Why has he done a 180 on race?

Kanye West’s Saint Pablo tour made a stop in San Jose, Calif. last night and while onstage, he did the unthinkable: ‘Ye claimed he would have voted for president-elect Donald Trump. In-between songs, Yeezy stopped his show several times to talk Trump, politics, and race. You can read the entire rant right here.

“If I would have voted, I would have voted for Donald Trump” Kanye said. He went on to say his team told him not to admit he was pro-Trump aloud and asked the crowd how many people they suspected voted for Trump within the arena. He claimed that 20 to 30 percent of the crowd probably did but half of them would never admit it.

For what it’s worth, there was more nuance to Ye’s comments than you may realize.

Kanye clarified that being pro-Trump didn’t mean he was against Black Lives Matter, women’s rights, and gay rights. Though that doesn’t really explain why he called Trump’s approach “absolutely genius because it fucking worked” and went on to say his method of communication was “futuristic” and he loved The Donald in the debates. (Of course he did, Kanye loves interruptions!) In the end, he said that now that racist white people are now being openly racist, they’re exposing themselves—which is ultimately good for change. He also reiterated that he still plans to run for president in 2020.

’Ye seemed keenly aware of the damage he was doing to his brand, however. “Oh nah, the Saint Pablo ticket sales is going down now,” he joked.

Although the man who infamously said “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” on national TV is now supporting a man who hired a white nationalist as his chief advisor, supporting Trump wasn’t even the most hypocritical part of Ye’s rant.

“To black people, stop focusing on racism,” he said, in a part of the rant that’s not in the 17 minute YouTube video that has the bulk of Ye’s rant. “This world is racist, okay?… It’s just a fucking fact, we are in a racist country…. Not one or the other candidate was going to instantly be able to change [racism] because of their views.”

While he might be right that racism can’t be stopped overnight, it’s strange to hear Kanye West of all people to say we should stop focusing on racism because he’s made a career out of rapping about it.

On Yeezy’s 2004 debut album, The College Dropout, he talked about racism explicitly on many tracks. On “Spaceship” he rapped about experiencing tokenism firsthand working at the Gap.

They take me to the back and pat me

Asking me about some khakis

But let some black people walk in

I bet you they show off their token blackie

On “Jesus Walks” he went so far as to say:

We at war with terrorism, racism

But most of all we at war with ourselves

On “Never Let Me Down,” he rapped about how his grandfather and mother fought for Civil Rights before declaring:

Racism still alive, they just be concealing it

On “Two Words” he concluded:

And I basically know now

We get racially profiled

‘Cuffed up and hosed down

pimped up and ho’d down

Meanwhile, songs like “We Don’t Care” and “All Falls Down” don’t mention racism explicitly, but Ye touches on ideas of institutional racism that afflict the black community.

On his second album, 2005’s Late Registration, race wasn’t at the forefront nearly as much but it was still there. Songs like “Gold Digger” and “Diamonds From Sierra Leone” touched on racial issues (however slightly) while “Crack Music” is all about how institutional racism lead to the crack epidemic of the ’80s:

Crack raised the murder rate in D.C. and Maryland

We invested in that, it’s like we got Merrill lynched

But race was clearly still on Ye’s mind. A few months after the release of this album, Kanye would say “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” at A Concert for Hurricane Relief.

On his next two projects—2007’s Graduation and 2008’s 808s & Heartbreak—Kanye seemed to take his own advice and barely rapped about race, which isn’t surprising considering that’s also when he became a full-blown celebrity—one who hated the paparazzi more than the Nazis. He seemed to know it too, on “Everything I Am” he rapped, “So say goodbye to the NAACP Award.”

But a curious thing happened after Kanye interrupted Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs and faced a major backlash, some of which was racially motivated: he started rapping about race again.

On 2010’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy as well as 2011’s collaborative album with Jay Z, Watch The Throne, racism suddenly became a topic worth addressing again.

On “Power”—a song where he mentioned current President and actual decent human being Barack Obama after Obama referred to Kanye as a “jackass”—Ye rapped lines like:

The system broken, the school is closed, the prison’s open

And:

In this white man world, we the ones chosen

Race was a major theme on MBDTF, as songs like “Gorgeous,” “Hell of A Life” and “Who Will Survive In America” all nodded to discrimination. He continued that streak on WTT—arguably his most political album—as songs like “Murder To Excellence,” “Made In America,” “Primetime” all talked covered the topic. “Gotta Have It” finds him rapping about white America assassinating his character. And then there was “New Day” where he rapped:

And I’ll never let my son have an ego

He’ll be nice to everyone, wherever we go

I mean I might even make him be Republican

So everybody know he love white people

And despite his on-stage comments, on his last two albums, 2013’s Yeezus and 2016’s The Life of Pablo, he had plenty to say about issues he’s faced a black man in America.

Yeezus, in particular, is anchored on ideas about race. Probably because, as we later learned, Kanye was experiencing racism first hand as he was trying to break into the fashion industry. Songs like the “Strange Fruit” sampling “Blood On The Leaves” and “Black Skinheads” clearly show he thought racism was a problem worth addressing. But none of that compared to “New Slaves,” where he specifically rapped:

You see it’s broke nigga racism

That’s that “Don’t touch anything in the store”

And it’s rich nigga racism

That’s that “Come in, please buy more”

Meanwhile, on this year’s “Feedback” he seemed to nod to BLM saying:

Hands up, we just doing what the cops taught us

Hands up, hands up, then the cops shot us

So after all these years, and all these lyrics and songs, for whatever reason Kanye wants to deem race a topic not worth focusing on. Unless, of course, Kanye is experiencing it himself. Then it’s worth making an album about.

So why did Kanye say what he said? Maybe because he no longer cares about black people as much as he cares about himself.