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The toll Kanye West’s changing behaviour took on Kim Kardashian during their marriage is vulnerably revealed in a new documentary trailer.
The upcoming In Whose Name? Documentary was created by filmmaker Nico Ballesteros, who began capturing footage of Kanye West six years ago, when Ballesteros was just 18 years old.
He shot thousands of hours of Kanye since the project began, documenting the rapper’s apparent worsening mental health struggles, failing marriage to Kim, the rapper’s reaction to mounting public backlash, and increasingly erratic and problematic behaviour.
In a new teaser for the film, which debuted on YouTube on Wednesday, a striking moment of marital strife is revealed.
Kanye can be heard saying he stopped taking medication for his bipolar disorder: ‘I’m off my meds for five months now.’
While he is seen exiting her dressing room at an unknown event, Kim’s audibly emotional voice can be heard tearfully saying: ‘Your personality was not like this a few years ago.’
At another point in the trailer, he declares: ‘I’d rather be dead than to be on medication. Either they destroy me or I destroy it.’
Kim and Kanye were married from 2014 to 2022 and share four children: North, Saint, Chicago, and Psalm. Kim filed for divorce from the Gold Digger rapper in February 2021, six years after they tied the knot.
In 2020, Kim addressed her husband’s behavior in a social media post after he faced backlash for an antisemitic rant. She wrote: ‘As many of you know, Kanye has bipolar disorder.
‘Anyone who has this or has a loved one in their life who does, knows how incredibly complicated and painful it is to understand.’
She continued, saying he is a ‘brilliant but complicated person’ whose ‘words sometimes do not align with his intentions.’
Kim and Kanye were each legally declared single in 2022 – the Grammy-winner later married Bianca Censori in secret, while Kim famously dated Pete Davidson for around nine months, and has since been linked to a number of stars.
As Kanye’s behaviour has grown more erratic in recent years, he and Kim’s ongoing co-parenting dynamic has continued to grab headlines.
Over the last year, Kanye outraged many with horrific antisemitic tirades on social media, as well as attempting to sell T-shirts emblazoned with a swastika.
He took to X to declare himself ‘a Nazi’, say he ‘loves Hitler’ and insist that he has ‘dominion’ over his wife, whose stream of extremely revealing outfits worn in public have disturbed fans.
It seems that the upcoming doc may finally give fans insight into the hitmaker’s mental state, with the teaser revealing audio clips stitched together.
At one point he can be heard yelling: ‘It’s a calling by the universe. Never tell me I’m going to wake up one day and have nothing.’
There’s also sure to be plenty of revelations about the collapse of Kim and Kanye’s marriage, with the trailer showing another moment in which Kim calmly says to Kanye, ‘We could talk about that later, but…’ before he interrupts her, aggressively saying: ‘It ain’t no but.’
At another point, Kanye says: ‘When I went to the hospital and one of the ideas was to do a church,’ alongside clips of his Easter Sunday Service performance at the 2019 Coachella Music Festival, where he appeared to be crying as Chance the Rapper consoled him.
Later on, he says ‘Thank you, Jesus. I decided to run,’ as a clip of Kanye holding up a sign that read, ‘YE4PRESIDENT,’ flashed across the screen, a moment from his failed 202 US Presidential campaign.
At another point in the heart-pounding trailer, Kanye yells: ‘I almost killed my daughter.’
In the concluding clip, he proclaims: ‘You know the best thing about being an artist and bipolar? Anything you do and say is an art piece.’
The summary of the trailer reads: ‘Over six years, 18-year-old Nico Ballesteros captured an unfiltered portrait of Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, offering unprecedented access into the private and public life of one of the most controversial figures in modern culture.
‘The film charts Ye’s meteoric rise to becoming the richest Black man in American history and the choices, contradictions, and collapses that have since redefined his legacy,’ the description continued.
‘Featuring appearances by Kim Kardashian and other influential figures from Ye’s inner circle, the documentary explores the razor’s edge between creative genius and self-destruction, revealing the cost of freedom in a fame-obsessed world.’
The documentary is set for release on September 19.
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