Kanye blames Grammy outburst on ‘voices in my head’

Kanye West knows what led to his latest controversial outburst — not his overwhelming admiration for Beyoncé (though that surely played a part), but the voices in his head.

“You know, I felt like just the whole Grammys, right when that happened, everybody was looking at me and then people started screaming, ‘Kanye! Kanye! Go do it!’” the rapper, 37, told Ryan Seacrest on Wednesday. “OK, that didn’t really happen, these were voices in my head. So the voices in my head told me go and then I just walked up like halfway up the stage.”

As Beck walked up to the stage to accept the album of the year award at Sunday’s Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, Mr. Kim Kardashian bounded toward the stage as if he were about to recreate his infamous 2009 VMA stage-crashing moment with Taylor Swift, before heading back to his seat with a laugh.

While West may have been joking at that point, things took a turn for the shocking when he went on an after-show rant to E! News, in which he criticized the rocker for not showing fellow nominee Beyoncé the respect she deserves.

“Beck needs to respect artistry and he should have given his award to Beyoncé, and at this point, we tired of it,” North West‘s dad said at the time. “We ain’t gonna play with them no more.”

Asked if he had anything against Beck, West explained that his ill will was reserved for the Grammys, not “one of the nicest guys and one of the most respected musicians in the game.”

“You know, what I really wanted to do is just joke around about what had happened before, but I just really didn’t want to take away from Beck’s moment or the time he’s having to talk because you know the Grammys, they play music really quick no matter who you are and everything,” he explained on the “On Air with Ryan Seacrest” radio show. “So I didn’t want anything to take away from his screen time. So I just walked back down because you know, it was kind of a joke like the Grammys themselves.”

As is bound to happen when talking about one of the rapper’s outbursts, the conversation eventually touched on Swift, whom West posed for a picture with at Sunday’s ceremony.

“Yeah, she wants to get in the studio and we’re definitely going to go in,” he revealed. “Any artist with an amazing point of view, perspective, fan base, I’m down to get in the studio and work. I don’t discriminate, I don’t have an elitism of music because of like how many Grammys or you know, the amount of ratings you get on an album.”