In February, Ye (formerly Kanye West) released Vultures, his chart-topping collaborative album with Ty Dolla $ign. What fans noticed right away is this album’s explicit content stands in stark contrast to Ye’s two previous projects, the Dove-Award winning Jesus is King and non-explicit Donda, which was filled with faith content as well.
When Ye released those projects, he talked about the intentional shift they represented in his professional and personal life. In a 2019 interview with Zane Lowe, Ye shared that he believed it was his mission to share about all the things Jesus had done for him.
“Now that I’m in service to Christ, my job is to spread the gospel, to let people know what Jesus has done for me,” he said. “I’ve spread a lot of things. There was a time I was letting you know what high fashion had done for me, I was letting you know what the Hennessey had done for me, but now I’m letting you know what Jesus has done for me, and in that I’m no longer a slave, I’m a son now, a son of God. I’m free.”
Ye even called himself an evangelist for Christ in his Jesus Is King documentary
“We’re here to spread the Gospel,” he said. “I’m not here for your entertainment. I’m an evangelist. So my music, my films—every conversation, every room I’m in—we’re here to save souls, save people from eternal damnation.”
Which is why fans — especially Christians — were surprised by the extreme 180 represented on Vultures. Has Ye turned his back on his faith?
In a new interview with Big Boy, Ye addressed what he now thinks about God.
“I have my issues with Jesus,” he admits. “There’s a lot of stuff I went through that I prayed and I didn’t see Jesus show up. I had to put my experience in this world, my experience with my children, my experience with other people, my experience with my accountant, my experience with my brand and my experience with the level of music that I was dealing with in my own hands.”
Ye then explained that he sees Christians rely “so much” on God that it sets them up for failure.
“A lot of times, I just feel like, in America, Christians depend on Jesus so much that we won’t put the work in ourselves,” he said. “The main thing that really that I don’t rock with is it’s always saying, ‘I’m going to pray for you,’ and it’s just like, you can actually physically do something yourself, too. More than just pray.
“We’re so in this mentality that that’s all that needs to happen but we ain’t praying our way out of prison,” he continued. “We ain’t praying our way out of the abortion clinics. We ain’t praying our way to get our land back that was always ours after gentrification, after the Harlem Renaissance. Black Wall Street was burned to the ground. Them prayers ain’t working. We have to apply actual physical building partnerships and it doesn’t start unless we could really be real with each other and say, ‘This is what I did.'”
Later in the interview, as Ye was explaining why he doesn’t like to be controlled by labels and other producers, he also shared that he doesn’t understand the point of fearing God.
“It’s another thing I don’t like in Christianity — the fear of God,” he said. “If God is love, why should you fear Him? Because you place one fear and you get another fear, you get another fear, then what do you have? At that point, you’re easily controllable. You’re easily sellable. You’re easily contracted because you have this fear on you. Everybody is going to die eventually. But I’m going to live my entire life with zero fear.”
You can watch the full interview with Big Boy here:
