With a new documentary series now detailing his rise to prominence, the artist formerly known as Kanye West spoke last night about his journey, and his vision for what he’s calling Black Future Month.
During Friday night’s Los Angeles screening of Netflix’s “jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy,” Ye made an appearance alongside directors Clarence ‘Coodie’ Simmons and Chike Ozah, and gave a speech to commemorate the special moment.
“When you have people next to you that believe in you, and a community, and that the community sticks together, that’s the way that we can protect each other,” Ye said in an Instagram clip shared by Tracey Mills. “Out here in Hollywood a lot of times, I got my man DaBaby right here, people try to cancel us and we all run away from each other… we not talking to each other, not communicating, and that’s why on Black Future Month we stood up and said, ‘We got stand next to each other and we ain’t gonna let each other go when someone brings up one mistake that someone did.’”
Ye continued, sharing his reasoning for why he makes what people think are “mistakes” in public, and why he chooses instead to look forward instead of reflecting during the month of February.
“When y’all see me doing certain things that y’all wouldn’t expect us to do, and y’all want me to step back and be a house***a, that’s not my position,” Ye said. “My position is to make what y’all might think are mistakes in public, so I can show you that that ain’t no red line, that ain’t no real wall. That’s just a smokescreen, and it’s for us to take this. We on lables we don’t own, play for basketball teams we don’t own. The time is now. I got offered $100 million by Larry Jackson to put ‘Donda’ on Apple, but I ain’t never got a meeting with Tim Cook. So it ain’t about the money, it’s about our power and out respect collectively. So I be saying stuff that people try to remind me in Black History Month that people got killed for. But this is Black Future Month.”
The first act of the documentary—featuring over two decades of Ye footage—hits the streaming service on Feb. 16, with the following two acts in the trilogy being shared during each consecutive week.
