Kanye West is at it again. In a new post on Instagram, the mercurial producer went off on a long list of imagined critics, enemies, and rivals in response to his song “Carnvial” reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Among those names were Drake, Adidas, and even Hailey Bieber. While fans probably wouldn’t be surprised by the first two inclusions, that last name might have raised some eyebrows. After all, to the best of our knowledge, Hailey Bieber is not a rapper with whom Yeezy has longstanding, on-and-off-again beef, nor a multi-billion-dollar apparel brand who cut him off after his wild 2023 comments about Jewish people. So what gives? Why did Kanye West diss Hailey Bieber?
Buckle your seatbelts, this is a wild ride.
The origins of Bieber’s inclusion go back a couple of years, to the beginning (ish?) of Kanye’s latest years-long bout of contentious provocation. In a now-deleted post screen-capped by TMZ, Kanye snapped on Bieber, calling her “nose job Hailey Baldloose” (oof, he can’t even spell “lose”) praising model (and rumored ex-girlfriend) Vinetria after she walked in his “White Lives Matter” shirt showcase at Paris Fashion Week in 2022.
After being called out by Vogue‘s first-ever Black Editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, Kanye lashed out at her, making fun of her outfits and saying she “is not a fashion person.” Bieber later posted a photo of Karefa-Johnson on her own Instagram praising the editor, writing, “My respect for you runs deep my friend! To know is to adore you and to work with you is an honor. The most kind. the most talented. the most fun. the most chic.” Meanwhile, her fellow model Gigi Hadid went a step further, calling Kanye a bully.
This was apparently enough to land her on West’s shitlist. He posted a screenshot of a Google search depicting several outlets’ headlines describing Bieber as defending Karefa-Johnson, adding the caption, “Wait, am I canceled again? Justin [Bieber, Hailey’s husband] let me know.” He posted another screenshot of a gossip blog post from 2016 about Hailey supposedly going on a date with his perennial nemesis Drake, writing, “Get your girl before I get mad. You spose to be my friend right?” As evidenced by his most recent post (which has since been edited, because of course the man has no courage of conviction), he clearly still harbors ill will toward Bieber.
“F*ck everybody at the fashion houses that sided with Gabby and Hailey Bieber,” he wrote. Naturally, he makes no mention of the fact that he spent several days attacking her online for the offense of simply disagreeing with him, or that his childish provocations were disapproved of by pretty much any human being with a working brain that isn’t a virulent bigot. So, yeah, in conclusion… Please kick Kanye off social media again. He ain’t learned his lesson and he probably never will.