The industry's openness to letting a world-famous rapper operate a school is, perhaps, why West has been touring Pitbull's SLAM Academy today, mere days after going on a pro-Trump rant that was edited out of last weekend's Saturday Night Live season premiere. He's been posting photos and videos of the tour on Twitter.
Everything about this is nonsense. Will West open his own series of charter schools? Who knows? Who cares at this point? But it is worth noting that, in light of Yeezy's fervent Trump fandom, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visited the same school last year.
Also worth noting: Pitbull is seemingly not accompanying West on this tour, which means that West dropped in as a surprise or that Pitbull — who once called Trump a "joke" — does not want to be seen with Kanye for any of a thousand reasons. (Just yesterday, West was posting videos of himself hanging out with billionaire Cleveland Cavaliers co-owner Dan Gilbert in Detroit.)
To make things even weirder, Yeezus went on the charter-school tour with self-help guru Tony Robbins, who has reportedly become part of West's inner circle since the rapper's opiate-induced breakdown in 2017.
Here's West's series of Miami videos, in which a few SLAM Academy administrators, including Pitbull's partner Fernando Zulueta, babble to West about creating "new cultures" at schools and other nonsense. The series of tweets
we're at Pitbulls school SLAM pic.twitter.com/byhISS7jPL
— ye (@kanyewest) October 3, 2018
— ye (@kanyewest) October 3, 2018
— ye (@kanyewest) October 3, 2018
— ye (@kanyewest) October 3, 2018
— ye (@kanyewest) October 3, 2018
— ye (@kanyewest) October 3, 2018
— ye (@kanyewest) October 3, 2018
— ye (@kanyewest) October 3, 2018And, as Miami Herald education reporter Colleen Wright recently noted on Twitter, SLAM Academy isn't exactly an example of a thriving school: Though the high-school has received fairly solid marks from the Florida Department of Education, the SLAM middle school's latest grade from the state is a "D."
