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Ye aka Kanye West is stoking more outrage as a new photo of him and JPEGMAFIA shows the rapper sporting a t-shirt with the image of a notorious neo-Nazi and murderer.
Last Friday (January 19), photos of the rapper and producer JPEGMAFIA and Kanye West caught the web by surprise. Posted to his Instagram account with the caption “can’t talk right now, doing hot girl s—t,” the pictures showed the duo posing together with West sporting a new set of titanium dental grills presumably at work on new music. But West’s t-shirt caught the attention of metal fans who immediately identified the artist as Burzum, a Norwegian black metal band fronted by Varg Vikernes, a notorious pagan neo-Nazi.
The revelation got worse as fans saw that the proposed artwork for his upcoming Vultures album had similarities to the artwork on Burzum’s self-titled album from 1992. The photos caused dismay to fans of JPEGMAFIA, who had lyrics calling Burzum out for his racism on his “ALL CAPS NO SPACES” track from his album Black Ben Carson. He also had called West out on X, formerly Twitter in a since-deleted rant earlier that week. “[You] got 27 n**gas tweaking hi-hats just to make some mid [music]. Talk to a real scientist, brother,” he wrote.
Vikernes openly supported Nazism from the 1990s and would be convicted and imprisoned for murdering the guitarist of another band, Mayhem in August 1993 as well as for burning down three churches. Vikernes would serve 21 years before gaining parole in 2009, after which he and his wife moved to France. The couple would be arrested on suspicion of plotting a massacre in 2013 and a year later, Vikernes was found guilty of inciting racial hatred online against Jews and Muslims.
The photos come after Kanye West started the year out by posting an apology to Jewish people in Hebrew on his Instagram page, which was met with skepticism considering that he had been performing songs from Vultures with antisemitic lyrics. ‘There will never be a redemption arc for Kanye West, period. What will he try next? Another apology in Hebrew?’,” said Liora Rez, executive director of the StopAntisemitism organization.
As for Vikernes, when alerted to West’s attire on social media, he responded: “I know very little about him or what he says or does, and I kind of have very little incentive to ‘find out.’ it is better to spend time on something more fruitful.”
