Kanye West marks 1-year anniversary of Sunday Service: 'This thing was an alternative to pornography'
Kanye West celebrated the first anniversary of his Sunday Service shows at Skid Row in Los Angeles. The 42-year-old "Christian innovator" visited the Union Rescue Mission in downtown with his choir and put on a show before offering his version of a sermon and reflecting on the past year, L.A.'s homelessness epidemic and the rapper T.I.
"I ain’t telling nobody what to do, I’m expressing what I’ve been through. 'Cause you know people love to take a soundbite and say, 'This was not exactly devil-approved by the internet,'" West begins in a video acquired by TMZ. "You can be speaking on something that's God-approved."
Kim Kardashian's husband then defended T.I., seemingly over "hymengate."
"Y’all know what I’m talking about," West continued. "They tryna play T.I., but he’s talking about something that’s God-approved. It's 30 states that still got the death penalty. Thou shall not kill, but, we be cool with that."
Although it's not necessarily clear what West is referring to, T.I. made headlines in November when he said on a podcast how he used to accompany his daughter Deyjah, now 18, to the gynecologist when she was a teen to ensure she was a virgin. T.I. defended the controversial revelation on Red Table Talk and made a comment similar to West's, explaining how his soundbites were "sensationalized."
West went on to talk about how Sunday Service "saved" his life.
"So today marks one year of Sunday Service ... I definitely saw a strong, compelling vision with the homeless problem, and I know that we can find a solution, worldwide solution," he explained. "This is what we need to be talking about, are these solutions. A lot of times people say, 'Thank you 'Ye for Sunday Service' and I'm saying, 'Thank God.' This thing saved my life. This thing was an alternative to opioids. This thing was an alternative to pornography."
The Jesus is King creator has spoken out before about how finding God helped him with his addictions.
"I think when people have been addicted to something ... with God, I've been able to beat things that had full control of me," he told Zane Lowe in October. "Some people drown themselves in drugs, and I drowned myself in my addiction."
"Which was what?" Lowe asked.
"Sex," West replied. He added, "Playboy was my gateway into full-on pornography addiction. My dad had a Playboy left out at age 5, and it’s affected almost every choice I made for the rest of my life, from age 5 to now, having to kick the habit."
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