On the Sept. 29 season opener of "Saturday Night Live," Kanye West — who announced he was changing his name to "Ye" earlier in the day — performed as the sketch-comedy show's musical guest.
But after the show wrapped and host Adam Driver bid goodnight to the cameras, the rapper delivered another performance for the studio audience — one that TMZ characterized as "a pro-Trump rant" — that didn't make it on the air.
Comedian Chris Rock, who was in the audience, captured some of Ye's words — and the crowd's boos — on his Instagram Story and in the brief clips, which were shared by 2Cool2Blog on Twitter, Chris can be heard stifling a laugh as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing and sighing, "My god."
Fox News reported that some of the show's cast members shook their heads in disapproval, kept their heads down or rolled their eyes as they heard Kanye's impromptu speech. TMZ reported that Adam finally walked off the stage after awkwardly standing in a corner.
People magazine reports that Ye began his post-show tirade by singing, "I wanna cry right now. Black man in America, you're supposed to keep what you feel inside right now. And the liberals bully you and tell you what you can and cannot wear, where you and they can't not stare. And they look at me and say, 'It's not fair. How the hell did you get here?' Well…"
He then told the audience, "Actually, blacks weren't always Democrats. It's like a plan they did to take the fathers out the homes and promote welfare. Does anybody know about that? That's the Democratic plan. And what this shows is we can't be controlled by monolithic thought. You can't always have when you have a black subject matter like [Bill Cosby] that you have to have a black comedian talk about it."
Ye — who performed earlier in the night dressed as a Perrier bottle with rapper Lil Pump, who was dressed as a Fiji water bottle — also said, "It's so many times that I talk to a white person about this, and they say, 'How could you support [President Donald] Trump? He's racist.' Well, if I was concerned about racism, I would have moved out of America a long time ago. We don't just make our decisions off of racism. Imma break it down to you right now: If someone inspires me and I connect with them, I don't have to believe in all they policies.
"But this man is a builder and when I said I'm running in 2020, all my smart friends talked so much s— about me," he continued. "And when I saw that man win, I said, 'See, I told you. I could have been there.'"
Someone in the audience yelled "F— Trump,'" but the rapper went on. "Now you got a situation where we need to have a dialogue and not a diatribe because if you want something to change, it's not going to change by saying, 'F— that person.'"
In a YouTube video shared by TMZ, Kanye can then be heard softly singing the words "Try love, try love," as an organ continued to play background music, then pointing at the audience and saying, "Ya see, they laughing at me. Ya heard 'em, they scream at me. They bully me, they bullied me backstage they said, 'Don't go out there with that [Make America Great Again] hat on. They bullied me backstage! They bullied ME! And then they say I'm in 'the sunken place.' You want to see the sunken place?"
He continued, "OK, I'm gonna listen to ya'll now. But I'm gonna put my Superman cape on because this means you can't tell me what to do. Follow your heart and stop following your mind. That's how we're controlled, that's how we're programmed. If you want the world to move forward, try love."
Kanye then offered gratitude to the audience — which at this point had been completely silent as he went on and on, save for a person clapping when he said he was bullied, and a couple shouts when he said he can't be told what to do.
"Thank ya'll for giving me this platform. I know some of ya'll don't agree but y'all be goin' at that man neck a lot and I don't actually think it's that helpful," he said. "I think the universe has balance. Ninety percent of news are liberal. Ninety percent of TV L.A., New York, writers, rappers, musicians, so it's easy to make it seem like it's so, so, so one-sided."
He then sang, "I felt kinda free / I thought this country said I could be me." An audience member can be heard shouting, "Love ya, Kanye," to which Kanye responded, "I love me too!" before he started singing again and walked off the stage and into the audience.
The next morning, Sept. 30, Kanye appeared to have forgiven 'SNL' staff for trying to muzzle him as he'd claimed, because he actually tweeted about what a great time he had on the show!
"Had so much fun at SNL. [Producer] Lorne [Michaels] agreed that I would host before the year is out. Need to set a date. Gonna be sooooooooo lit," Ye wrote. "In the words of Lil Pump …Esskeetit !"