Kanye West Speaks On Michael Jackson’s Legacy With Pharrell Williams; “They’re Gonna Come Wacko Jacko Me”

In a recent phone interview for i-D Magazine with friend and past collaborator Pharrell Williams, Kanye Wes touched on his poor treatment in the media, which he compared to that of legendary pop star Michael Jackson, even mentioning blogs when speaking of companies that should not be tearing down “our heroes.”

“We should have something that says we can’t allow any company to tear down our heroes. Not on The Shade Room, not on social media and especially not in documentaries,” he told Pharrell in the “Faith in Chaos” issue, seemingly referring to HBO’s “Leaving Neverland” doc, which explored the child sex abuse claims against Jackson. “I’m like every time the media isn’t happy with me, it’s like, ‘Here they go. They’re gonna come and Wacko Jacko me.’ Which, in some ways, they’ve tried to do.”

Ye went on to express his adoration for the King of Pop and how he inspired not only him but all blacks through his contributions to black culture through his massive career.

“It felt like you really tore down the walls and the doors much like Michael Jackson did a generation before,” Ye told Pharrell. “In a way, he’s very similar to Michael Jackson, in the ways where Michael Jackson was doing covert, super gangsta stuff, like he’d just pop the needles off. He kissed Elvis Presley’s daughter on MTV. Black culture used to be… we used to be fronting all night, but Michael was doing stuff that was different to what we were programmed to understand as being what we should do. He bought The Beatles’ back catalog. That was Mike Jackson, right there.”

Pharrell then touched on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and what life will look like post-coronavirus as the world struggles to adapt.

“I think we need to be clear that this is a plague we’re living through at the moment. I don’t think there will be such a thing as a new normal – it doesn’t do enough justice to the difference in who we were pre-pandemic and who we will be moving forward. I think it’s made a lot of people very wary and on edge. Life’s going to have a different kind of gravity than it’s ever had before. It’s also gonna make us really separated. We’re disconnecting from each other even though online we’re probably more connected than we’ve ever been. It’s a bit like the Tower of Babel if you will. We’ve never been this close, and there’s a lot of advantages that come with that. There’s a lot of disadvantages, too, and a lot of grey areas.”

“But I also know that love is going to be a very deep emotion. Something people really feel, you know. You can’t just shake a hand or hug a person and exchange that feeling in a way you could before. And then, look at things economically, regardless of whatever ways stabilization reveals itself – not normality, but stabilization – because like a wave it’s gotta stabilize at some point, and when that does, there’s nothing normal about looking around and seeing so many businesses closed and so many people without jobs. But we have been through many plagues before. We have been through pandemics. We survived. We’re gonna make it. In a lot of ways we got ourselves into this, we gotta get to work to get through it.”

Ye also gave his views on the pandemic and how we all will need to proceed in order to prevail, citing a conversation that he had with music executive Abou “Bu” Thiam.

“… We got on the concept of what it meant to be poor in America, and then I started the sentence, and I said, ‘When you’re poor in Africa…’ and before the sentence was finished, Bu interjected and said, ‘You’re better off there than in America because if you’re in Africa, the community won’t let you go hungry.’ That’s the type of mentality that we’ve gotta apply moving forward [after] this pandemic. That’s the change that must happen.”