Rapper Kanye West stunned observers last month when he started openly praising the late Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
But while West's comments about Hitler were shocking, they apparently weren't anything new.
Rolling Stone has interviewed multiple people who have worked with West who say that his admiration for one of history's greatest mass murderers goes back nearly two decades.
One former business associate tells the magazine that West shocked listeners during a 2015 business call when he gushed that Hitler was a "marketing genius" and said that he "really understood how to mobilize people in a way that no one ever has."
One music industry source, meanwhile, tells the publication that West wanted to mimic Hitler's techniques for controlling others and getting them to do his bidding.
"He was just so fascinated by [Hitler] — someone that can have complete control over people and how he did it," they explained. "I think it was maybe the understanding of who Hitler was and how he created his army … I think [West] started to almost correlate how he could manipulate things to be, not the same level, but how he could try to get people to be his ‘army.’”
A former West collaborator, meanwhile, reveals to Rolling Stone that West used to be more careful about revealing his Hitler love.
"If he felt you were trustworthy... there was a reasonably high likelihood that he would attempt to engage with you and evangelize his beliefs about Hitler and the Nazis to you," they said.