Kanye West Went From Wearing A Confederate Flag To Complaining About Racism In The Fashion Industry. What Changed?

Do you remember in 2013 when Kanye West set out to re appropriate the confederate flag? If you don’t, here’s the 411. Kanye had one of his master ideas to change the way America works and how it sees people. The rapper did this during the time he was released his album Yeezus, which had many racially motivated songs including “New Slaves.” While the entire thing could have been just a huge PR scheme, Kanye West continued his rants on public radio about his personal experience with racism in the world of fashion. Therefore, taking the confederate flag and wearing it as a fashion statement is a good idea right? Kanye West sure though so.

“React how you wan. Any energy is good energy. The Confederate flag represented slavery in a way. That’s my abstract take on what I know about it, right? So I wrote the song ‘New Slaves.’ So I took the Confederate flag and made it my flag. It’s my flag now.”

Kanye’s grand plan led to him taking the confederate flag with him on his Yeezus tour and stamping it on all of his merchandise. Yet 2013, marked a series of crazy interviews starring Kanye West, in which the rapper expressed his disdain for the fashion industry insiders that kept him out. So, does wearing the confederate flag, an image which Kanye himself calls an image of racism toward blacks, make Kanye a hypocrite? Some people have called him a self-hater instead.

Self-hater or not, many people purchased Kanye’s confederate flag merchandise in 2013. Kanye also comes after a long line of hip-hop artists who have chosen the confederate flag as attire according to the Washington Post. Rapper Ludacris reportedly appeared on stage in 2005 with entire confederate flag get up. But the difference between someone like Ludacris and Kanye West is Kanye’s apparent desire to be accepted by white America and even by the French fashion world. The rapper obviously used the confederate flag to appeal to fans who were not black and never succeeding in appropriating the image. Sorry Kanye, the Confederate flag will never be the new n-word of hip-hop.

The exact cause of Kanye ending his alliance with the Confederacy is unknown. However, a good guess would be that he finally figured out the being on the Confederate side would mean that Kanye West would’ve probably have been born a real slave instead of a “new slave.”

[Images via Kevin Winter/Getty Images For 102.7 KIIS FM’s Wango Tango and Complex]