Kanye pal says mom’s death at root of meltdown

Kanye West’s close friend Fonzworth Bentley offered a play-by-play of events that may have caused the rapper to suffer a meltdown last month.

“He never mourned his mother, and that’s at the root of this, and you don’t have to be a clinical psychologist to figure that out. That is at the core of this. I think a lot of these things are coming up and coming out now.”

Kanye’s mom, Donda, died suddenly after complications from plastic surgery in 2007, and just before canceling his tour and his hospitalization, the rapper mourned the ninth anniversary of her death.

Bentley continued, “You have to look at it from his perspective. You put out the most amazing album. You’re breaking records on merch . . . So, what happens is . . . you take that, and then your fashion show just demolishes and fails . . . We all know more than anything that he wants to be successful in fashion, so when editors and everything are beating him up . . . That happens and then you’re onstage, your wife gets robbed — and it’s not like that didn’t happen — that happened . . . It’s not OK. That’s not something to question. That really happened,” Bentley told the Tequila Avión podcast “Rich Friend: The Elevated Conversation.”

Bentley added that West called everyone together backstage at his Sacramento, Calif., show before he canceled the rest of his tour.

“He went through everybody and was like, ‘I’m sorry this didn’t happen for you like this, but y’all need to know how important y’all are, and everybody comes and helps me, but we need to be helping each other’ . . . But at the same time I believe in my heart it was a call for help,” he said.

Bentley also confirmed that West is home now, and his wife, Kim Kardashian, is by his side.

Kanye is the king of rants: