Kanye West Struggles to Stay Awake in Malibu Mansion Trial Testimony

He appeared close to adding more Z’s to Yeezy while testifying Friday at a trial over his former Malibu mansion.

Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, appeared in a Los Angeles courtroom and repeatedly yawned, closed his eyes for long stretches, and at times seemed to catch his head falling forward as if dozing while seated on the witness stand. Speaking in monotone, he answered “I don’t recall” to dozens of questions about the architecturally significant Malibu house he bought for $57 million in 2021 and later sold at a steep loss.

The sleepy performance prompted glances among people in the gallery. Ron Zambrano, the lawyer representing the plaintiff Tony Saxon, even turned around at one point and mouthed to a colleague, “Is he asleep?” The judge appeared to notice as well, asking Zambrano to “make things a little snappier” during the afternoon session.

After one particularly long pause with his eyes seemingly closed, Ye asked Zambrano to repeat a question. The courtroom stenographer read it back: “When you hired Saxon, did you understand you had hired Saxon to help you execute your vision for the Ando house?”

“Ask it again please,” Ye said. The stenographer repeated it. “Yes,” Ye replied, looking exhausted.

The subdued testimony came a little more than a month after he took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal to apologizing for antisemitic remarks. “I’m not asking for sympathy, or a free pass, though I aspire to earn your forgiveness,” Ye wrote in the apology published Jan. 26. “I write today simply to ask for your patience and understanding as I find my way home.”

The trial, now in its second week in Los Angeles, centers on claims Ye hired Saxon as a construction project manager and round-the-clock security guard at the Ando house but then misclassified and mistreated the former handyman. Saxon, 35, alleges he was ordered to remove all wiring, electricity, plumbing and toilets from the home and demolish a built-in concrete jacuzzi and massive fireplace with 30-foot tall stainless steel stacks. Saxon claims he severely injured his neck and back doing the work and was later fired in retaliation when he raised security concerns.

According to Saxon, Ye knew he was not a licensed contractor and neglected to obtain workers’ compensation insurance. He’s asking the jury to find Ye liable for not only unpaid wages but damages related to his medical expenses, loss of earnings, and emotional distress.

Ye’s lawyers, meanwhile, have argued Saxon was an independent contractor who was hired to perform “renovation prep work” but instead “destroyed the Ando house.” They claim no one asked Saxon to sleep on a makeshift cot at the house that he posted on social media.

Under questioning Friday, Ye was confronted with deposition testimony he gave last August. “You don’t dispute you were his employer,” Zambrano asked him in the video shown to the jury. “No, I don’t dispute that,” Ye responded. At that point, Zambrano called the music mogul “Mr. Ye” in a follow-up question. “It’s just Ye, not Mr.,” Ye corrected him. Zambrano apologized, saying he didn’t mean to offend.

Asked about his plans for the remodeling of the Ando house, Ye said it was true he wanted to remove all plumbing, demolish a firepit, and renovate the kitchen. He couldn’t recall if he asked to have the jacuzzi removed.

“Do you have a memory of telling Mr. Saxon to turn all the stairs into a slide?” Zambrano asked.

“Not all the stairs,” Ye replied. Just one set of stairs, he corrected the lawyer. He said overall, his plan was to “simplify” the house. He said he planned to live there, “sometimes,” as a bachelor. “I was in the process of being divorced,” he testified. When the questions turned to text messages and bank records, he sat with his eyes closed as Zambrano flipped through a binder just a few inches away. Saxon sat at the plaintiff’s table, staring at a screen with no expression.

“Like the rest of us, Tony is not perfect. Like the rest of us, he has weaknesses. But he’s intensely loyal, intensely hard-working. He shows up and works hard. And he’s bipolar. He goes through high highs and low lows,” Zambrano told the jury during opening statements. In his recent apology advertisement, Ye attributed his antisemitic behavior to untreated bipolar disorder, saying it was caused by a brain injury he suffered in a car crash in 2002.

Saxon’s lawsuit is the first among a wave of civil complaints filed by former employees and collaborators over the past six years to reach a jury. Ye, 48, has faced more than a dozen lawsuits since an October 2022 social media tirade in which he tweeted his now-infamous plan to “go death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE.”

Weeks later, Rolling Stone published an investigation into the allegedly “toxic” work environment at his Yeezy label, where Ye purportedly told one staffer that “skinheads and Nazis were his greatest inspiration.” Ye later apologized in an Instagram post written in Hebrew, but he again promoted antisemitic ideology, sporting a T-shirt for the Norwegian metal musician Burzum, who has been fined for antisemitism.

Last year, Ye again posted inflammatory messages on X, formerly Twitter, writing “IM A NAZI,” and “I LOVE HITLER.” Days after that, he aired a Super Bowl commercial promoting Yeezy.com, where he later sold shirts emblazoned with swastikas. Last May, he released a single titled “Heil Hitler,” which was quickly removed from most digital streaming services.

Ye’s testimony followed an appearance a day earlier by his wife, Bianca Censori, who was questioned about text messages she exchanged with Saxon in late 2021. In one exchange, Saxon wrote, “My back is so fucked.” Censori replied, “Chill then for sure and come in tomorrow.”

Ye ultimately sold the Ando house for $21 million in September 2024. The buyer, Steve “Bo” Belmont, told the Los Angeles Times he planned to restore the architectural landmark, “to make it as though Kanye was never there.”