Kanye West is dominating the news lately, but definitely not in good ways. His antisemitic remarks on social media, combined with various interviews where he seemingly continues to either double down on the comments and say other inflammatory things have led to boycotts and serious business consequences for the rapper. (Just last night, it was revealed that Adidas is dropping its partnership with West, which is going to cost the company nearly $250 million in 2022 alone.) And recently, in a marathon interview with Piers Morgan, Kanye West put forth the idea that Jamie Foxx and Quentin Tarantino stole the idea for “Django Unchained” from him.
Speaking to Piers Morgan about racism, Kanye West into a bit of a digression to explain how his idea for a proposed video for his 2009 song, “Gold Digger,” led to the creation of Quentin Tarantino’s Western, “Django Unchained,” in 2012.
“Tarantino can write a movie about slavery where – actually him and Jamie, 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,’” West explained. “And then Tarantino turned it into a film.”
Of course, this was just part of an interview where he talked about so many other things, often pinging back and forth between various topics in one breath. So, it’s hard to know the exact details about what he claims is his idea for the video. Of course, Jamie Foxx is part of the song and video for “Gold Digger,” but the eventual video (seen below) has nothing to do with Westerns and/or slavery. So, for whatever reason, the ‘Django’ idea was never used. Did Foxx then go and tell Tarantino about the idea, leading to the creation of the Oscar-winning film? That much is unclear. And considering we only have the word of Kanye West, it’s hard to take his claims as fact after everything else he’s done in the past few weeks.
As mentioned, “Django Unchained” was released in 2012 and became a big hit for Foxx and Tarantino. The film went on to earn 5 Oscar nominations, including two wins for Christoph Waltz’s performance as Best Supporting Actor and Tarantino’s Best Original Screenplay.