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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more. When I told my friends and my wife that John Safran was coming back on Conversations, they all said to me various versions of, what's he done now? Well, I'll tell you what he's done now. John Safran, Australian gonzo author and documentary maker, has spent a week or so in what he calls a writer's residency in a mansion in Los Angeles.
And not just any mansion. It's a mansion that belongs to Kanye West. Kanye West, one of the biggest-selling, most critically acclaimed hip-hop artists of all time. He's also a major figure in street fashion. He's become so wealthy and powerful, he's got people who can turn his slightest whims into reality. Sort of. At one point, Kanye West was worth something close to $2 billion.
But then he made the transition from celebrity eccentric to seriously out there. John Safran became interested in Kanye West, who now calls himself Yee, when he saw a clip of him on the Alex Jones show, wearing a black eyeless balaclava, denying the Holocaust and speaking in defence of Adolf Hitler as a human being.
Kanye then said that black people like him can't be anti-Semitic because they're actually Jewish. And so John went to LA to ask Kanye, or Yee, what gives? And so he spent a week in one of Kanye's mansions, an abandoned mansion, that John entered uninvited. And John squatted in that weird blue empty house with no running water and a vulture in the roof.
Chapter 2: Why did John Safran decide to squat in Kanye West's mansion?
hoped he would actually run into the man. This was a project that ticked quite a few boxes of John's personal obsessions. Nazis, hip-hop, book writing and snooping. John's new book is called Squat and I enjoyed it enormously. Hello, John. Hey, how are you? I'm well, sir. I know you've always loved hip-hop. You talk about it all the time.
But at what point did you start to take an interest in Yee or Kanye? We're just going to call him Kanye for the purpose of this because it seems, I don't know, less weird, doesn't it? Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
I was obsessed with the early incarnation of hip-hop. So he's like a quarter of a generation after I'd expanded my tastes and I wasn't obsessed with hip-hop as much as I was. Because you're more of a... Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, Run DMC. But I was, like, aware of him, obviously, and a bit like the Beach Boys. If someone said... did you like the Beach Boys? I go, oh, yeah, sure.
And then they'd say, do you know they did that song? I go, oh, my God, that's a brilliant song. But I'm not emotionally invested in the Beach Boys. I didn't grow up or have this thing. It was like the same with Kanye where... I thought, you know, well, I heard his tunes, he's pretty cool or whatever, but I wasn't that emotionally invested up until, yeah, he comes out in support of Adolf Hitler.
As a human being. Yeah, as a human being and starts blaming the Jews for his woes. And so, yeah, then obviously my ears pricked up and I thought this is a real story that needs to be pursued by me. One of the first things I looked into before I... decided to write about this more comprehensively is he named on his Instagram account three bankers, three Jewish bankers from Chase Morgan.
He said, these are the ones who have screwed me over, these Jewish bankers. And I just did a little bit of research and I found out that none of the three Jewish bankers were Jewish. Two of them were Greek Orthodox Christians and the third one was something else. So I was like, okay, this is fun. Why is he projecting Jewishness onto non-Jewish people and neo-Nazis generally don't like
black people as well. So that whole tangle just made it more enticing to me to go and try to follow up on that.
He rechristened himself Ye because it's the second syllable of his name and also because the word Ye is a lot in the King James Bible. Ye shall do this, Ye shall be considered that. And like I say, he went on the Alex Jones show, who's a pretty strange character to begin with. But when you see Kanye West on that, he's got the eyeless balaclava on and gloves.
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Chapter 3: What controversial statements did Kanye West make that sparked interest?
I think if he would have said something similar against trans people or Muslims or whoever. But in the case of Adidas, there was the extra twisting of the knife into them because they're a German company. And if you're a German company, German mainstream brand, you can't have this...
or they felt they can't have this guy talking up Hitler because the founders of Adidas were associated with... They had links with the Nazi party. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think he did get away with being a troublemaker and saying these provocative things for a bit longer than other people just because it was like he's such a good artist and...
He'd also been prodding black Americans at his fashion shows wearing T-shirts that say White Lives Matter and getting his models to wear White Lives Matter. So he got away with that, but I think that's because the white community was going, well, that's a black person talking to black people and we're not going to get involved in that.
But as soon as he started prodding other people, that's when it went too far.
So you went to LA with your then girlfriend, Antoinette. What was the plan at that stage?
It was so loose that the book could have been about the music industry. In fact, like a week before I got on the plane, I was going, is this going to be about black Americans versus Jewish Americans and what Kanye said using that as the kicking off point? Or is it going to be Kanye's blaming the Jews for his music career where he feels like he's been ripped off and...
Even though that's outrageous what he's said, it is true that through the history from Michelangelo to Taylor Swift, you've had artists saying, I've been exploited by my benefactors. And I thought maybe the book was going to be that.
But you could have done that in Melbourne where you live. Why were you going to LA? What did you think you were going there for?
Oh, no, I have to go to LA. I have to leave the house. Yeah, it just would not be acceptable by my standards to do a book on Kanye West where... I'm either in my apartment in Melbourne or even I'm just wandering around Melbourne. I have to get there and bumble around. Were you hoping to find him somehow and talk to him?
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Chapter 4: What was the experience like living in an abandoned mansion?
He's got a lot of ideas that he then abandoned. So maybe you are like, oh, I'm going to build a shelf and then you... start building and then you just, oh, okay, fine. And then you just leave it. So he does that, but he's got all this money and he can be accommodated. And so he set up a school.
It was an uncredited private school in this schoolhouse that was painted matte black in the middle of the woods in this place in Los Angeles called Simi Valley. You don't have to drive far in Los Angeles to be suddenly rural. The mansion I stayed in was in Calabasas. It's also with a forest behind it and everything. So you went to this place, the Donda Academy. How did you get onto the property?
I made my way over a collapsed fence. It was surrounded by, what do you call it?
Cyclone fencing.
Cyclone fencing. That was one and a half times as tall as me. And it had black all over it. So you couldn't see in and you couldn't grip onto it. But I just kept on walking and walking. And then we got to a bit where the fence had collapsed. And so I climbed over that and then, yeah, I got to see the matte black schoolhouse in the middle, in the clearing.
And what was inside the schoolhouse when you got in there? I climbed through the window and then Antoinette, just as I fell in, she's going, the door's open. He could have just gone through the door.
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Chapter 5: How did John Safran prepare for his time in the mansion?
And it was hard to tell whether he'd fully set up a school there and now taken things out or whether he'd just... set up a bit of a school in there and then lost interest and left.
But it was definitely his place because there was a pile of like paintings, finger paintings drawn by kids and their names are written on it and it had like Chicago and North and that's the name of his and Kim Kardashian's kids. And the other reason I knew it was his definitely is because there was all these unopened utility bills Address to Kanye West? Kanye West and the Donda Academy.
And also private mail addressed to Kanye West, which I assume because of the penmanship. It must have been like fans who'd somehow found out this was where he had a school or whatever. But it was like dusty and there was like a little wheel of copper wire here. And then there was a bathroom, but it was grotty because it hadn't been cleaned in a while.
Yeah, the whole place was like dusty, except there was this shiny new bike in one of the big rooms in the schoolhouse. And then next to it was a sheet of cardboard that said, Yee, where are you? Yee, we're looking for you. Please ring this number. And there was a number? Yeah, there was a number. So I rang the number. And who answered? He was this guy. He must have been in his mid-20s maybe.
And I had to talk to him for a couple of minutes because he couldn't understand my Australian accent. He had this story. Oh, he's with you at the moment. And there was just something wrong with the story. But I was excited still because it was like the adventure seems to be starting. So I ended up catching up with him. Where are you meeting this guy? At a diner. Right.
And he'd brought along his friend, which he's claimed was his business partner, and his friend had only one eye and the other eye was sewn over.
So you're meeting this guy who says he's a friend of Kanye West. Yes. He's got his business partner who has one eye sitting next to him. Yeah.
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Chapter 6: What strange discoveries did John make in Kanye's mansion?
And what story did he have to tell?
He fessed up and just said, yeah, like he didn't know Kanye.
Yeah.
He just worked in retail. I think it was in Connecticut or whatever. And he's been obsessed with Kanye West for so long. And he just feels like they're almost like the same person. And he said, God just came to him. And whilst he was working in retail in Connecticut, that he has to come to Los Angeles and find Kanye. Because he was like, not only am I a fan, I feel like
We're the same person almost. I know that doesn't sound like it makes sense, but it made... It made sense. And so he'd come over and he'd gone to the schoolhouse like I had and then he'd squatted in there because he'd quit his job. He needed somewhere to stay. So he decided to squat in the schoolhouse. And that was his bike in the house? Yeah, that was his bike and he'd written the sign and...
And because he was still searching for Kanye. And he was like a big Christian. He kept on quoting scripture. And he said, oh, I was in that schoolhouse for 20 days and 20 nights. But then Kanye's people, he says, came and they threw him out. So that's the first thing that planted in my head, this whole thing of, oh, you can squat it and abandon. The precedent has been set.
I can tell any court in the land, I go, I refer to the precedence of the guy with the bicycle who squatted at the schoolhouse.
So what happened when you brought up Kanye West's anti-Semitic statements with this guy?
He was like, he was a bit, yeah, he didn't like it. And he was sort of going, oh, listen, all he said was, was that you should love everyone. Right. Which is just lame. Just own it, you know what I mean? And what did he think of your Jewishness? Yeah, he wanted me to accept Christ and I really attract people who want to convert me. I don't know what it is about me.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of the vulture in the attic?
You slept in his bed. Yes. Okay. Is this the property? Like famously, he'd had all these strange and rather beautiful timber bubble domes built for homeless people.
Was this the property where he'd built those domes? Yes, yes, yes. That was one of his projects, which he could argue he was trying to follow it through, but then the local council shut it down. He built these domes. I guess they looked like giant beehives. Why domes? Why domes for the homeless? I think one of his things was it reminded him of when he used to play with his Star Wars village toys.
as a kid and they looked like the... Oh, this is like the planet Tatooine, is it? I think so.
In Star Wars, because there were domed houses in that. So he's building like a Tatooine for the homeless.
Yeah, he wanted... It was his kind of idea of how he could help the homeless, which is kind of a nice thing. It's a nice thing, yeah. But his neighbours were not impressed and they said, it's just not the area for this. And like a lot of things, there was just two ways of looking at it, like either...
Kanye's obnoxious and thinks he can just not have to follow the rules that everyone else has to follow and it is a danger, like it's a bush fire area and like one of the neighbours was going, oh, they're at their tools and you can see the sparks going everywhere as they were building these domes and it was like... Yeah, but there's that and that meets the neighbours going, we don't want that type of person around here at all.
Yeah, totally.
And then the other side of it is we either don't want Kanye as a type of person but definitely they don't want homeless people in this real area of Calabasas.
So you got the idea that you might be able to squat in such a place and write your book in there. Yes. What did you think being in that place might do for you?
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