Kanye Asked People To Avoid Premarital Sex While Working On His Album
Kanye West is being Kanye West again in a new interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music’s Beats 1 radio station. The rapper sat down to discuss his new album, Jesus is King, and he revealed some pretty unusual details about the recording process. Apparently, Kanye West asked his team to avoid premarital sex while working on the album, in an effort to help them focus on the task at hand.
In the two-hour long video interview, which came out Oct. 24, West explained what he called the “radical” rules imposed on collaborators while making the album. "I was asking people to fast during the album,” he said. “There were times where I was asking people not to have premarital sex while they were working on the album.” He was hoping this would keep everyone completely engrossed in the creative process. "There were times where I went to people that were working on other projects and said, 'Can you just work and focus on this?'" he remembered. "I thought if we could all focus and fast — families who pray together stay together." Jesus is King was released on Oct. 25 after several weeks of delays.
For the record, West can’t actually ban an employee or collaborator from abstaining from sex on their own time. According to Angelique Hamilton, human resources expert with HR Chique Consultancy Group, forcing employees to conform to your religious beliefs is a violation of federal law. "As an organization, Mr. West is not at liberty to implement such a requirement," Hamilton tells Elite Daily. "It infringes upon the rights of his employees and potentially violates civil rights." She notes that West should consider the effect this policy could have on his employees' well-being and personal belief systems. "Mr. West should refrain from invoking a practice that is improper and inappropriate within the workplace," she says. "His workplace should be one of inclusion and acceptance."
In the Beats 1 interview, West also revealed to Lowe that he previously struggled with porn addiction. “Playboy was my gateway into full-on pornography addiction,” he explained. “My dad had a Playboy left out at age five, and it’s affected almost every choice I made for the rest of my life from age five to now, having to kick the habit.” Elite Daily reached out to a rep for the magazine for comment and did not hear back in time for publication.
West's latest creative decisions have been informed by his newfound faith, which he developed while reading the Bible during a recent hospitalization. “Now that I’m in service to Christ, my job is to spread the Gospel, to let people know what Jesus has done for me,” he said in the interview. "I've spread a lot of things." He also explained that receiving treatment for his mental health struggles may have saved his life, and certainly changed his perspective on his music.
On Oct. 14, West came under fire for criticizing Kim Kardashian West about her photos that he thought were “too sexy.” Even Bachelorette alum Tyler Cameron weighed in on Twitter. “What not to do... You should want your significant other to be sexy and feel sexy,” Cameron wrote on Oct. 15. “Ye lost his confidence. Fellas if you can’t stand the heat get out the kitchen. Encourage your significant other to be all they can be. Not hold them back.” West discussed the incident in his interview with Lowe. “I suffer and I appreciate the suffering because we can feel a little bit of what Jesus experienced, but I suffer on social media," he said. “There are other married men that I know are happy to hear me say that.”
Whatever transformations West is going through in his personal life, he’s imposing a lot of rules on the people around him — some of which (like the no sex policy) are basically impossible (and illegal) to enforce. All I can say is, that sounds like a stressful work environment for everyone involved. I hope for West’s collaborators’ sake that they were able to get some mental space from the process... and some time to *ahem* relax on their own terms. Sorry, Kanye, I said it!
