When his deteriorating mental state was bringing their marriage to a close, Kim Kardashian issued a gracious statement. She asked fans to show ‘compassion and empathy’ to Kanye West, who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, describing him as ‘a brilliant but complicated person’.
In the years since then, Kanye’s behaviour – ranting about being a Nazi on X and parading his near-naked, disturbingly compliant, second wife Bianca Censori at public events – must have tried Kim’s patience many times, but she has mostly kept quiet in order to protect their children. Now, however, the rapper has stepped over the line.
Kanye, 47, dealt his lowest blow yet last weekend, when he recorded their 11-year-old daughter North rapping on a new track with the alleged sex trafficker Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs.
Kim was horrified – so much so that she may be considering a renewed custody battle.
The reality star, who has more than 350 million Instagram followers, would certainly have the backing of her many fans and close associates, who have urged her to rip up the agreement surrounding the four children she shares with Kanye – North and her younger siblings Saint, nine, Chicago, seven, and Psalm, five.
Kim, 44, might even consider representing herself: she decided to train as a lawyer in 2019, in memory of her late father, the renowned attorney Robert Kardashian.
She passed California’s baby bar examination (for first year students) in 2021 and is still studying law.
Kim is certainly very upset. A source tells the Mail: ‘Kim is disgusted her daughter appears on Kanye’s new song that also features Diddy. This is disastrous. To be linked in any way with Diddy is both heartbreaking and unforgivable.’
Kanye West, left, and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs released their track at the weekend
The song, entitled Lonely Roads Still Lead To Sunshine, opens with a conversation between Kanye and Diddy. North can then be heard rapping: ‘When you see me shining, then you see the light’. Diddy’s son Christian also appears on the track.
Shortly before the song was released at the weekend, Kanye posted on X, then deleted, a series of screen grabs allegedly showing a vicious text exchange between himself and Kim in which he threatened to go ‘to war’ with her.
The supposed conversation suggests Kim holds the copyright to North’s name and was using it to try to prevent the 11-year-old from being included on a track with Diddy – provoking a furious reaction from Kanye.
In the grabs, Kanye texts Kim, ‘I’m never speaking with you again,’ along with a snippet of what appears to be a legal document, including the phrase, ‘participation in this project,’ presumably in reference to the new song.
Kim allegedly shoots back, ‘I asked u at the time if I can trademark her name,’ alleging, ‘You said yes,’ and adding, ‘When she’s 18 it goes to her.’
The grabs then show her evidently urging Kanye to ‘stop’, added: ‘I sent paperwork over so she wouldn’t be in the Diddy song to protect her.’
And Kim allegedly continued: ‘One person has to trademark! We agreed when they were born, I would get all of our kids’ names and trademarks. So no one else would take them.’ (Celebrities in the US frequently trademark their children’s names so no one can exploit them).
Kayne appears unmoved by his ex-wife’s pleas. He fired back: ‘Amend it or I’m going to war. And neither of us will recover from the public fallout.’ He then darkly declared: ‘You’re going to have to kill me.’
Kim Kardashian with daughter North, 11, who is heard rapping on the new track
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A move on Kim’s part to take full custody of the children would be understandable then. But it presents her with an unwelcome dilemma. A friend of the billionaire businesswoman told the Mail it is an option they believe she will never pursue.
‘Kim will never go for full custody. Why? Because Kanye never had an NDA [non disclosure agreement] with Kim.
‘He was her husband. No one knows Kim and her family better than Kanye and she worries about what he could make public from their private lives.’
Kim and Kayne married in a lavish ceremony in Florence, Italy, in 2014. It’s impossible to know what secrets they shared during the years they spent together.
They separated after Kanye – who announced he wanted to run for US president around the same time – accused Kim’s mother Kris of trying to have him locked up.
Kim said later that ‘I tried everything humanly possible to make a situation work’. The marriage was formally ended by divorce in 2022.
Kim has been extremely forgiving when it comes to co-parenting with Kanye ever since, despite his increasingly erratic behaviour, but in the past few months things have definitely been going down hill.
Kanye’s outrageous acts reached a new nadir earlier this year when he arrived at the Grammy Awards with Ms Censori and ordered the stepmother of his four children to strip in front of the world’s cameras.
This was too much even for the often scantily-clad Kim, who is said to have ordered privately that Bianca never dress (or undress) like that around her children.
Days later, Kanye promoted a swastika T-shirt on his Yeezy website and declared he was a ‘Nazi’ as he praised Adolf Hitler.
In a rare intervention, Kim stopped her children attending an event organised by their father, where he’d encouraged participants to wear the swastika shirts he called his ‘greatest art’.
Despite all this, Kim has declared it important that the children spend time with their father, albeit with trusted nannies accompanying them.
But now the arrangement is becoming strained – on both sides. Indeed, some fear North is becoming a ‘pawn’ in a ‘tit for tat’ battle between her parents.
Despite protests from Kanye, for example, the children increasingly feature on Kim’s reality TV series, while North is often paraded on her mum’s TikTok account, which has ten million followers.
Kanye recently got his own back by hauling North on stage with him at a concert in South Korea.
A source fighting his corner said: ‘Kanye doesn’t care what Kim has to say because North is his daughter too and they share joint custody.
‘He is proud of North for following her dreams to become a rap artist. North chooses her dad over Kim and still wants to live with him but he doesn’t have a solid foundation yet.’
On multiple occasions an exasperated Kim has said how alike her daughter and Kanye are, even describing her as his ‘twin’.
But now, we’re told, Kanye’s decision to feature North on his new track with Diddy risks ‘driving a wedge’ between Kim and her daughter.
A source told the Mail: ‘Kim has never wanted to stop her children seeing their father.
‘She thinks it is important that he is in their lives, as she was close to her own father before he died when she was just 23.
‘But Kim is fearful that if she goes into full-blown war with Kanye and reopens the custody issue, he will make her life a living hell and weaponise the children against her.’
In the divorce settlement in 2022, the rapper was awarded shared joint custody of their children with ‘equal access’ and was ordered to pay £154,000 per month to his ex-wife in child support.
It was these equal access rights that sparked the latest legal spat. After learning about the track with Diddy, who recorded his part from his prison cell, sources claim Kim sent cease-and-desist letters demanding her ex-husband stop its release.
An emergency mediation hearing took place on Friday last week, where her divorce lawyer Laura Wasser and his lawyer Patrick DeCarolis reached an agreement that their young daughter would not appear on any version of the song’s release.
But on Saturday, Kanye posted the new song on X. The track includes Diddy’s voice thanking Kanye for his support. He says no one else has reached out to him while he remains in prison.
The full prison call with Diddy has since been leaked, showing the extent of Kanye’s friendship with the alleged sexual predator which dates back decades.
Diddy advised Kanye to ‘get behind the mic’ and ‘get back to smiling’ in the recorded phone call. ‘When I get out there, man, I want to see you f****g tear down the stadiums. I need to see you back on that stage, f*****g actually rapping and f*****g performing and everything. I be dreaming of that s**t,’ Diddy told Kanye.
Diddy also seems to encourage Kanye’s paranoia, telling him: ‘We gonna have years and decades to fight these motherf*****s’ before warning Kanye to ‘be careful’, adding: ‘They definitely trying to end us.’ Kanye then says he ‘looks up to’ the relationship Diddy has with his children.
The Harlem-born hip-hop star fathered son Christian, 26, and twin daughters Jessie and D’Lila Combs, 17, with former wife, actress Kim Porter. He also has three more children – son Justin Combs, 30, daughter Chance Combs, 18, and daughter Love Sean Combs, two – with three different mothers.
The Kardashian family used to be on friendly terms with the disgraced rapper. In an old episode of the family’s hit series Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Kim’s sister Khloe recalled crossing paths with a young Justin Bieber at one of Diddy’s star-studded bashes, where she revealed that ‘half of the guests were naked’.
Kanye has since done a lot of ranting about the ‘Kardashian mob’ in a series of tirades on social media.
He once called Kim’s mother Kris Jenner ‘Kris Jong Un’ (comparing her to the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un) and complained that getting visitation rights to see his four children was like being ‘in jail’.
He has claimed that his ‘rights’ have been taken away by the Kardashian family, adding in capital letters: ‘I don’t want to just ‘see’ my kids. I need to raise them.
‘I need to have a say so of where they go to school, and who their friends are, and whose houses they sleep over, whether my daughters wear lipstick and perfume.’
Yesterday afternoon, Kanye returned to social media in a fresh rant, asserting that ‘the man has the final say over his kids’.
It’s no surprise to hear that he has stopped taking his medication. He now claims he was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder, instead of autism.
‘I haven’t taken the medication since I found out it wasn’t bipolar, that it wasn’t the right diagnosis,’ he said recently.
‘It’s finding stuff that doesn’t block the creativity, obviously that’s what I bring to the world. It’s worth the ramp-up, as long as y’all get the creativity.’
If Kanye’s turbulent past is any indication of how things are going to play out, then the Kardashian clan are no doubt braced for things to get a whole lot messier.