Michael Che Confronted Kanye West After His 'SNL' Meltdown in 2018

In Whose Name? is a documentary directed by Nico Ballesteros culled from over 3,000 hours of footage tracking the fall of Kanye West over the last six years. It was released this weekend. It has not been widely reviewed (there are four review on Rotten Tomatoes, and the reception is largely mixed). To its credit, the doc doesn’t attempt to redeem Kanye West, but it does appear to offer some explanation for the villain turn Kanye’s career has taken (he’s bipolar, and he stopped taking his meds).

There is one clip going around social media right now that I found particularly interesting, if only because it provides a glimpse of Michael Che out of character, so to speak. It’s also earlier on in his tenure on “Weekend Update” — in 2018, four years after he replace Cecily Strong — and really before Kanye’s dramatic fall, which began in earnest with that appearance in September 2018 (the next month, he visited Trump’s White House).

After that September episode, during the closing credits, Kanye went on an unscripted political rant. It was rambling and incoherent, and uncomfortable enough for many on the stage to walk off (including host Adam Driver, Kenan Thompson, and Pete Davidson). It was something of a defense of Trump, some rambling about being controlled by the media, and a defense of Bill Cosby. At one point, he even said, “They bullied me backstage. They said, ‘don’t go out there with that [MAGA] hat on. They bullied me backstage. They bullied me!”

The whole thing was pretty wild, but what we didn’t know is that Michael Che confronted Kanye West after the show, which I actually think was notable given Che’s junior status on the show at the time and the fact that Kanye was still Kanye (sort of) at the time and mostly surrounded by Yes men.

“You good with me?” Che asked Kanye after the rant. “That was f—-ed up!”

“Why was that?” Kanye says.

“Why you gotta call me out on the f***in’ [stage] if I don’t got a chance to say anything for myself?” Che asked.

Kanye claimed that he was actually criticizing Leslie Jones, although it was Che who made the Bill Cosby joke. “I wasn’t callin’ — I said that about Leslie coming back and they wanna do that.”

“I’m the Black comedian that made a joke about Cosby,” Che said. “That’s f****ed up. Why would you do that to me?”

“Aw, man, I love you though, bro,” Kanye responded.

“I love you too. I’m a fan. But why would you do that to me? I work here! I work here! Come on, man. We treat everybody that come in like family, and you’re gonna sell us out? That’s f***ed up, man! We look up to you, we love you. What you got against us?”

Ye said hat he does have things against SNL in general.

“That’s cool, but airing it out like that without letting us be able to reply is kinda foul,” Che told him. “You wait til the last song and then say that foul s*** to us, and we brought you in here.”

Kanye sort of concedes the point while Consequence basically nods in agreement with Kanye during the entire clip before an SNL producer shut it down.

Kanye needs more Michael Che’s and less ENABLERS‼️ pic.twitter.com/Z5kYvCXPFO

— Meidas_Charise Lee (@charise_lee) September 19, 2025