Kanye West has slammed the media for sensationalizing the "wheelchair incident" that happened during his concert Friday night, Sept. 12, at Qantas Credit Union Arena in Sydney, Australia.
In a YouTube video posted by one of the concert-goer, the 37-year-old rapper is shown refusing to continue his performance until every audience member was on their feet. The only problem was, one of the concert-goers was in a wheelchair and another one was using a prosthetic leg.
One of those two singled-out fans waved her prosthetic limb, proving that she could not stand up. Kim West acknowledged her, saying, "Okay, you fine," according to Daily Mail.
But when he saw the other fan still on his seat, the "Bound 2" rapper said, "This is the longest I've had to wait to do a song, it's unbelievable." Concert-goers surrounding the seated person eventually shouted to the stage that the fan was in a wheelchair. But West still sent his bodyguard Pascal Duvier to find out whether the seated fan was, indeed, in a wheelchair. When it was confirmed, West said, "He is in a wheelchair? It's fine!" Then, he just went straight back into his performance of "Good Life."
At the last stop of the Australian leg of his "The Yeezus Tour" in Brisbane, West addressed the "wheelchair incident," especially how the media reported it.
"Run the video that everybody's talking about where I so-called scream at somebody, since this is such big media news," the 21-time Grammy-winning recording artist said Monday night, Sept. 15 at Brisbane Entertainment Centre, according to In The Mix.
"It's like, welcome to today's news everybody - we've got Americans getting killed on TV, we have kids getting killed every week in Chicago, we have unarmed people being killed by police officers, and we have Kanye West with an ice cream cone," North West's dad said. "They got this thing where they want the masses, people who never even heard one of my albums, to somehow read a headline that reads negative and to think I'm a bad person or something. I'm a married Christian man with a family. At my concerts, I make sure everybody has as good of a time as possible."
"All this demonizing me, it ain't gonna work after a while, so pick a new target, 'cause I ain't one of these dumb ass artist you're used to," he added, according to Consequence of Sound. "You come at me, I'm gonna take my platform and break this shit down for real intelligent people every night so they can understand, then we get back to the music."
West's wife, Kim Kardashian took to Instagram to defend his husband. "What an amazing Australian tour! It's frustrating that something so awesome could be clouded by lies in the media," she wrote along with a video of West performing on stage. "Kanye never asked anyone in a wheel chair to stand up & the audience videos show that. He asked for everyone to stand up & dance UNLESS they were in a wheel chair."