La Roux singer Elly Jackson has claimed she saw Kanye West engage in “upsetting and unsettling” behaviour when she worked with him a decade ago.
Elly, who collaborated with the rapper on his 2010 hit All Of the Lights, and on a remix of La Roux’s In For The Kill, described him as “fascinating” and “amazing to be around”, but also deeply troubling.
“I just saw some behaviour that wasn’t directed toward me, but I saw some behaviour that I can’t approve of as a human being ― I can’t approve of,” she said, during an interview on Phil Taggart’s Slacker podcast released earlier this year.
She added that she found Kanye’s conduct “upsetting and unsettling”.
“He’s one of those people that’s not 100% normal,” Elly added. “He’s kind of fascinating. It’s a fascinating world to be in for, you know, like a few days.”
Despite her extensive work with Kanye, Elly said she didn’t get to know him properly because “you can’t talk about anything normal”.
“You can’t just have a normal conversation. I didn’t manage to anyway ― I found it impossible,” she revealed. “He’s on [a] show 24 hours a day, it’s just him.
“It’s also kind of amazing to be around. You know, I’ll never be around anything like that again. It was really strange.”
Elly said she got the feeling Kanye wanted to come off as strange, later speaking about some of his behaviour with a mutual friend.
“One of his friends that I knew afterwards asked me, ‘You kind of looked at me like [Kanye’s behaviour] was weird, wasn’t it?’” she said. “And I was like, ‘Yeah it was pretty weird, you know, and I saw a couple of things happen.’ ... I found all of it strange.”
The friend, Elly continued, told Kanye about the conversation, and he apparently was insulted enough to want an apology. Later, she said she wrote him a “creepy” note.
“I remember writing it. I was sat there on my sofa lol’ing to myself like, ‘Dear Kanye,’” she said, calling the whole thing “ridiculous.”
She “didn’t say anything bad about him,” Elly insisted, adding: “He was absolutely lovely to me.”
Elly first spoke out against Kanye in a 2014 interview with the Sunday Times after their collaboration, stating: “Fuck him, nobody likes him.”