Kanye West shrugs off backlash to that Pete Davidson video

Kanye West defends yet removes that divisive Pete Davidson video from Instagram

Kanye West posing in sunglasses and a leather jacket

March 7, 2022 8:35 AM PT

Kanye West has removed the music video for “Eazy” from Instagram after he was accused of threatening and endangering Pete Davidson with its violent claymation imagery.

On Sunday, the rapper defended and posted a still from the controversial video, which depicts a clay figurine of West kidnapping, burying and decapitating a clay figurine resembling Davidson, who is dating the musician’s estranged wife, Kim Kardashian.

After West — who legally changed his name to Ye — released “Eazy” last week, Twitter users deemed the video “weird,” “disgusting,” “disturbing” and “scary on so many levels.”

“Art is therapy just like this view,” Ye wrote Sunday on Instagram. “Art is protected as freedom of speech. art inspires and simplifies the world. Art is not a proxy for any ill or harm. Any suggestion otherwise about my art is false and mal intended.”

Ye’s defense comes less than a week after a judge declared Kardashian legally single, and the reality TV star officially dropped West from her last name amid their turbulent divorce. The Grammy winner and the beauty mogul have been married for eight years and share four young children.

On Friday, the “City of Gods” hitmaker shared on Instagram a poem comparing divorce to “full blown COVID,” “walking on glass,” “being bullied in a class hall,” “getting beat up in the mall” and “suffocating.”

“Divorce feels like your soul was dragged over coals,” the passage reads. “Divorce feels like your kids were snatched from your control. Divorce feels like you’ve been shot and traffic is slow.”

Representatives for Davidson and Kardashian did not immediately respond Monday to the Los Angeles Times’ requests for comment.