Kanye West Opens Up About His Porn Addiction

In an interview with Beats 1's Zane Lowe,West touched on everything from his planned 2024 presidential run to his forthcoming Sunday Service album, Jesus Is Born. However, he also spent a significant amount of time opening up to about his sex and porn addiction, as well as the effect it had on Jesus Is King's production process.

Related | Pornhub Gives Kanye West a Free Lifetime Membership

Early in the conversation, West began speaking on the "sex sells" concept and revealed that he found his dad's copy of Playboy when he was five, which served as the "gateway to a full on pornography addiction."

"It has impacted every choice I have made in my life from age five to now, having to kick the habit," he said, before explaining that it later developed in a sex addiction that played into his ego. West also touched on how that attitude was related to his notorious 2009 VMAs moment with Taylor Swift.

"That was such a script out of a rock star's life," he said. "You know that Playboy that I found when I was five years old was written all over the moment when I was at the MTV awards with the Timberlands, the Balmain jeans... before people was rocking Balmain jeans, and the Hennessy bottle. My mom had passed a year before. And I said some people drown themselves in drugs, and I drown myself in my addiction: sex."

And though West's since overcome his addiction (even if he still has that free lifetime Pornhub membership), his past experiences appeared to have an impact on the making-of Jesus Is King. But how so exactly?

"I was asking people to... this is gonna be radical what I'm about to say," he said. "There were times where I was asking people to not have premarital sex while they were working."

Turns out though that West's rationale was rooted in a desire for his team to stay focused — something he also tried to cultivate through prayer and fasting together, as "When people pray together, and fast together, the power is increased."

Photo via Getty