Ye, whose February has swung from “I’m a Nazi” to “I’m not a Nazi,” says he “doesn’t want to be caught in the middle of all this drama” surrounding Bhad Bhabie’s Alabama Barker diss track “Ms. Whitman.”
As reported earlier, the song samples Ye and Ty Dolla Sign’s Vultures 1 hit “Carnival” featuring Rich the Kid and Playboi Carti. After teasing the track on social media for a while, Bhabie dropped an official video this week. In it, someone pretending to be a drummer wears a t-shirt from Famous Stars & Straps, the brand Alabama’s dad Travis Barker started back in 1999.
A supposed remix clip later appeared online, featuring what was claimed to be a verse from the artist formerly known as Kanye West. But according to Ye’s Instagram Stories update, he wasn’t involved with the track beyond approving the “Carnival” sample.
“Yo, I’m not in the middle of none of this A.I. beef, people throwing my voice on things, the whole ‘Carnival’ sample,” Ye said Tuesday night, shortly after previewing new music with his “Eazy” collaborator The Game. “I just talked to Travis Barker. I would never be in the middle. I don’t even know what’s going on.”
Ye then spoke more broadly about how he handles sample clearances, suggesting he approved this particular request without knowing the full story.
“I just got sent a song and asked if I could clear the sample,” he explained. “Only reason why I clear anything is because so many people try to stop me, they stop clearances. Everything has been very difficult for me so anybody asks me for something, I always clear it. But I’m not cool with being put in the middle of all of this at all. So any verse that be going viral using my voice and all that, it’s like, I didn’t do it.”
Bama later reposted Ye’s comments to her own IG Stories. Check them out in full below.
The A.I. reference is noteworthy since Ye himself has faced criticism from fans about his own use of such technology in his music. In a recent Justin Laboy interview, Ye compared A.I. to Auto-Tune, arguing they’re “in the same family.” His comments mainly focused on how A.I. has made sampling easier through features like stem extraction.
As fans know, Ye and Travis Barker, who’s married to Kourtney Kardashian, have collaborated before. They both appeared on XXXTentacion’s posthumous single “One Minute” back in 2018.
