Kanye West defends Michael Jackson and says documentaries shouldn’t ‘tear down our heroes’

West also said that he, like Jackson before him, has been treated poorly by the media

Kanye West has defended Michael Jackson, arguing that companies and documentaries should not be allowed to “tear down our heroes”.

West also compared his treatment in the media to that of Jackson, referencing the “Wacko Jacko” nickname given to Jackson amid a number of stories about his apparent eccentricity in the late 1980s and 1990s.

During a conversation with Pharrell Williams for i-D Magazine, West said both Williams and Jackson had brought new facets of black culture to the mainstream.

“It felt like you really tore down the walls and the doors much like Michael Jackson did a generation before,” West said. “In a way, he’s very similar to Michael Jackson, in the ways where Michael Jackson was doing covert, super gangsta stuff, like he’d just pop the needles off.

“He kissed Elvis Presley’s daughter on MTV. Black culture used to be... we used to be fronting all night, but Michael was doing stuff that was different to what we were programmed to understand as being what we should do.”

West argued that, as a result, more respect should be granted to Jackson. He also appeared to condemn the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland, which saw two men accuse Jackson of molesting them as children.

“We should have something that says we can’t allow any company to tear down our heroes,” West said. “Not on [Instagram gossip platform] The Shade Room, not on social media and especially not in documentaries. I’m like every time the media isn’t happy with me it’s like, ‘Here they go. They’re gonna come and Wacko Jacko me.’ Which in some ways, they’ve tried to do.”

Last week (5 June), it was reported that West had set up a college fund to cover the tuition fees of George Floyd’s six-year-old daughter, Gianna.

He has also donated at least $2m (£1.58m) to charities associated with Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery – all black Americans killed in recent months and whose deaths have sparked a wave of international protest against systemic racism and police brutality.