We may never know what West’s true intentions are with these recent appearances and rants. Perhaps he truly is just speaking his mind and seeking to expand the way our culture thinks. But the problem is that much of this rhetoric — and the wild, thoughtless way it’s being delivered without fact-checking — feels like a publicity stunt. Watching each interview, West has seemingly become a caricature of himself, an uncontrollable egomaniac who either wants to hear himself speak or is attempting to sell records via confusing, inflammatory performance art. But as Van Lathan , the Black TMZ staffer who bravely confronted West in the newsroom after he declared slavery “a choice,” put it: “You’re entitled to believe whatever you want. But there is fact, and real-world, real-life consequence behind everything that you just said. And while you are making music and being an artist and living the life that you’ve earned by being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives. We have to deal with the marginalization that has come from the 400 years of slavery that you said, for our people, was a choice.”