A few weeks after setting the internet alight with his appearance on the Drink Champs podcast, Kanye returned with a five-minute video posted on Instagram titled “Thanksgiving Prayer” that struck a notably different tone. In this new clip, West reflects on some of his recent struggles and mistakes, narrating a minimalist video of his Sunday Service choir.
Kanye opens the clip explaining he wrote this message on his way home from taking Saint (“my mini-me”) to a football game where the five-year-old got to play catch with Tom Brady.
Clearly still emotional from his split with Kim Kardashian, West says, “All I think about every day is how I get my family back together and how I heal the pain that I’ve caused.” (Kim Kardashian filed for divorce in February.)
He goes on to speak candidly about how his drinking created problems with his loved ones because it exacerbated his anger issues. He also references the highly publicized 2016 “manic episode” that led him to be prescribed medication that he took sporadically. He owns up to issues with his ego (“My ego has a tendency to go past the threshold of being motivating and entertaining to just being overbearing…”) and his temper (“[My] screaming might have helped me tell off everyone who doubted me in music but that screaming did not help me keep my family together”).
Throughout the clip West takes a noticeably wry and witty tone when talking about his faults, almost bordering on self-deprecation “(This might come as a surprise, but sometimes I scream.”) He even interrogates his own heightened turn to Christianity. “When I got saved it did not immediately make me a better person. It made me a self righteous Christian,” he says at one point. “I was arrogant with my Jesus. Like I just got me some Jesus at the Gucci store with a stimulus check.”
Kanye also cites his public support of Donald Trump as a cause of great strain in his marriage. He says Kim (who supported Hillary Clinton and later Joe Biden and Kamala Harris) stood by his side for the sake of their family. “Then I ran for president without proper preparation and no allies on either side,” he says contritely, before alluding to his disturbing breakdown about his and Kim’s conversations considering abortion: “I embarrassed my wife in the way that I presented information about our family during the one, and thank God, only press conference.”
Closing the video, West stresses the theme of accountability, acknowledging that he had been taken advantage of by people around him, and that we all need to be responsible “for ourselves and our children.” The difference in tone and rhetoric here is noteworthy, since during Kanye’s Drink Champs appearance he said “We’re not even divorced.” Kim’s apparent relationship with comedian Pete Davidson has been covered relentlessly by the media, though according to CNN, they are “taking it extra slow.”
In this Thanksgiving prayer, as well as an appearance West made in Los Angeles on the 24th, he admitted to more of his own shortcomings. “I’ve made mistakes. I’ve publicly done things that were not acceptable as a husband,” he said, before claiming that, “If the enemy can separate Kimye, there’s going to be millions of families that feel like that separation is okay.”