Kanye West claims he originally conceived of the idea for Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 historical revamp tribute to Spaghetti Westerns, Django Unchained. During Ye’s recent contentious chat with British talker Piers Morgan on Piers Morgan Uncensored, the MC/entrepreneur claimed that writer/director Tarantino and star Jamie Foxx cribbed the idea for the film from him based on a pitch he made while brainstorming for the 2005 “Gold Digger” video, which starred Foxx.
“Tarantino can write a movie about slavery, where actually — him and Jamie [Foxx] — they got the idea from me, because the idea for Django I pitched to Jamie Foxx and Quentin Tarantino as the video for ‘Gold Digger.’ And then Tarantino turned it into a film,” Ye said during last week’s interview, in which he also continued to lean into his recent string of antisemitic comments.
The surprise claim from Ye came after Morgan asked him if he believes in limits for free speech and, if so, what West thinks they are. “There are no limits to free speech,” Ye responded. “It’s all context, right?… In that film he creates a context where Leonardo DiCaprio use the [n-word] multiple times within that context.”
The Hype Williams-directed “Gold Digger” music video consists almost entirely of West rapping the song in a raspberry-hued void while Foxx croons the refrain and buxom, lingerie-clad models dance with the men at a nightclub and pose for magazine covers. Tarantino’s Oscar-winning film tells the story of a freed slave named Django (Foxx) who embarks on a killing spree across the South with a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) as they search of Django’s wife (Kerry Washington); there does not appear to be any obvious narrative correlation between the “Gold Digger” video and Tarantino’s film.
Foxx was not originally attached to star in Django, with Tarantino originally considering the late Michael K. Williams and Will Smith for the lead role. A spokesperson for Tarantino could not be reached for comment at press time.
