Kanye West blasts paparazzi in New York performance
Entertainer Kanye West in Manhattan on Oct. 23, 2012. Credit: Getty Images
Rap star Kanye West delivered a profanity-laced diatribe about paparazzi and the nature of celebrity during a performance for advertisers and TV executives at Manhattan's Roseland Ballroom for Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim."
In comments recorded Wednesday night on a video shot by Complex magazine, West, 35, insisted he's no celebrity.
"There's one thing about me: I'm a terrible, terrible, terrible celebrity . . . I'm the worst kind of celebrity. Because all I do is make real music. . . . So I don't want nobody running up on me with no cameras, trying to, like, sell pictures and ---- to magazines, asking me no ---- questions, throwing me off of my focus."
Last Friday, paparazzi photographed West as he walked into a street sign in Beverly Hills, bumping his head. Earlier this week, photos circulated of West's $750,000 Lamborghini crashing into the electric gates leading to his girlfriend Kim Kardashian's Los Angeles-area mansion. (West was not behind the wheel at the time.)
West, who is scheduled to be the musical guest on tomorrow's "Saturday Night Live" season finale, said he would not take part in any skits poking fun at himself.
"Somebody asked me, 'When you do "SNL," are you going to do a skit about the paparazzi and . . . like, humanize yourself?' I ain't here to apologize to no man. It ain't about me humanizing myself. At what point did I become unhuman, where I had to turn myself back? Or maybe I was demonized. Or maybe I was treated inhumanely and not human in that kind of situation."
