Kanye West said Tuesday he planned to step away from politics after a whirlwind month that saw him meet with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, strut around the stages of “Saturday Night Live” wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat and jump on top of a table at an Apple Store to deliver his own keynote address.
West, 41, took to Twitter to address some of the criticism heaped on top of him, noting that he had been “used to spread messages I don’t believe in” and that he planned to focus on “being creative.”
“My eyes are now wide open and now realize I’ve been used to spread messages I don’t believe in,” he wrote to his 28 million followers. “I am distancing myself from politics and completely focusing on being creative !!!”
HuffPost has reached out to West’s representatives for comment.
The new stance comes just weeks after West ventured to Washington to meet with Trump at the White House, delivering a 10-minute speech in which he showered praise on the president and referred to himself as a “fine wine.”
“Trump is on his hero’s journey right now,” West, wearing the president’s trademark red baseball hat, said. A noted critic of politicians, he also walked back his 13-year-old remarks that former President George W. Bush didn’t “care about black people.”
Just days before the meeting, West also cornered the cast of “SNL” and delivered an off-camera speech about his support of Trump. The act was harshly mocked by several of the show’s comedians, including cast member Pete Davidson, who called it “one of the worst, most awkward things I’ve ever seen here.”
On Tuesday, West also sought to clarify some of his political positions and also distanced himself from a movement dubbed “Blexit,” a campaign urging black voters to leave the Democratic Party. West was reportedly involved in the design of the movement’s merchandise — items had a sentence reading “Design by Kanye West” on their descriptions. But the rapper said he had “nothing to do with it” and that he didn’t want “any association” with the effort.
It’s unclear how long this latest anti-political incarnation will last — West regularly pinballs back and forth over his use of social media amid controversy, shutting down his accounts and stepping out of the spotlight only to reemerge once again. Just this month he deactivated his Twitter and Instagram handles after tweeting that the constitutional amendment ending slavery should be abolished.
He was back online a week later.