Kanye West

In a departure from many of his hip-hop peers and forebears, Kanye West has always been a controversial figure, but never really a criminal one. While other rappers often recounted their experiences in gang life, detailing shootouts and illicit pharmaceutical sales, Ye mostly stuck to reminisces about his days working at The Gap and obsessing over fashion.

However, according to a new report from The Daily Beast, Ye may be in violation of federal campaign finance laws after his ill-fated Presidential campaign last year. Although West supposedly ran as an independent, third-party candidate, recent disclosures revealed that his campaign may well have been secretly run by the Republican Party (or an offshoot thereof) in a bid to splinter support for the GOP’s opponent Joe Biden. Republican Party advisors apparently funneled money into Kanye’s campaign, receiving their own payments for services rendered, all while disguising or hiding the transactions in their reports to authorities to keep their associations secret.

Of course, it was already long postulated that Ye’s campaign was just a smokescreen for Trump’s own bid for reelection — which turned out to be unsuccessful anyway — but Ye always denied such speculation. Now, it seems, there’s proof with Common Cause vice president Paul S. Ryan telling The Beast, “The importance of disclosure in this matter can’t be overstated. It’s no secret that Kanye West’s candidacy would have a spoiler effect, siphoning votes from Democrat Joe Biden. Voters had a right to know that a high-powered Republican lawyer was providing legal services to Kanye—and federal law requires disclosure of such legal work.”

The full report goes into further detail, but in summary, it describes the Kanye campaign securing legal services from firms linked to Trump, the Republicans, and voter fraud conspiracy theorists. This lines up with a recent Reuters report that Kanye had previously employed a publicist who traveled to Georgia to harass and threaten a poll worker Trump accused of ballot stuffing. Those claims have long since been proven baseless and false, but that hasn’t stopped his fanatics from harping on a supposed fraud in the 2020 elections, which he lost by a significant margin.

What does that mean for Kanye in the future? That probably depends on how much Kanye himself knew about the firms he was hiring — but the entire situation looks suspicious, considering the campaign almost exclusively employed Republican firms which had ties to Trump himself. For what it’s worth, it seems that either way, he didn’t really seem to know what he was paying for, issuing six-figure payments to advisors way after he was effectively out of the race. His previous violations of fundraising standards were reported, so it seems that the campaign’s reputation for disorganization was well-founded.

You can check out the full story here.

Ye (aka Kanye West) recently had a conversation with British-German artist Tino Sehgal for German culture magazine 032c, and he really said a lot of noteworthy things during the chat. He revealed that he plans to be “homeless in a year” because he’s turning his homes into churches. Ye also noted that he’s working on a performance piece called The Funeral Rehearsal Of Kanye West. Elsewhere during the interview, he also dropped some names and called himself the “template” for some major artists.

Ye said:

“Moses could do everything his army could do, but he couldn’t free his people without the army. And you know, all these leaders, all these people who created the templates — Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, George Lucas — were crazy as f*ck but influenced so many people. I’m just saying, I’m the template. Kanye West is the template for Drake and Travis and…”

He said something similar elsewhere in the conversation, noting, “At this point, every art piece I do is a window, an app, for human beings. 808s & Heartbreak was the app for Drake and The Weeknd, and The Funeral Rehearsal Of Kanye West will be the app for others.”

The interview is print-only and is included as “a special edition booklet” in Issue #40 of 032c, so grab a copy for yourself here.

It was reported in October that Ye (formerly Kanye West) was looking to sell one of his Wyoming ranches. As far as what he plans to do with his remaining homes, he apparently intends to leave himself “homeless in a year” by turning them all into churches, according to a conversation between Ye and British-German artist Tino Sehgal for German culture magazine 032c.

In the print-only interview that’s included as “a special edition booklet” in Issue #40 of the publication (photos of which were shared on Reddit but have since been removed), Ye said:

“The ultimate good life is simpler. It’s for those who are willing to not have any possessions. Your baggage weighs you down.

I’m going to be homeless in a year. I’m going to turn all the homes I own into churches. We’re making this orphanage, and it will be a place where anyone can go. It should be like an artist commune. Food should always be available. The opportunity to make art and be around friends should always be available.”

Speaking of possessions, a bulletproof vest that Ye wore during one of his Donda listening parties was recently sold, alongside an NFT, for a whopping sum of $75,000.

Ye might still be plotting to run for president again in 2024, as his pinned tweet from last year would suggest, but the rapper has run into some hot water when it comes to last year’s election. Last week, it was reported that a publicist from Ye’s team accused a poll worker of faking ballots and pressured them to admit to voter fraud or else they would be thrown in jail. Obviously, that’s not a good look for someone who might run for office in the future, but Ye’s team is now distancing themselves from the publicist, saying she was “not associated” with Ye at the time.

Trevian Kutti, the publicist in question, reportedly told the poll worker that they were “in danger” and that they were a “loose end for a party that needs to tidy up.” By the time Kutti showed up and accused them of faking ballots, the poll worker had already been harassed by Trump supporters for weeks on end. After Kutti left, the poll worker found out that Kutti was a known Trump supporter and worked for R. Kelly before joining Ye’s team.

While Ye’s team doesn’t deny that Kutti worked for the rapper in the past, one of his spokespeople told Reuters that they weren’t working for him at the time and haven’t since. “Trevian Kutti was not associated with Kanye West or any of his enterprises at the times of the facts that are reported in these articles or since these facts occurred,” the spokesperson said.