Ye could probably benefit from a few more Michael Che-like personalities in his life.
Footage from a new documentary shows a tense exchange between Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) and Che after the rapper’s infamous rant on “Saturday Night Live” in 2018.
In 2018, Ye performed on the long-running sketch show as its musical guest. Shortly after his final song, the “Runaway” rapper essentially took the show and its audience hostage to deliver a rambling pro-President Donald Trump and anti-Democrat diatribe while wearing a MAGA hat.
“You can’t be controlled by monolithic thoughts,” Ye said at one point. “You can’t always have, every time you have a Black subject matter, like [Bill] Cosby, that you have to have a Black comedian talking about him.”
According to a now-viral clip from Nico Ballesteros’s new Ye-centered doc, “In Whose Name,” Che took issue with this specific remark and swiftly confronted Ye backstage after the rapper wrapped up his tirade.
“You good with me? For real?” Che can be seen asking Ye in the clip. “I’m the Black comedian, I made a joke about Cosby.”
“Aw, man, I love you, though, bro,” the “Gold Digger” rapper said meekly.
But Che refused to back down. “Why would you do that to me? I work here.”
Ye went on to claim that he was referring to “SNL” alum Leslie Jones, not to Che, during his remarks about Black comedians.
But Che wasn’t buying it.
“I work here. Like, come on, man. We treat everyone that come in like family, and you gonna sell us out? Like, that’s fucked up, man,” he said. “We look up to you, we love you. What you got against us?”
“I mean, I do have some things against ‘SNL,’” Ye admitted.
“That’s cool,” Che said. “But airing it out like that without letting us be able to reply is kind of foul. You wait until the last song and then say that foul shit to us?”
At this point, rapper Consequence — who was watching the confrontation unfold — tries to break it up.
Che later turns to Ye before the clip cuts out, and says: “Yo, you’re a hero to us, man! We love you. Seriously, we love you. But it’s foul to do that.”
On social media platforms like X and TikTok, users were impressed by Che’s calm but firm demeanor during the confrontation.
“a narcissist is confronted & he’s gets quiet 🤨 …props to Michael Che for standing up for his SNL team 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 wish this clip was released sooner…” a TikToker said.
“I respect Michael Che even more now!” another TikToker agreed. “Too many people don’t call kanye out for his nonsense.”
“Ye was shook 😭” another TikToker noted.
Other “SNL” stars and alums who were present for Ye’s rant have spoken about it in retrospect.
During the “Ladies & Gentlemen…50 Years of SNL Music” special that aired in January, Ego Nwodim recalled that the Ye incident happened during her very first broadcast, when she was stuck onstage.
“I moved to New York exactly eight days prior for this job,” she said, per Entertainment Weekly. “I was like, ‘I don’t wanna be up here for this, and I don’t agree with this, and standing up here looks like I’m standing in solidarity.’”
Kenan Thompson also admitted to leaving the stage when he realized the rapper was about to pull some kind of stunt.
“When he grabbed the mic and was just wandering around, you could see that he was gearing up to say something. I was like, ‘I’m out!’” Thompson recalled in the special. “It would have been cool if he just had did the music thing, and, I don’t know, just spoke through the hat, I guess, ’cause the hat was loud.”
