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(New York Jewish Week) — The web was flummoxed over the weekend when a photograph made the rounds on social media showing to point out Kanye West strolling a New York Vogue Week runway carrying a blue shirt studying “Jewish Lives Matter.”
Might or not it’s that the rapper and designer, who goes by Ye and final fall launched a stream of antisemitic feedback, was participating in teshuvah — Hebrew for repentance — simply earlier than the Excessive Holidays start on Friday?
Don’t maintain your breath. The actual West seems to be as much as his regular antics — crashing a marriage over the weekend in Florence, Italy.
The person carrying the hanging blue shirt on the runway Saturday night time was really a West impersonator named Baron Jay Littleton Jr., who goes by “The Kanye Clone” on social media and makes use of the identify Baron Jay in actual life.
Jay, who is predicated in Los Angeles, stated it was his concept to put on the “Jewish Lives Matter” shirt whereas strolling at a style present on the Conrad New York Downtown resort in Tribeca for Creators Inc., a social media administration firm. The present featured the corporate’s creators and different invited company.
Initially, Jay stated the producers of the present requested him to put on a “White Lives Matter” shirt to recreate West’s viral second from his personal YZY SZN 9 style present for his Yeezy assortment throughout final fall’s Paris Vogue Week. That shirt sparked a social media altercation with Sean Combs, the rapper also referred to as Puff Daddy and Diddy, that touched off West’s stream of antisemitic remarks.
Jay requested to put on a Jewish Lives Matter shirt as a substitute.
Jay’s message, he stated, was a literal one: “I needed to convey a message that Jewish lives matter,” he advised the New York Jewish Week. “My intention behind it’s that every tradition can rally round one another.”
“All ethnicities matter,” he added. “Black lives matter, white lives matter.”
This was Jay’s first time publicly carrying the shirt, which he sells on his web site together with different Yeezy-esque attire and footwear. On the runway, Jay paired the shirt with unfastened black pants tucked into black leather-based boots. He additionally wore black sun shades and a black baseball cap with the letters ‘YZS’ on the entrance, a spoof of West’s “YZY” model.
“I simply thought it was a genius idea,” Andrew Bachman, the CEO of Creators, Inc., advised the New York Jewish Week.
“I believed, ‘Screw it, it’s good for a viral second,’” added Bachman, who’s Jewish. “Kanye West has made antisemitic marks, so taking somebody who appears to be like an identical to Kanye West and making that assertion is highly effective and thought scary.”
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Jay’s look as Kanye wasn’t the one a part of the style present that made waves on the web. Proper after Jay walked, Fred Beyer, a YouTuber recognized for making outrageous prank movies, crashed the runway. Safety tackled Beyer simply moments after Jay departed, slicing brief his time within the highlight.
Saturday night time’s style present was not the primary time Jay has imitated West: He advised the New York Jewish Week that he has been impersonating the rapper for almost twenty years, since West launched his debut album, “The School Dropout,” in 2004.
“Folks rent me to do bar mitzvahs, birthday events, company occasions, meet and greets,” Jay stated. “In every single place I am going, I’m getting mistaken as Kanye West.” The truth is, Jay appeared as a stand-in for West within the music video for Jewish rapper Drake’s 2015 track “Vitality.”
The similarities between the 2 males don’t cease at appears to be like. Each are 46 years outdated and hail from the Midwest — West from Chicago and Jay from Detroit. “We’re like two totally different dimensions on the identical earth,” Jay advised the New York Jewish Week, including that West has by no means contacted him about his movies and the 2 have by no means met.
After West went viral for his antisemitic outburst, he confronted swift backlash, shedding a profitable partnership with Adidas and getting banned from Twitter till Elon Musk purchased the platform. Jay stated that he misplaced some gigs as a result of venues didn’t need to affiliate with the rapper.
When requested for his ideas on Kanye’s latest phrases and actions, Jay stated, “I want to create a world the place totally different races are carrying one another’s ‘Lives Matter’ shirts,” he stated. “Black individuals carrying ‘Jewish Lives Matter; Jewish individuals carrying ‘Black Lives Matter’; Asian individuals carrying ‘Jewish Lives Matter.’”
Although West has used his huge affect to site visitors in conspiracy theories, similar to saying that the Holocaust didn’t occur and that “slavery was a alternative,” Jay channels his Kanye-like look for causes he cares about. “I really feel like as a result of I appear to be Kanye West, I’m better off to unfold the message and to fill within the gaps that Kanye West just isn’t in a position to fill in,” he stated.
His day job is serving because the director of the eponymous Baron Jay Basis, which he based in 2002 with the intention of empowering underprivileged youth within the Los Angeles space, the place he now lives.
“I actually am in a position to resonate with these children extra and get them to belief me as a result of I appear to be Kanye,” he stated. He stated he places the proceeds he makes doing gigs as Kanye West again into his basis.
For now, nonetheless, Jay is at present nonetheless in New York Metropolis, the place he’ll carry out Monday night time in a “Jay-Z & Kanye West Hip-Hop Legends Tribute Present” on the 333 Lounge in Park Slope.
On X, the platform beforehand known as Twitter, a screenshot of the outfit is circulating from user Yaakov Langer, a Jewish podcaster whose tweet incorrectly said that West is the one who wore the “Jewish Lives Matter” shirt. Customers joked that the picture appeared barely off.
“That is Kanye East….” one responded.
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“That’s Kanye Ma’arav,” one other stated, utilizing the Hebrew phrase for West.
“I want this was actual,” a 3rd stated.
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