Kanye West was scribbling Bible verses and pictures of spaceships on his bedsheets while consumed with paranoia. That’s the picture his former trainer painted of the musician’s 2016 breakdown, in details made newly public.
A long New York Times article published Friday (October 27) that spends most of its time recapping West’s turbulent relationship with adidas, shared observations by Harley Pasternak that came from the former trainer’s deposition in a 2017 lawsuit.
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Pasternak said that he visited Kanye’s house in November 2016, days after the musician delivered a long rant onstage, praising Donald Trump and worrying that JAY-Z might send “killers” to get him.
According to the article, Pasternak discovered a paranoid Ye who was obsessed with the idea that the government was out to get him.
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“He was writing Bible verses and drawing spaceships on bedsheets with a Sharpie, while a handful of worried friends and employees lingered nearby,” the Times piece reads. Soon after, Pasternak saw West with “suitcases packed with pots, pans and Tupperware.”
In addition to the details about Kanye West’s breakdown, the article recaps his long history of antisemitic and sexist actions during his partnership with adidas, dating all the way back to an incident of the rapper reportedly drawing a swastika on a sketch of a sneaker in 2013.
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There are accounts of Kanye using “sexually explicit language” while verbally abusing adidas employees; making employees watch pornography (supposedly as creative inspiration); and telling a Jewish Adidas manager to “hang a photo of Hitler in his kitchen and kiss it every day to practice unconditional love.”
West has also been accused of expressing admiration for Hitler’s “command of propaganda” and forcing then-manager Scooter Braun, who is the grandson of Holocaust survivors, to have dinner with Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has a long history of controversial public comments about Jews that has led the Southern Poverty Law Center to call him an antisemite.
The Times reached out to West for the piece, but he did not respond.
The bombshell article comes after Rolling Stone published a similar exposé last year, which claimed that Kanye West’s love of Adolf Hitler dates back to as early as 2003 when he was working on his debut album The College Dropout.
One music industry source claimed that Ye would discuss Hitler and Nazis in the studio on a “daily” basis, and even quiz others on their feelings towards the notorious dictator, pressuring them to acknowledge the “good” that he had done.
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Other insiders said that Kanye even sought inspiration from Hitler’s power-gaining tactics to chart his own path to fame and success.
“He was just so fascinated by [Hitler] — someone that can have complete control over people and how he did it,” one person said. “I think he started to almost correlate how he could manipulate things to be, not the same level, but how he could try to get people to be his ‘army.'”
