One of Kanye West’s former backup dancers has praised the famed artist as a hero in a recent video. The Australian woman recounted her experience after she performed as a ballerina at Australia’s Splendour in the Grass in 2011.
According to HiphopDX, she said, “Of all the crazy headlines that always go up about Mr. Kanye West, I will always have a personal soft spot for him. I genuinely think he’s a good dude and that’s because of a personal experience I had with him.
“I used to be a background dancer for Mr. Kanye West many, many years ago. It was when he came to Australia for the Splendour in the Grass show. And he came to town and he hired like 20 Australian girls to be his ballerinas.
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“Now, one night after the show, we went back to his penthouse – all of us dancers and his crew – and we went for the after party. A bunch of us were out on the veranda, so there was like, Kanye, the two ballerinas that he traveled with – the female ballerinas – and then he had like a bit of a posse that came around and traveled with him. Kanye was inside on his laptop, I don’t know, doing something and a bunch of us were out on the veranda like dancing and drinking and all that sort of stuff.”
She continued: “Now we were all sitting around and a bunch of the guys that were like Kanye’s little posse were like, standing around and they were like, dancing and twerking and they’re like, ‘Blah, blah, join in! Join in!’ And I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m okay. I’m just sitting here just relaxing, just chilling.’
“And out of all the girls I think I was probably the thickest, right? So I don’t know, I’m generalizing here, but I think that the Americans liked thick girls and they were honing in on me like, ‘Come on, dance! Twerk! Come on!’ And they were full on shaking their bum like, trying to get me to do what they wanted to do.”
She clarified that she didn’t want to dance, even though another girl was dancing with one of the guys. It was awkward for her, she recalled, and there was a lot of pressure. She continued, saying she started to feel uncomfortable because, even though she kept telling them no, they insisted she dance as well. She remembered that the men in question appeared menacing.
“Then, out of nowhere, Kanye literally like bursts through them and was like, ‘Bro she said no!’ And I was like whoa! And he was like, ‘She said no, so stop asking her to do it alright?’ And they were like, ‘Okay, sorry bro!’ and they like backed up.
“And he came and sat next to me and he was like, ‘Look, if you don’t wanna do it, that’s fine. They’re just being dicks. You don’t to do anything – just have fun chilling!’ And I was like, oh my God! In that moment I felt really, really unsafe – like there was a bunch of guys asking me to do something that I didn’t wanna do and Kanye told him to back off!”
In conclusion, she said, “So of all the things that I see about him, at the crux of it all, I think he’s a good dude. Maybe he does some crazy shit, but I will always have a soft spot for you, Ye.”
In October, West’s Twitter and Instagram accounts were frozen for anti-Semitic material he posted. Adidas, his brand partner, also severed ties with him. In that same month of October, the rapper was criticized for the “White Lives Matter” shirts he debuted at his Yeezy Season 9 fashion show.
