Topline
Musician Kanye West on Monday blamed a decades-old brain injury for his bipolar diagnosis and a series of manic episodes in which he lashed out at Jewish people, praised Hitler and sold swastika T-shirts over a yearslong period that largely derailed his career.
Kanye West and Bianca Censori attend the 67th Annual GRAMMY Awards on Feb. 2, 2025 in Los Angeles.
Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Key Facts
West, who changed his name to Ye, took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal Monday morning to address his years of antisemitism and asked for “patience and understanding,” claiming to be ”committed to accountability, treatment, and meaningful change.”
West, who Forbes once rated a billionaire before a series of antisemitic outbursts, said he suffered a frontal-lobe brain injury after a car crash 25 years ago that “caused serious damage to my mental health and led to my bipolar type-1 diagnosis.”
He said the disorder caused manic episodes in which he “said and did things I deeply regret,” including having “gravitated toward the most destructive symbol I could find, the swastika.”
He specifically addressed what he called a “four-month long manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behavior that destroyed my life” in early 2025, in which he posted dozens of antisemitic messages online and sold swastika T-shirts on his fashion brand’s website.
He said he hit “rock bottom” months ago and has found comfort on Reddit forums, where he’s learned “it’s not just me who ruins their entire life once a year despite taking meds every day.”
West said he is working to “find my new baseline and new center through an effective regime of medication, therapy, exercise and clean living.”
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Crucial Quote
“I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people,” West wrote.
Key Background
West’s widely condemned antisemitic outbursts began in earnest in October 2022, when a now-infamous conversation between West and Tucker Carlson was leaked. The leak proved Fox News had edited certain comments out of a broadcast that saw West claim the body-positive movement is a “genocide of the Black race” and that he was pressured into staying quiet about his support of Donald Trump ahead of the 2016 election. In 2023, he wore a “White Lives Matter” shirt—a slogan associated with a neo-Nazi group—to his Yeezy fashion show in Paris and followed up the appearance with a series of bizarre interviews and social media posts that led to him being restricted on Instagram and briefly suspended from Twitter. CNN then reported that West wanted to name his 2018 album after Adolf Hitler and several anonymous sources told reporters he had an “obsession” with the Nazi leader. In December of 2023, he praised Hitler during an appearance on Infowars. He was then dropped from a majority of his business partnerships and he disappeared from the public eye for months. In 2024, he was sued by a former employee of his private Christian school Donda Academy who claimed he mistreated Black employees and praised Adolf Hitler in front of students. In February 2025, he said he’d been newly diagnosed with autism and days later started posting bizarre comments on X—including that he was “NEVER APOLOGIZING FOR MY JEWISH COMMENTS” and “IM A NAZI.” He ran a Super Bowl ad in the Los Angeles area last year directing people to yeezy.com, his fashion brand’s website, where a $20 plain white T-shirt with a black swastika printed on the front was the only item available for sale. Shopify later removed the website for violation of terms. In June, he released a song called “Heil Hitler” that was banned on most streaming platforms. The song led to his Australian visa being revoked.
Forbes Valuation
West was named a billionaire by Forbes in April of 2020. He lost the status in October of 2022 when his Adidas deal, estimated to account for $1.5 billion of his net worth, fell through. Without Adidas, Forbes estimated in 2022 that West is worth $400 million thanks to his real estate, value of his music catalog, stake in ex-wife (and billionaire) Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand, Skims, and other assets.
Kanye West’s Wall Street Journal Letter
Titled, “To Those I’ve Hurt,” the letter explains that, “Twenty-five years ago, I was in a car accident that broke my jaw and caused injury to the right frontal lobe of my brain,” and the “deeper injury, the one inside my skull, went unnoticed.” He writes that with the injury, which led to a bipolar diagnosis, he “lost touch with reality,” and “Looking back, I became detached from my true self.” He continues: “I regret and am deeply mortified by my actions in that state, and am committed to accountability, treatment, and meaningful change. It does not excuse what I did, though. I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people.” He finishes by saying, “I’m not asking for sympathy, or a free pass, though I aspire to earn your forgiveness. I write today simply to ask for your patience and understanding as I find my way home.”
Read the entire letter here.