Getty Kanye West accused Saturday Night Live of holding Black people back.
Kanye West has accused Saturday Night Live – SNL for short – of holding, “other black people back” in a tweet on the morning of Sunday, October 18. A new episode of SNL premiered the night before on Saturday, October 17 with HBO’s Insecure star Issa Rae hosting the show and Justin Bieber as the musical guest.
During the show, Rae played a lawyer for the NAACP on Kenan Thompson’s imaginary talk show, “Your Voice Chicago.” The skit joked about the presidential election, and Rae said she would be, “voting for everybody Black,” which played off her 2017 Emmy Awards comment that she was, “rooting for everybody Black.” Towards the end of the skit, Thompson mentioned Kanye West’s candidacy, to which Rae responded, “Kanye? F him!” with an eye roll.
West took to Twitter the next morning to address his disapproval of the comment. “Ive always said SNL uses black people to hold other black people back,” West tweeted. “My heart goes out to Issa Rae I’m praying for her and her family I know that the twenty years of service that I’ve paid in the entertainment field has furthered our ability to be more successful.”
Kim Kardashian’s husband also attached a screenshot of Issa Rae’s Google search results in Spanish to the tweet. Rae, West, nor SNL have publicly addressed the matter since West’s Sunday morning tweet.
Kanye West Gave a Political Speech During His Last SNL Appearance
While the 43-year-old presidential candidate doesn’t seem too thrilled about the comedy series, he has appeared on the show in the past. West last took the stage in late September 2018 as the musical guest alongside host Melissa McCarthy. The rapper donned a President Donald Trump, “Make America Great Again,” during his performance.
After the show wrapped up and the cast thanked the audience, West took a mic and began speaking. His pro-Trump ten-minute speech covered areas of racism and equality. About wearing the MAGA hat, West said, “They bullied me backstage. They said, ‘Don’t go out there with that hat on.’ They bullied me backstage.”
West added in his speech, “There’s so many times I talk to, like, a white person about this and they say, ‘How could you like Trump? He’s racist.’ If someone inspires me, and I connect with them, I don’t have to believe in all their policies.”
He also aired some of his issues with SNL. “You know what I don’t like about — it’s not that I don’t like — what I need ‘Saturday Night Live’ to improve on, or what I need the liberals to improve on, is: If he don’t look good, we don’t look good,” West said in the speech. “This is our president. He has to be the freshest, the flyest, the flyest planes, the best factories. And we have to make our core be empowered.”
President Trump claimed that he didn’t watch SNL, but he admired West’s speech. “Word is that Kanye West, who put on a MAGA hat after the show (despite being told “no”), was great,” President Trump tweeted shortly after the show. “He’s leading the charge!”
West Celebrated False Kentucky Presidential Election Results
GettyKanye West announced his bid for presidency on July 4.
The rapper unexpectedly dropped a song via Twitter on October 13 after a series of tweets about his rankings in the 2020 Election. A few hours before releasing the song, West tweeted a screenshot of invalid Kentucky presidential election results on Twitter. The false report – attributed to NBC’s LEX 18 – showed Jo Jorgensen in first place and West in third place with 19 percent of votes. LEX 18 responded to the tweet, “The results shown were not valid. They were simply part of a test.”
West tweeted the screenshot with the looking eyes emoji, appearing that West believed the results. West’s name has made the presidential ballot in Kentucky. West then tweeted a video of himself with a friend saying, “Get the West Wing ready, 19 percent, 40,000 votes, Kentucky, get the West Wing ready.” He tweeted the video along with the caption, “GET THE WEST WING READY !!! … this is how I felt when I saw that Kentucky pole result.” A few minutes later, West tweeted, “PEOLE TRIED TO TALK ME OUT OF RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT… NEVER LET WEAK CONTROLLING PEOPLE KILL YOUR SPIRIT.”
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