I don't know how I expected Kanye West to react to Jay Pharoah's skit about him that took place at the VMAs recently, but looking back, I guess I should have expected him to do exactly this. After all, he's Kanye West, and when he doesn't like something, you can bet every dollar in your bank account that he's gonna talk about it for at least 10+ minutes. It's what he does! Anyway, according to Us Weekly, Kanye West said that he confronted Jay Pharoah about the VMA skit because, and I quote, "They want to make a joke out of how hard we work."
West divulged this information while he was performing a set during the Made in America festival, which is hosted by his buddy Jay Z. According to the rapper, he was not amused by Pharaoh's impersonation of him at the VMAs, and wasted no time telling him exactly that after the show was over: "It's fine and all funny and everything, but don't distract from our vision. It's not a joke what we do up here. This music that we do is not a joke. What we do culturally is not a joke...I called Jay Pharoah right after the MTV awards. I said, 'I appreciate your show, but let me tell you about my story. Let me tell you about what I went through to get to that position,'" he said. "So we ain't gonna have no black comedians going onstage spoofing the people that's working hard, and helping the next man out."
While I get why West wasn't finding the joke funny, it was still clearly a joke — I don't think Pharoah would attempt to trivialize the struggles of any black entertainer when, just last year, he was one of the only performers on SNL pushing to get a black female comedian hired onto the show because, according to him, "They need to pay attention...And I believe they need to follow up with [making the show diverse] like they said they were going to do last year." The VMA skit was just in good fun.
Here's the skit featuring Pharoah, in case you missed it:
