LOS ANGELES, (Reuters Life!) – Rapper Kanye West yesterday complained of being misused in a new TV interview during which he pulled back from a 2005 comment he made that characterized former President George W. Bush as a racist.
But the outspoken rapper, who is known for his socially-conscious lyrics, did not say he was misquoted when the “Today” morning chat show interviewed him. Instead, in a series of Twitter messages, he said the program’s co-host Matt Lauer had “tried to force my answers” to questions.
“Today” stood by its interview.
Kanye’s tweets and the “Today” reaction, which both stemmed from statements made by Bush in his new White House Memoir “Decision Points,” capped one of the more unusual back-and-forth exchanges in U.S. pop culture between the man once considered the most powerful in the world, a celebrity rapper and a television news program.
The three-way verbal sparring began when Bush hit the promotional circuit for “Decision Points” and was asked about passages that address comments West made on a television fund-raiser for victims of Hurricane Katrina. On the program West said “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
