Kanye West: I feared Kim would leave me after slavery comments

Kanye West has said he has considered suicide and feared his wife Kim Kardashian West might leave him after he made controversial remarks about slavery.

The rapper caused an outcry when he appeared on gossip website TMZ’s TV show saying: “When you hear about slavery for 400 years… For 400 years? That sounds like a choice.”

But in a new interview with the New York Times he clarified his comments, saying: “I said the idea of sitting in something for 400 years sounds – sounds – like a choice to me, I never said it’s a choice.

“I never said slavery itself – like being shackled in chains – was a choice. That’s why I went from slave to 400 years to mental prison to this and that.

“If you look at the clip, you see the way my mind works.”

One of his songs on new album Ye, Wouldn’t Leave, suggests the interview put his marriage at risk.

He told the newspaper: “There was a moment where I felt like after TMZ, maybe a week after that, I felt like the energy levels were low, and I called different family members and was asking, you know, ‘Was Kim thinking about leaving me after TMZ?’ So that was a real conversation.”

Another song on Ye, I Thought About Killing You, says he has considered suicide and West said: “Oh yeah, I’ve thought about killing myself all the time.

“It’s always an option and [expletive]. Like Louis C.K. said: I flip through the manual. I weigh all the options.”

He added: “I’m just having this epiphany now, ’cause I didn’t do it, but I did think it all the way through.

“But if I didn’t think it all the way through, then it’s actually maybe more of a chance of it happening.”

West also spoke about his support for the current US president, saying it was part of his refusal to filter his thoughts and constrain his thinking.

He said: “I felt that I knew people who voted for Trump that were celebrities that were scared to say that they liked him. But they told me, and I liked him, and I’m not scared to say what I like.

He added: “I hear Trump talk and I’m like, I like the way it sounds, knowing that there’s people who like me that don’t like the way it sounds.”

However, questioned if he likes the sound of Trump’s ban on people from Muslim-majority countries entering the US, he said he does not agree with all of the president’s policies.

West also said he had felt pressured to support Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

He said: “It was like an arranged marriage or something. And I’m like, that’s not who I want to marry. I don’t feel that.

“I believe that I’m actually a better father because I got my [expletive] voice back, I’m a better artist because I got my voice back.

“I was living inside of some universe that was created by the mob-thought, and I had lost who I was, so that’s when I was in the sunken place. You look in my eyes right now – you see no sunken place.”