SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Ye, the artist once known as Kanye West, is apologizing for his behavior, and no, not for the first time. He recently took out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal, and he said he regrets and is deeply mortified by his antisemitic behavior. He said, quote, "I lost touch with reality," and he attributed that to bipolar disorder, a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings and in some cases can be associated with psychotic breaks. The music journalist Kiana Fitzgerald has been open about her own experience with bipolar disorder, which is one reason why she has paid close attention to all of this, and she is with us today. Welcome to the program.
KIANA FITZGERALD: Thank you for having me.
DETROW: So you wrote an open letter to Ye for the site Consequence. Let me ask directly, what was your reaction when you first saw this ad?
FITZGERALD: Surprise - I wasn't expecting him to apologize for anything because he has taken back apologies in the past. So I was just kind of like, this is interesting. It made me feel, you know, optimistic because I live with bipolar type I, as this conversation is about. So it's easy for me to see the inner workings of what he's been through, and it makes me want to root for him. But ultimately, there's so much damage that is left in his wake.
DETROW: Yeah. And I want to talk about the timing of this. I want to talk about your optimism and skepticism in a moment. First, let me read part of what Ye wrote. He wrote, (reading) the scariest thing about this disorder is how persuasive it is when it tells you, you don't need help. It makes you blind but convinced you have insight. You feel powerful, certain and unstoppable.
Does that description ring true to your own experience?
FITZGERALD: Absolutely. I'm someone that had five, 5 1/2-ish episodes that have landed me in hospitals since 2016, and I have experienced the entire gamut of symptoms with bipolar type I. I've been psychotic, and I have experienced, you know, mania in the most intense and immense sense of feeling like you're surrounded by love and kindness and all of these wonderful qualities. But it's not coming out of you in that way. You're coming out as irritable. You're coming out as uninformed. So there are so many experiences within mania that seem to be one way when you're within it, but looking from the outside, it looks a completely different way.
DETROW: What did you make of his direct appeal to the Black community in this open letter, where he writes, it's unquestionably the foundation of who I am. I'm so sorry to have let you down. I love us.
FITZGERALD: Yeah. I mean, it's appreciated, you know? But ultimately, I personally can't speak on behalf of the whole Black community. I don't think anyone can, including him. But we all want him back, you know? We want - we miss the old Kanye, you know? Like, everybody, of course, would love to be able to listen to his music again without feeling some type of way. Do I think that the community is ready to come back around? I don't know. I know I'm seeing a lot of conversation just in my own spheres on social media, and I'm seeing people say, no, thank you. But that doesn't mean that that's the only thing that's happening in this conversation.
DETROW: You wrote, and you noted with a little bit of skepticism, that the last few attempts to apologize have tended to come right around the time that new albums came out. Given that, what type of action would you want to see in the coming months to make you think, OK, maybe this is sincere or more sincere than I thought?
FITZGERALD: I would want to see Ye engage in conversations with mental health professionals in public spaces. I would want to see him engage in conversations with other people who live with mental health conditions, such as bipolar, especially bipolar type I. I've been writing about Kanye and his mental health since 2018, when he revealed his diagnosis initially. And I have said multiple times he could change the way that we talk about mental health and mental illness. So that's what I want him to do. I want him to actually start the conversation, continue the conversation, and then make benefits of the conversation after he's done talking.
DETROW: That is Kiana Fitzgerald. Her commentary is on the site Consequence. Thank you so much.
FITZGERALD: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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