Trevor Noah addresses his alleged feud with Kanye West: 'I still love him, despite the s--- that he talks'

If Trevor Noah is noticing a problem, he's going to be honest with you about it.

The Daily Show host was recently asked by an audience member about his ongoing "beef" with Kanye West. Noah's response? "I was never beefing with Kanye West; I was concerned about Kanye West."

He elaborated in a new behind-the-scenes clip: "If somebody says to me, or to anyone, that they have a mental health issue, and they say to everyone that when they don't take their medication they're unable to control themselves, and then everyone ignores when that person is having an episode and they haven't taken their medication, and then they platform the person, and then they put them out... I sometimes think it's a little s----- to be honest with you, you know?"

The comedian has become a frequent recipient of West's vitriol after he denounced West's harassment of his wife Kim Kardashian and then-boyfriend Pete Davidson on his show in March. Over the summer, West (who now goes by the name Ye) was suspended on Instagram after he called Noah a racial slur, and last week he made another comment about Noah's ethnicity in a since-deleted Drink Champs podcast episode.

Still, Noah maintained that he "grew up loving Kanye" and is "still playing College Dropout," West's 2004 debut record, to this day.

"There are a few hip-hop artists who have shaped how I see music," he said. "The punchlines that he had in every single song, it was like listening to comedy — the sketches that he had, he loved standup comedy. His mom's influence on him, his influence on hip-hop culture, his influence on fashion, how he changed the paradigm. I grew up loving this man. I still love him, despite the s--- that he talks. And so for me, it's not a beef."

But that doesn't mean he — or others — won't hold West accountable for his actions. Earlier this month on The Daily Show, Noah slammed West for making a series of anti-Semitic threats on social media. Following West's remarks, luxury fashion brand Balenciaga announced that it had parted ways with the rapper on Friday, reports WWD.

"When I grew up in South Africa, one thing I loved was you grew up in a space where people would say, 'We're gonna tell you to your face.' You know what I mean? We're not gonna sit by and see you doing something and just act like, 'Oh no, we didn't see it,'" Noah said. "I sometimes feel like Americans enjoy doing that. They see it and then something really bad happens and they're like, 'Ah, I wish we had spoken about it. I wish someone had said something.'"

He added, "I think there are elements of Ye where he knows when he's being an a--hole — and he's admitted this. He knows when he's pushing the envelope. But there are moments where I go, 'People, what is happening here?'"

Noah also called for others to stop giving West a forum while he's not in the right frame of mind.

"I don't have beef with a human being who has expressed openly that they're dealing with a mental health issue," he said. "I don't have beef with that human being. What I have beef with is, as a society, not coming together around a person and going like, 'Hey, hey, hey, maybe this is not the moment to put a microphone in your face, so that you just go off saying everything. If this is what you wanna say when you're on your medication, then that's a different story. But because you've told us that, I'm not gonna sit by and say that."

He won't turn a blind eye to it going forward either. "I've promised myself, I'll never be the person who just sits by and gleefully says things about people that I care about and then also joins the group of mourners afterwards and acts like I wasn't part of it," Noah said. "Too many people like to mourn you when you're dead, and they don't say anything to you when you're alive."

Representatives for Balenciaga and its owner, Kering, did not immediately respond to EW's request for comment.

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