Kanye West is as controversial as they come. On one hand, his musical genius and impact on culture cannot be questioned. On the other hand, his behavior has drawn a divide between his fanbase and the world as a whole. Some notable people have withdrawn their support of West in recent years, such as Pusha T, John Legend, and Yung Lean. For Lean, he knows the exact kind of behavior that Ye exhibits. The smartest thing he felt he could do was separate himself from it.

Recently, he spoke on the New York Times’ Popcast with Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli. There, Yung Lean was frank about Kanye, saying that he didn’t want to engage with the problematic behavior Ye was exhibiting. “Kanye is mentally ill,” he says matter-of-factly. “I’ve been there and I feel for him, and I think all this stuff that he says about Jewish people—my grandfather was Jewish… I don’t know, I can’t defend him. But it’s a mentally ill person who still did ‘Flashing Lights.’ … I haven’t seen him for a long time now, ‘cause it’s too much. I can’t really be around it.”

Yung Lean Talks About Strained Relationship With Kanye

Ultimately, Lean knows well enough to withdraw himself, in a creative sense and personally, from Kanye because he knows that behavior personally. “I mean, the public shit, I don’t really care too much about, but I just felt like, ‘Oh, I’m being dragged into something that I’ve been dragged into myself,’” Yung Lean explains. “And the best thing I could do is not, you know, make a song with this man. It’s more like, ‘I’ve been manic, too, I’ve been psychotic. Lithium works, this works.’ But he’s not going to listen to anyone. And that’s his thing.”

Caramanica and Coscarelli mention that people feel like medication impairs creativity, an idea that Lean is vehemently against. The way he sees it, it ends up becoming a trick from the mind. “There are certain types of bipolar antipsychotics that don’t numb you down, or dumb you down or take away the creativity. I mean, even when I was really manic and psychotic, I wasn’t more creative; I was just more sloppy. I would do like, ‘Let’s start one song here. Let’s book a flight to India here. Let’s start a painting here,’” Yung Lean recalls.

“It’s like being on a drug, you think you’re going to do all this cool shit, but you’re not doing anything. So, I do feel for him, and I know there’s a great heart in there, and that’s all I can say. You can really be bipolar on medication and still be super creative. I’m not saying I have it figured out, but right now I feel very close,” Yung Lean adds.