Kanye West credited the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for his interracial marriage on a track from his new album Bully.
The rapper-producer, who married Australian model and architect Bianca Censori in December 2022, muses about his relationship on “King” while giving a nod to the late civil rights leader.
The banning of interracial marriages was declared unconstitutional in 1967 with the decision in the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, during the same period that King was fighting against segregation. The activist was assassinated the following year at 39.
While King never brought his political activism to bear on interracial marriage directly, he wrote in a September 1957 advice column in Ebony that “There is nothing morally wrong with an interracial marriage,” though he acknowledged that “many social obstacles stand in the way.”
As a young man, according to one of his biographers, King had a serious relationship with a white woman, Betty Moitz. Moitz confirmed the relationship decades after the fact in an interview with author Patrick Parr.
“I brought a white queen to the altar/Couldn't happen without Martin Luther,” Ye raps on “King.”
The 24-time Grammy winner was previously married to reality television star and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian, who has Armenian, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry. The ex-spouses share four children, including 12-year-old North West, who is given a production credit on Bully track “Punch Drunk.”
Ye, who famously rapped “And when he get on, he'll leave yo' ass for a white girl” on his 2005 single “Gold Digger,” has been in multiple interracial relationships prior to marrying Censori. Before finalizing his divorce from Kardashian, he had a brief fling with actress Julia Fox, as well as model-actress Irina Shayk.
Ye met Censori when she was an employee at his clothing brand Yeezy, and she was eventually named Head of Architecture. Censori has since made a name for herself in visual art, debuting her first performance art piece last year, and, more recently, directing Ye and Travis Scott’s “Father” music video.
