Kanye West Confronted In TMZ Newsroom After Calling Slavery a "Choice"

Kanye stopped by the TMZ office today to play some more Kanye games.

Some of the fun didn't sit will with TMZ staffer Van Lathan, who issued a tense challenge to Kanye after 'Ye said focusing on the legacy of slavery was a "choice."

“When you hear about slavery for 400 years … that sounds like a choice,” Kanye said. “Like, you was there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all? It’s like we’re mentally in prison. I like the word prison, because slavery goes too direct to the idea of blacks. It’s like slavery, Holocaust, Holocaust, Jews. Slavery is blacks. So prison is something that unites us as one race … the human race."

After that Kanye mentioned something about free thought and Lathan stood up and went in.

“I actually don’t think you’re thinking anything,” Lathan said. “I think what you’re doing right now is actually the absence of thought.”

“Kanye, you’re entitled to your opinion, you’re entitled to believe whatever you want, but there is fact and real life consequence behind everything that you just said,” Lathan continued. “While you are making music and being an artist, and living the life that you’ve earned by being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives.”

“We have to deal with the marginalization that has come from 400 years of slavery that you said, for our people, was a choice,” he added. “Frankly, I’m disappointed, I’m appalled, and brother, I am unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something, to me, that’s not real.”

The video cuts off when Kanye approaches Lathan and apologizes for hurting him. Apparently, that lead to a face-to-face at Lathan's desk which TMZ hasn't released yet.