The prospect of spending nearly two unfiltered hours with Kanye West, excuse me, Ye, should fill anyone with dread. But that’s exactly what you get with Nico Ballesteros’ documentary, six years in the making and edited down from some 3,000 hours of raw footage. This documentary portrait of the hip-hop superstar certainly delivers what it promises — an unflinching look showcasing its subject’s many inner demons. But for those not fascinated by the twists and turns of Ye’s clearly disturbed mind, In Whose Name? makes for a painful viewing experience.
The debuting filmmaker, who began the project when he was just 18 years old, certainly had … access. He seems to be present for any number of intense personal moments, and how and why he was granted such close proximity is a mystery not addressed in the film. With any other celebrity, it would be surprising. With Ye, it seems just as inexplicable as everything else he does.
In Whose Name?
The Bottom Line
Like watching a car crash in slow-mo for two hours.
Release date: Friday, September 19
Director: Nico Ballesteros
Rated R,
1 hour 46 minutes
The filming, which began in 2018 and ended in 2024 and was largely shot on iPhones, begins with footage of Ye interacting with a seemingly endless procession of celebrities, including Lady Gaga, Drake, LeBron James, Pharrell Williams and, in a moment that hasn’t aged well, Sean Combs. It proceeds to document one outrageous incident after another, and there is no shortage of them, including moments both happy and not with his then-wife Kim Kardashian; they’re seen both bitterly fighting and enjoying a safari in Uganda with their children.
His 2018 hosting of Saturday Night Live, for which he wore a MAGA hat on camera, is chronicled with backstage footage of him being berated by Swiss Beatz, effusively praised by Chris Rock, and given a dressing-down by a clearly pissed-off Michael Che. Invited to the White House to meet with Donald Trump, Ye insists, “I need to go in exactly the way a foreign dignitary would go in.” We also see footage of the meeting itself, in which Trump seems bemused by encountering someone even crazier than himself.
He tells his mother-in-law Kris Jenner, “I’d rather be dead than on medication,” just before erupting in a rage. “Mental health is a health issue. It just so happens that it’s on your brain,” he proclaims. He’s seen screaming at relatives and displaying strong signs of paranoia. Meeting with a team of Swiss architects, he informs them, “I am Picasso.” And most disturbingly of all, he seems to enjoy listening to Kenny G’s private rendition of “Over the Rainbow.”
Then there’s his plan to build a sustainable city in Wyoming. His aborted presidential run. His bonkers listening party for his album Donda at Chicago’s Soldier Field. His backstage meeting with Elon Musk, in which they discuss their respective relationship woes (seeming to demonstrate a direct correlation between massive wealth and power and mental illness). His friendship with right-wing conspiracy theorist Candace Owens. His wearing a “White Lives Matter” t-shirt (“It was a joke!” he later insists). His anti-Semitic posts. And so on, and on, and on.
Eventually all the controversy and turmoil comes back to bite him, with corporations cutting him off left and right and his numerous hugely successful product lines in tatters.
Although In Whose Name? is pretentiously divided into a prologue and “Act 1, Act 2,” etc., it never achieves real cohesiveness. Although to be fair, when you’re dealing with someone so mercurial, that was probably a lost cause. But Ye does reveal astuteness when he advises his chronicler to apply some shape to the sprawling material. Otherwise, it’s just “one antic to the next antic,” he complains. Indeed.