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Ahead of the release of “Jesus Is King,” Kanye West said in a recent interview that he asked anyone working with him on his album to not have premarital sex.
- “There were times where I was asking people not to have premarital sex while they were working on the album,” West said during an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s Beats 1 Radio, according to Genius. “There’s times where I went to people that were working on other projects and said ‘Can you just work and focus on this?’ I thought if we could all focus and fast… Families who pray together stay together.”
West said his addiction to sex prompted his infamous feud with Taylor Swift, too, when he stole the microphone from her and said Beyonce had the best album of all time.
- “That was such a script out of a rock star’s life,” he said. “My mom had passed a year before. And I said some people drown themselves in drugs, and I drown myself in my addiction: sex.”
West said he has a new relationship with God, which inspired him to make sure his collaborators had shared values, according to XXL Magazine.
- “Now that I’m in service to Christ, my job is to spread the gospel, to let people know what Jesus has done for me. I’ve spread a lot of things,” he said in the interview. “There was a time I was letting you know what high fashion had done for me, I was letting you know what the Hennessey had done for me, but now I’m letting you know what Jesus has done for me, and in that I’m no longer a slave, I’m a son now, a son of God. I’m free.
The most space that I had to think is when I went to the hospital. One of the things that happened when I went to the hospital is I started reading the Bible and I started writing and copying out Bible verses and a person came to my house that wasn’t a Christian and told me come over, and 30 minutes later I was in handcuffs headed to the hospital. Now this person very well may have saved my life because when you’re in an episode you could jump off the side of a balcony you can stab your eye out you can do a lot of things when you’re ramped up like that, but one of the things that people do now is they try to discriminate against my mind and my thoughts because of that moment.”
The interview aired Thursday, one day before West plans to drop his new “Jesus Is King” album.
West has been promoting his new-found Christian beliefs in lead-up to the new album. Earlier this month, he admitted that he converted to Christianity while speaking at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium in Washington, D.C.
“I want to let you know that I am not here for your entertainment this afternoon,” West told the crowd, according to Complex. “We are here to spread the gospel.”
“Excuse me if I mispronounce anything,” he added. “I am a recent convert. It means I recently got saved within this year.”
West’s pastor, Adam Tyson, said in a recent interview with the Pure Flix Podcast that West disapproves of people swearing.
“If somebody cusses in his presence, I’ve heard him say a couple of times, ‘Hey, man, you can’t cuss when you’re with me. I’m a born-again Christian,’” Tyson said on the Pure Flix Podcast. ”Who’s gonna say that if they’re not meaning that they want Christ to be exalted in all that they do? (He told me), ‘From now on, all I want to do is serve Christ. I want every song that I sang, to have part of my testimony, to include the gospel, and to include the element of worship to our great God. That’s what I want to do.’”
“Jesus is King” is expected to drop Friday at midnight.