alt=Bethany MandelThe rapper formerly known as Kanye West is the rare celebrity who doesn’t seem to care what he’s supposed to say and instead just speaks from the heart, without a filter or a team of communications experts in charge of messaging. From his mental health struggles to his Christian faith to his relationship woes with wife Kim Kardashian, West, who recently changed his name to Ye, has been honest, almost to a fault.
When the couple’s impending divorce was first announced, Kardashian leaked a carefully crafted statement to People magazine (as reported by Vanity Fair). “Although Kim and Kanye have been separated for months, it was still emotional for Kim to actually file for divorce,” an unidentified source said. “She spent the weekend taking care of herself and her kids. She is spending time with her mom, sisters and hasn’t been working. Everyone is supportive. Kim feels very lucky to be surrounded by her big family.”
The beauty mogul also apparently feels very lucky that “there is no drama” between her and her estranged husband. “Kim is mostly just disappointed that they couldn’t figure out how to stay married,” the source added. “But it takes two people to create a happy marriage. Kim has felt Kanye is not willing to do the hard work and compromise.”
Kardashian has reportedly already moved on and has been linked to “Saturday Night Live” star Pete Davidson. That’s the nature of Hollywood romances; rebounds are often faster than legal proceedings. For a while, that seemed to be the case with West and Kardashian.
But West is now speaking openly about his desire to reunite with his wife.
In a new interview for Revolt TV’s Drink Champs that was released on Thursday, but appeared to be filmed last month judging by the state of the rapper’s hair, West accuses ‘Saturday Night Live” writers of turning his marriage into the butt of a joke when Kardashian was the host Oct. 9.
“‘SNL’ making my wife say ‘I divorced him’ on TV because they just wanted to get that bar off. I never even seen the papers. We’re not even divorced,” he said, referring to the opening monologue Kardashian delivered
Kim and Kanye share four children together and were married for nine years. Moving on isn’t that easy for most people after a marriage like theirs. Which is why West went on to explain, “They ain’t no joke to me. My kids want their parents to stay together. I want us to be together.”
Last week he kept at it, Yahoo!Life reported.
The day after Thanksgiving, the rapper shared an old photo originally posted by Kardashian to her Instagram Stories in 2019. The photo (which you can see here) featured West and Kardashian kissing in matching sweatsuits. Over the photo, West added a TMZ headline, reading, “Kanye West Says God Will Bring Kim and Him Back Together, Inspire Millions.” West tagged the publication as well as Kardashian.
The article West referenced detailed the speech he gave while dropping off meals at the L.A. Mission on Nov. 24. “The narrative God wants is to see that we can be redeemed in all these relationships,” West said, per People. “We’ve made mistakes. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve publicly done things that were not acceptable as a husband, but right now today, for whatever reason — I didn’t know I was going to be in front of this mic — but I’m here to change the narrative.”
While denouncing the narrative he says is being pushed by “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” networks Hulu and E!, West added, “If the enemy can separate Kimye, there’s going to be millions of families that feel like that separation is okay … but when God brings Kimye together, there’s going to be millions of families that are going to be influenced to see that they can overcome the work of the separation, of trauma the devil has used to capitalize to keep people in misery while people step over homeless people to go to the Gucci store.”
Even if West is unsuccessful in his efforts to win back his wife’s affections, he’s making an important statement. Divorce and separation is traumatic, and not something that one can easily bounce back from, into the waiting arms of another. It is a tragedy for all involved, and West isn’t just speaking for himself, he’s also advocating for what his kids desperately want: Their family to be whole again.
This is not just another trivial celebrity story, but a devastatingly human one that’s being coldly dismissed by magazines that report on West’s efforts to reunite his family as a “ploy.’
Vanity Fair also reported, “The Grammy winner also blamed the Kardashians’ PR team for ‘promoting’ the idea of divorce and getting in Kim’s ‘ear,’ giving her ideas for storylines that would play well on her family’s new Hulu reality TV show, which these dates with Davidson are reportedly being filmed for.”
While the Kardashian clan is planting stories with friendly media outlets about her romance with Davidson, West is showing them to be fabulists. There’s no such thing as bouncing back and moving on from a marriage with the father of your four kids in a matter of months. This is the narrative that Hollywood publicists and elites want to sell us: That marriage vows are meaningless and that relationships are disposable and interchangeable. West is here to remind us they’re anything but.