(AllHipHop News) Kanye West fans have his pastor’s son to thank for saving the rapper’s career.
The Jesus Walks hitmaker has revealed he seriously considered turning his back on music following his conversion to Christianity after a bout of alcoholism, but a child gave him faith that his rapping could be inspiring.
“I was thinking of not rapping again, because I rapped for the devil so long that I didn’t even know how to rap for God,” he tells GQ magazine. “Then one of my pastors told me, ‘My son just said that he would want a rap album about Jesus from Kanye West’.
“He didn’t say, ‘Kanye West, you should do this’, or, ‘You need to do this’. He just told me something that a child said. And that one thing made the difference.”
Kanye bounced back with the album Jesus Is King last year (19), which helped him conquer the Christian charts.
In the interview, the rapper also addresses his issues with alcohol, revealing he often started his day with a vodka.
“One day I was in my office working on the couture collection, and there was some Grey Goose in the fridge and I was just going to get a daytime drink, and I looked and thought, ‘Devil, you’re not going to beat me today’,” he explains. “That one statement is like a tattoo.
“I haven’t had a drink since I realized I needed to take it day by day, but I never owned up, or was even told, ‘Hey, you’re a functioning alcoholic’. People have called me a crazy person, people have called me everything – but not a functioning alcoholic. And I would be drinking orange juice and Grey Goose in the morning.”