Hip-Hop Lives Here
Hip-Hop Lives Here
Kanye West is one of the most polarizing celebrities of the 21st century. He's also one of the most fascinating. He has been through so many artistic iterations and controversies that it can difficult to keep track. Fortunately, a new documentary titled In Whose Name? will do it for us. The documentary follows teenager Nico Ballesteros as he accompanies Kanye West on his various business ventures.
Ballesteros directed the documentary, which is produced by the production companies Goodfellas and Utopia. The press release for In Whose Name? promises to explore "overlapping influences of corporate exploitation, racial complexities and psychological struggles inherent in the American dream." It's a lot to deliver upon, but Kanye West's response to the doc leads us to believe it delivered. Ballesteros posted a screenshot of a text exchange with West after the rapper watched the final cut. His response was, in the classic Ye sense, dramatic. "The doc was deep," he asserted. "It was like being dead and looking back on my life."
Ballesteros took the weighty statement to heart. "This is the most profound text message I have ever received," the director wrote back. "I love you brother." Kanye West has seemingly played a much bigger role in the making of In Whose Name? than the previous documentary about him. Netflix released a three part saga titled Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye West Trilogy in 2022. The series was released without West getting a chance to see the final cut, which he revealed in a since-deleted IG post. Clarence 'Coodie' Simmons and Chike Ozah, the Jeen-Yus creators, told Digital Spy that they refused for fear of compromising their artistic vision.
"It's not an autobiography of Kanye, you know," Ozah stated. "It's not a type of documentary where it would serve the doc best for him to have ultimate control." Kanye West attended the Jeen-Yus premiere, but it's clear from his text exchange with Ballesteros that he's a much bigger fan of the upcoming doc, In Whose Name? The documentary is reported to have been shot over the last six years, and the budget is alleged to have been $1 billion. We can't wait to see what West himself saw when the doc is released.
Share
Advertisement
Kim Porter may have passed in 2018, but she has been a major talking point in 2018. The model had four children with Diddy, who has become one of the most reviled figures in popular culture. Numerous claims have been made on behalf of Porter, with most revolving around the notion of a hidden memoir. There's been widespread debate as to whether the model kept a diary of her experiences with Diddy, or whether this has merely been a way of drumming up controversy for various people to profit. Kim Porter's friend, Lawanda Lane, asserts that it is the latter.
Lawanda Lane is the caregiver of Kim Porter and Diddy's twin daughters. She's also, according to TMZ, Porter's best friend during the last three decades of Porter's life. If anybody has insight into the model's perspective, it would be Lane. And she is using said perspective to shut down the claims made by a new witness in the Diddy case. Lane told the outlet that she was with Porter nearly every day, and never saw the late model write in a diary. She also called out the aforementioned Diddy witness, Courtney Burgess, for claiming to have found a manuscript of a memoir.
For one, Lane posits, there is no memoir, and for another, she claims to have been tasked with going through Kim Porter's belongings after her death. If there was a memoir, as Burgess states, that Lane told TMZ that she would have been the one to find it. Burgess previously told the outlet that he had footage of Diddy's so-called "freak off" parties, as well as Porter's manuscript. Burgess and his lawyer voiced a to publish said manuscript as soon as possible.
This is not the first time a Kim Porter memoir has been pitched to the public. In September, the book Kim's Lost Words was released through Amazon. The book was dismissed outright by the Combs family as inauthentic. The author, Chris Todd, later told Rolling Stone that he was unsure if the claims made in the purported memoir were even true. "I don’t know," he explained. But it’s real enough to me... Maybe 80% is." If we are to believe Lawanda Lane, then the new claims of a Kim Porter memoir will be similarly unreliable.
Share
Advertisement
