“It sucks that sometimes people can take advantage of a moment”

Chance the Rapper is finally breaking his silence after being on the receiving end of a Kanye West outburst. Footage of the private moment went viral last year.

Two years ago, while working on his album Donda, West invited several of his friends and collaborators to his Wyoming compound. Among those who showed up were Dame Dash, co-founder of Chance and Roc-A-Fella Records. The music executive and West share a close relationship that gave Dash access to West’s creative process for a documentary about the album.

One of the moments Dash was able to capture was West in the studio exploding on Chance. “Sit down and listen to the album or go,” West yells at Chance in the clip, which went online. Fan reactions to the footage showed little to no sympathy for the “Heartless” rapper. Online, people wrote: “You are dealing with a crazy person who has a lot of wealth and power” and “Whatever it was the coincidence is real as they come , his boy jumped on him due to illness and he still had his back instead of kicking.”

But now Chance is adding perspective that may have been missing when the clip was leaked. “It’s a clip of a bigger moment like no one would ever get the full story of what’s going on,” he explained while appearing on radio show The Morning Hustle. “And yes, people take it and walk around with it because I’ve seen some people put fake subtitles on the video to make it look like he’s talking about my music or something. But honestly, that’s real life. I have real friends and they have real problems.”

In an edited version of the outbreak, Dash narrates the scene by explaining that Chance “was there to be a friend” for West. Since publicly announcing that he has bipolar disorder, West has had a series of manic episodes in which he would punch those closest to him and has been evaluated for his behavior.

“I came out to check on my boyfriend. I and many other people still love Ye. But he’s human, he’s not perfect,” Chance continued. “He was obviously going through it at the time… It certainly made me reevaluate my friendship with him. I had never been this close to him going through an episode,” he added.

Watching the passionate moment become a joke and often mocked on social media, Chance said it’s unfortunate that people have spun a story about the rappers being at odds with each other. “It sucks that sometimes people can take advantage of a moment that’s a real moment,” he said.