Lee “Scratch” Perry Says Kanye West Sold His Soul
Kanye West has been having a weird time lately, with the mental breakdown and the Donald Trump photo op and all. Plenty of people have been wondering what’s going on with him. And the legendary dub reggae mystic and lunatic Lee “Scratch” Perry has his own theory. During a recent interview with the Canadian radio show The Strombo Show, Perry put forward an, um, unconventional idea: That Kanye has sold both his soul and his mother’s soul. And that he’s addicted to big butts. Here’s what Perry said:
Him sell his mother’s soul to get rich… To get rich, sell his soul to, sell his mother’s soul, sell his soul to get the American dollars that is going down. Why should I listen to somebody that is so perfect and so unperfect and so stupid?…
I warn him sometimes that I don’t need a jacket or a bulletproof. I did not sell my soul. I don’t need a bulletproof jacket. And I don’t have a woman with a real big batty because me is not afflicted by big batty. I am not addicted to big batty. And I am not addicted to Kim, with batty in front and behind. Kim has batty in front and batty behind. I am not addicted to girls with batty in front and batty behind. The girls I have is not too fat.
Here’s the full interview; the Kanye stuff comes in around the 30:15 mark:
A couple of things are going on here. Perry is 81, and you could certainly consider this a senior moment. But he also has long, long history of speaking in weirdly inflammatory riddles. He notoriously called Island Records boss Chris Blackwell a vampire, and my favorite story is that he refused to work with the British 2-Tone ska group Bad Manners unless they changed their name to Good Manners.