February 12, 2022
For Kanye West, the overall theme of his newly coined Black Future Month is Black ownership.
On Friday (February 11), Kanye West, alongside DaBaby and directors Clarence ‘Coodie’ Simmons and Chike Ozah, took the stage at the screening of the Netflix documentary jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy and spoke about his ambitions for the legacy of the film and Black Future Month and the importance of the Black community to remain connected.
“When you have people next to you that believe in you, and a community, and that the community sticks together, that’s the way that we can protect each other,” he said in an Instagram video posted by designer Tracey Mills. “Out here in Hollywood a lot of times, I got my man DaBaby right here, people try to cancel us and we all run away from each other… we not talking to each other, not communicating, and that’s why on Black Future Month we stood up and said, ‘We got to stand next to each other and we ain’t gonna let each other go when someone brings up one mistake that someone did.’”
In trademark fashion, Ye also casually dropped a bombshell during his speech revealing he declined a $100 million bag for exclusive streaming rights for his Billboard Chart-topping DONDA album and further driving home his intention to inspire and promote Black ownership.
“When y’all see me doing certain things that y’all wouldn’t expect us to do, and y’all want me to step back and be a house n-gga, that’s not my position,” Kanye West said. “My position is to make what y’all might think are mistakes in public, so I can show you that that ain’t no red line, that ain’t no real wall. That’s just a smokescreen, and it’s for us to take this. We on labels we don’t own, play for basketball teams we don’t own. The time is now. I got offered $100 million by Larry Jackson to put DONDA on Apple, but I ain’t never got a meeting with Tim Cook. So it ain’t about the money, it’s about our power and out respect collectively. So I be saying stuff that people try to remind me in Black History Month that people got killed for. But this is Black Future Month.”