Martha Stewart as well, actually. Right, okay. She was banned. She had a criminal record, though. Exactly. So the thing with those people is all those artists had criminal records in the US. Right. The person who's kind of most fits with the kind of US model of a ban is Tyler, the creator, who was banned in 2015 by then Home Secretary Theresa May. And that was over lyrical content. Anyone who knows Tyler, the creator's work, especially Wolfgang early on, would often use homophobic language. is queer himself but he would use homophobic language very violent sexual imagery as well which groups said was glorifying rape culture so he was banned by the home secretary in 2015 and the reaction to that was slightly different because there were people who were saying hang on a minute this is this is about artistic expression he's not being sincere in the things he's saying here young people have always pushed the boundaries about what is acceptable and what is good taste and he himself has come on quite a journey since then yeah he has and yeah he was allowed back into the country in 2019 and he actually ended up headlining wireless festival

8:04lanre before we get to how west got to this point i do want to rewind a little bit to the beginning of his story and that first decade of his career in which he is regularly hailed as a genius and releases for many some of the greatest albums of all time. Can you tell me about that ascent and how he became such an important fixture in the culture?

8:24Lanre Bakare:Yeah so he emerges in Chicago actually when he was still in school as a producer on the local hip-hop scene there. He is mentored by a guy called No ID who'd worked with some of the Rockefeller artists and through that connection he starts to produce tracks for people like Jermaine Dupri, Foxy Brown and ultimately Jay-Z and he produces a couple of tracks for Jay-Z on his probably most important or iconic album, which is The Blueprint. So he produces The Takeover, which is the Nas diss track. Kids out there, there was a diss war before Drake and Kendrick, which was, I think, even better. So he produces this track for him, which is incredible.

9:00Lanre Bakare:And then he also does Izzo, Hover. And I think those two tracks kind of like sum up Kanye West's ability and his skills. I mean, if Jay-Z was playing a concert, they'd be two of the biggest tracks I'd play. So he establishes himself as this incredible producer. Then he tries to make the very difficult leap from producer to artist. And he receives quite a lot of pushback. People are like, yeah, you're a producer and you're great. Kind of stick to that because that's what you do. But then he starts creating these tracks which are just undeniably incredible. So there's Through the Wire, which is a great track.

9:32Lanre Bakare:But then you get stuff like Jesus Walks. I mean, that whole era, college dropout, late registration, I actually did spend an afternoon with him between those two albums in Manchester. And it still remains, I have to say I was a baby in the early noughties. But one of the most interesting interviews I ever did, like his mother was present. His mother, Donda, was an African-American studies professor. You know, he comes from this sort of middle class background. They have a really interesting, immensely close relationship, you know, conversation was about linguistics, about the N-word, about misogyny, all sorts of things.

10:05and I don't know even at the time he made it very clear that he was obsessed with pushing boundaries like not wanting to conform and wanting to like do things differently to

10:18Lanre Bakare:everyone else yeah I think when he came out like the style of Kanye was I don't remember but he used to like wear polo shirts yes which was like a big deal in hip hop doggy backpacks yeah backpacks and then he had those kind of like new rave glasses with a like little slant in and i remember just thinking who is this guy because like you say he didn't conform to the to the stereotype of what you would look like as a rapper it was white tees gold chains big bag of jeans and jordans because at the time rap it was bling versus backpacks it was either like 50 cent going on about consumerism or it was tyler quelly and he actually did marry the two it was either being socially conscious or materialistic but he did both yeah yeah i mean gold digger right was like his massive tune at university like when that got played people got absolutely bananas and yeah he was always interested in the aesthetic i mean i think he shot the video for that as well he's always seemed interested in doing more than just being a rapper who you know rapped on incredible tracks and was like popular he kind of went into the world of fashion architecture design i did so many things to kind of expand what a hip-hop artist could be kind of transcended hip-hop and i think about him wanting to push boundaries i kind of feel like with kanye that was kind of baked into the premise.

11:28Lanre Bakare:Like if you were a Kanye fan, you knew he was going to say some fairly outlandish stuff. I mean, early on, the stuff he was saying was things that he could get behind. So for example, in 2005, there's a very famous moment in a live charity appeal during Hurricane Katrina where he stood next to Mike Myers from Austin Powers and they're just going through the script and he just turns to the camera and says, George Bush doesn't care about black people. Mike Myers is like, what the hell have you just said? Who is this guy? And I feel like that was kind of an announcement on a global scale of like this is someone who's going to do things differently and at that point I was 100 % behind it because black people were dying in their hundreds in Louisiana and the government wasn't doing anything about it so it was really exciting actually his emergence he was he was someone different and that was a much more innocent time I think and I think Donda his mother was around for for all of that yeah she died in 2007 yeah and then things start to shift and change well let's talk about that because you know we've said he's unpredictable, has an unwillingness to conform, contributed perhaps to the best, but also the absolute worst moments of his career.

12:29And there does seem to be a steady unraveling. Landry, can you tell me more about that?

12:34Lanre Bakare:In 2009, his behavior starts to become a bit more problematic. At the VMA Awards, Storm's on the stage, takes the microphone away from Taylor Swift, who just won the Moonman for Best Video. I'm really happy for you. I'm going to let you finish. But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time.

12:55Lanre Bakare:After that, Barack Obama calls him a jackass. Nice person. She's getting her award. Why would he do that? He's a jackass.

13:05Lanre Bakare:And it's this kind of like egotistical, megalomaniac behaviour where previously, you know, if Donda was there, would he have acted like that? Potentially not, right? She was the checks and balances on him. Exactly. The guardrails have kind of been removed. Then, 2014, he marries into the Kardashian family. Hey, good morning to you guys. Well, yes, it is official. You can now start calling them Mr. and Mrs. Kanye West after tying the knot in a romantic and intimate setting at a fortress, 16th century fortress overlooking Florence, of course. And he starts to become this reality TV figure who exists in this very strange world between kind of high art and culture and also the kind of trashiest TV you could possibly find.

13:45Lanre Bakare:I mean, he has said before, like, what I do is performance. And at this time, I kind of thought, maybe this is all a big kind of thing. And it's going to just get nominated for the Turner Prize and it'll all be fine.

14:01Lanre Bakare:Then in 2016, things really shift gears. What people don't know, Kanye, everybody knows, right? Does the world know Kanye? So he endorses Trump and he starts going around with a MAGA hat, ends up going to the White House and seems to just fully embrace that kind of MAGA world, which is a major departure for him. I don't want to put you in that spot. No, I'm standing in that spot. I love this guy right here. Let me give this guy a hug. I love this guy right here. That's true. Yeah. Come here. Yes. That's really nice. In 2017, he makes his bipolar diagnosis public. You know, he calls it a superpower.

14:40He's open to how he thinks it fuels his creative process. He also admits swerving, taking his medication. And as he said, by this point, he's met with Trump. He's wearing the MAGA hat. But then there's this moment where it just tips. And to me, at least, it feels dangerous. Lanre, can you tell me about his interview with TMZ in 2018?

15:02Lanre Bakare:Yeah. So TMZ is obviously a celebrity gossip site. He turns up at their studios. Two days after I got off of opioids and I was addicted to opioids. and gives this interview. I mean, I think I'm right to remember. He's just kind of walking around the studio. I'm taking two. Hey, everyone listen to this, please. Two days before I was in the hospital. Pontificating on lots of different stuff and gesticulating and just like mouthing off, essentially. And he goes into this stream of consciousness thing where he starts talking about black people and slavery, which was a theme in his music. He had a track called New Slaves.

15:36Lanre Bakare:But at that point, he was talking about slavery as like a concept that you could apply to being an artist. So like, I'm enslaved by, a bit like Prince, right? Yeah, by the record company. Exactly. But then he kind of shifts and says, 400 years of slavery, it kind of seems like slavery was a choice. World, you hear about slavery for 400 years? For 400 years? That sounds like a choice. Like, you was there for 400 years and it's all of y 'all? You know, like... Which is like, no, Kanye, that's not... And you know that's not true. If you know who his mother is, you know, someone who was a civil rights activist, He knows that's not true.

16:11Lanre Bakare:So he's doing this edgelord thing of pushing. He was actually confronted by one of the TMZ journalists. Right. Which is an incredible exchange. We have to deal with the marginalization that has come from the 400 years of slavery that you said for our people was a choice. And frankly, I'm disappointed. I'm appalled. and brother, I am unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something to me that's not real. Yay, be yay. I'm off it forever. And he kind of backs down, which is interesting because I think that shows that he doesn't really, at that point perhaps, doesn't really believe in those things.

16:51Lanre Bakare:He just knows this is a controversial thing to say. You say that, but it's also, it's not a one-off because in 2022 Paris Fashion Week, he sends models down a catwalk wearing long sleeve white lives matter tees. Landry, what's the blowback at this point and how does it affect his career? Yeah, I mean, I think 2022 is the year where everything implodes. He just goes into self-destruct mode. He's banned from going to the Grammys because his online behaviour is seen as too problematic. What's he doing at this point? He'd started with some anti-Semitic tropes at that point. So he sends a tweet saying that P.

17:21Lanre Bakare:Diddy is controlled by Jewish people. At the time, I think I kind of vaguely remember that and just thinking he obviously needs to be taken away from his computer and he needs some sort of help because this is kind of dark. And he carried on with that, the antisemitic behaviour. It's completely disgusting. He actually went on a podcast at one point and said he had a deal with Adidas. At this point, his stuff was selling, making millions for them every year. And he was saying, I could say antisemitic stuff and Adidas can't drop me. The thing about me and Adidas is like, I could literally say antisemitic shit and they can't drop me.

17:57I could say anti-Semitic things and Adidas can't drop me. Now what?

18:03Lanre Bakare:And a month later, they dropped him. The company calling recent statements by West hateful and dangerous. Adidas had faced pressure to act, and Kanye West bragged that nothing he said could end their partnership. He's now been suspended by Twitter and Instagram and dropped by his talent agency, and he's lost multiple brand deals. and at that point this is like mid 2022 sponsors start moving away even people who've been working with for years started to back away so like pharrell williams uh clips you know they've said that they can't work with kenya west anymore because he'd gone to a place that was just too toxic it was too dark he was saying he was a nazi um he's selling merch with two h's on it which are a reference direct reference to hail hitler and it starts coming through in the music so he has a song called Heil Hitler and this footage of Nick Fuentes basically doing Zeke Geil into this to this song which starts to do the rounds on the internet so it's embraced by by people on the far right as well um who are seeing him as almost like a poster boy for that movement someone who is so culturally relevant and even he's getting involved in it that's right you're not Hitler you're not a Nazi you don't deserve to be called that and demonized well I I see I I see good things about Hitler also the jew i love you know this is it's so disgusting and abhorrent anyone who understands history of the holocaust which he denied which he also denied exactly i mean the thing is we before i kind of talked about him in the context of someone like tyler the creator but actually i think you need to think of him as like someone like david irving who's like a holocaust denier someone who is anti-semitic and completely a pariah really and that's the position he he was in for a lot of people which makes the wireless decision it's just so confounding you're like how did you ever think that was going to work in this country.

19:49In January of this year, Wes took out this full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal in which he apologised to, and he addressed it, those I hurt. So in it, he tries to make amends to the black community. He says, sorry for letting them down, quote, I love us. He also insisted, I am not a Nazi. I'm not an anti-Semite. I love Jewish people. But, you know, by then he had committed himself to a years-long sustained campaign of anti-Semitism. And this wasn't even the first grand apology that he'd had to make for it.

20:16Lanre Bakare:Well, he apologized for it in 2023, where he released a statement on social media written in Hebrew, in which he apologized for his behavior. And then when he was criticized, he then rescinded the apology and he went back on it. Which is what numerous Jewish groups referred to in their statements about the performance of wireless. Why should we believe this guy who has a history of saying, oh yeah, I'm really sorry, I'm so sincerely sorry for this thing. And then continues the behavior, which he did throughout 2025. he was still creating songs that were referencing the Nazis. He was talking about how much he had made Hitler.