Kanye West’s Childhood Friend Rapper GLC Saw His Breakdown Coming! (EXCLUSIVE)

In an exclusive interview with Life & Style, rapper GLC (real name Leonard Harris) speaks out about his childhood friend Kanye West’s breakdown — admitting that he saw the signs of the impending breakdown for years.

“I wasn’t surprised,” says GLC, who was so close to Kanye that he was a pallbearer at his mother Donda’s 2007 funeral. “I saw it coming.” He believes it was Kanye’s mother’s death that put him in a “dark place” that he never got out of. “I tried to rearrange his brain,” he says. “But he tried to snap on me.”

GLC (center)
with Kanye and Lebron James in 2005.

When he saw Kanye, 40, being interviewed in recent years, GLC says he barely recognized his one-time pal. “It’s like his body is there, but [not] his soul and his spirit,” says GLC, 42. “It’s somewhere else.”

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GLC tells Life & Style he’s tried to get Kanye to take a break and focus on his emotional health. In 2009, after Kanye’s notorious onstage confrontation with Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards, he called his friend. “I said, ‘Look, dude, slow down, get your mind right for the limelight,’ ” he explains. But Kanye didn’t want to hear it. “He wasn’t in a place…to be receptive.”

After he wed Kim Kardashian, 36, and went on his mother-in-law Kris Jenner’s talk show in 2013, “I knew he was losing it,” GLC adds. “I was like, ‘Who is this dude? Did they put a trance on him?’ I thought someone had him hypnotized!”

But GLC isn’t pointing fingers. “I don’t know the Kardashian family, so I can’t blame them,” he says.

For the full interview with GLC, including what he witnessed of Kanye’s feud with Jay-Z, pick up the latest issue of Life & Style magazine, on newsstands now!