On Jan. 29, 2024, Ye (formerly Kanye West) was approached by a TMZ reporter who asked him: "People want to know if Bianca has her free will, some people are saying you're controlling."
The "Bianca" referred to is Bianca Censori, Ye's wife, as of December 2022.
Ye snatched the reporter's phone and kept walking, as seen below:
A #TMZ photog asked #KanyeWest a question about #BiancaCensori ... and he ended up confiscating our photog's phone and giving her a lecture. pic.twitter.com/zHbovP53Xt
— TMZ (@TMZ) January 29, 2024
Another view shows Ye interrogating and berating the reporter, whose name is Melanie Miller, for about three minutes. Among the questions he asked was, "Is that your job to go up to every celebrity asking some dumbass shit about they wife?" and "Was that a dumbass, disrespectful question to come ask a grown-ass superhero?" He eventually returned the phone to Miller before offering her a job, saying: "I'll pay you double what they paying you ... now you smiling. Get her contact."
One of the most viral tweets of the altercation was posted by X account @Dexerto. It received more than 2,800,000 views and 20,000 likes, as of this writing.
Kanye West grabs a TMZ reporter's phone after she asked him some questions.
He then gives it back and offers to double her salary to work for him. pic.twitter.com/H9afO8WCF3
— Dexerto (@Dexerto) January 30, 2024
Miller later went on TMZ's podcast to discuss the altercation and posted it on her personal Instagram. "With everything that he’s done, people deserve answers to this kind of stuff,” she said. "He doesn't appreciate women, he doesn't respect women," she said later in the interview.
Another video, filmed by an onlooker (likely one of Ye's employees or friends) and posted by X account @fearedbuck, also went viral with more than 599,800 views and 5,000 likes on X, as of this writing.
(Image via X account @FearedBuck)
The caption claims that Ye destroyed her phone and then offered her a job, which is only half correct. As can be seen at the end of the video, Ye returned Miller's phone, intact.
We've previously reported on other stories related to Ye, including that he tried to rename a city in New York "Ye" and that he was suspended from X for posting an unflattering photo of Elon Musk.