It seems that watching dork white-supremacist influencers like Andrew Tate and Clavicular dance to his song “Heil Hitler” at a Miami nightclub last weekend broke something in Ye. The artist formerly known as Kanye West has officially distanced himself from the rhetoric of that song, as well as a number of his other offensive and hateful remarks, in a new full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal this morning. In the advertisement, Ye clarified that he is “not a Nazi or antisemite,” and addressed disappointment toward him within the Black community, which he refers to as “the foundation” of who he is.
In addition to expressing a commitment to taking accountability for his statements and actions, Ye offers some additional context about the mental-health challenges he believes caused his erratic behavior. Ye has long been open about his bipolar diagnosis, though he now says that his struggle with this disease began after his famous car accident in 2002, which inspired his breakout single “Through the Wire.” He says the accident “caused injury to the right frontal lobe of my brain” and that this damage went undiagnosed and untreated, leading directly to his mental-health struggles today. “The scariest thing about this disorder is how persuasive it is when it tells you: You don’t need help. It makes you blind, but convinced you have insight. You feel powerful, certain, and unstoppable,” Ye writes.
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Ye speaks specifically about a period in early 2025 when his behavior and speech were at their most incendiary. “I fell into a four-month long manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behavior that destroyed my life,” he writes. “As the situation became increasingly unsustainable, there were times I didn’t want to be here anymore.” Ye ends his note by talking about the journey he’s on now of “medication, therapy, exercise, and clean-living,” and by asking for “patience” rather than “sympathy” from the public as he attempts to “find my way home.” He also writes that he’s rededicating himself to his art, which tracks because at the time of writing, his latest album, Bully, is slated to drop on January 30, according to Spotify.
