Last week, the rapper took ownership over the idea for the 2012, Tarantino-directed slavery drama, Django Unchained.
Quentin Tarantino has responded to Kanye West’s claims that he stole the rapper’s original idea for Django Unchained. Addressing the rapper’s comments — which last week saw him claim ownership over the initial idea for the 2012 film — during an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Tarantino refuted the idea that it was West who masterminded Django: “There’s no truth to the idea that Kanye West came up with the idea of Django,” he told Kimmel.
While Tarantino admitted that West’s contribution to Django “never happened,” he later elaborated on the pair’s previous collaborations, revealing that the rapper had once pitched him the idea for a “giant movie version” of his debut studio album, The College Dropout: “He wanted to get big directors to do different tracks from the album and then release it as this like, giant movie,” the director explained. “They were gonna be movies based on each of the different tracks. So we used it as an excuse, me and Kanye, we used it as an excuse to meet each other.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the Pulp Fiction director revealed that West had also brainstormed the idea for the Gold Digger music video, which was released in 2005 and starred Django lead actor Jamie Foxx. West’s initial idea for the video — much like that of Django — involved themes of slavery, which Tarantino assumes is where the rapper misconstrued his involvement in the movie. “He did have an idea for a video,” Tarantino said, “that he would be a slave and the whole thing was this slave narrative, where he’s a slave and he’s singing Gold Digger.”
He continued: “I’d had the idea for Django for a while before I ever met Kanye… Anyway, that’s what he’s referring to.” Tarantino’s clarification comes days after West made the initial claim, with the rapper asserting during an interview with Piers Morgan that it was him who floated the idea for the Oscar-winning drama. It marks just one of West’s baseless claims in recent weeks, having been embroiled in controversy following anti-Semitic Tweets and his decision to wear a ‘White Lives Matter’ t-shirt during Paris fashion week.
