Kanye West Defends Himself, Apologizes Over VMAs Incident On ‘The Jay Leno Show’

Kanye West made a public attempt to defend himself and apologize for his behavior at Sunday night’s MTV Awards, during an interview with Jay Leno on Monday night’s premiere episode of “The Jay Leno Show” on NBC.

While he was originally set to serve as just a musical guest – performing with Jay-Z and Rihanna — Kanye spoke to Jay for several minutes before taking the stage to talk about storming the VMA stage and stealing the microphone from Best Female Music Video winner Taylor Swift during the 19-year-old’s acceptance speech, to tout Beyonce.

“It’s been extremely difficult, just dealing with the fact that I hurt [someone] or took anything away… from a talented artist, or from anyone because I only wanted to help people,” Kanye told Jay. “My entire life I’ve only wanted to give and do something that I felt was right and I immediately knew in this situation that it was wrong and it wasn’t a spectacle, it’s actually someone’s emotions… that I stepped on… It was rude, period. I’d like to be able to apologize to her in person.”

When asked by Jay when he realized he was wrong, Kanye said almost immediately.

“Like as soon as I gave the mic back to her and she didn’t keep going,” Kanye said.

Jay then went on to bring up Kanye’s late mother, Donda West, during the interview, mentioning that he met her and asking the outspoken rapper what his mother would have said about her son’s behavior.

Kanye struggled to find the words to answer the question, and stroked his hair with his hands as he appeared to choke up.

After a long, silent pause on Kanye’s part, Jay rephrased the question asking if Donda would have been disappointed in her son’s actions.

Kanye answered by appearing to blame his busy schedule for his actions on Sunday.

“So many celebrities, they never take the time off and I’ve never taken the time off to really, you know, just music after music and tour after tour and tour,” Kanye said. “I ‘m just ashamed that my hurt caused someone else’s hurt. My dream of what other award shows are supposed to be caused — and I don’t try to justify it because I was just in the wrong… But I need to, after this, just take some time off and analyze how I’m [going to] make it through the rest of this life, how I’m [going to] improve and because I am a celebrity and that’s something I have to deal with. And if there’s anything I can do to help Taylor in the future or help anyone I like, ‘cause you know, I [want to] live, this thing is hard.”