Celebrity News

Kanye West leaves Kim K solo again amidst cheating report

Kanye's surprise performance last night at Design Miami/ Basel

Kanye’s surprise performance last night at Design Miami/ Basel (Courtesy photo)

After denying reports he’d cheated on pregnant Kim Kardashian, Kanye West skipped town without her to play a surprise show at a Design Miami event during Art Basel in Switzerland, sources tell Page Six.

West said through a rep yesterday he did not have any sexual encounters with 24-year-old model Leyla Ghobadi, who claimed she and West slept together twice, including once when expectant Kim was off in Miami. The rep called her story “totally without merit” and a blatant attempt for publicity.

Either way, West — who reportedly said his whole relationship with Kardashian was for publicity — hasn’t exactly been a constant at her side during her pregnancy. While she’s grounded in LA, he continued a whirlwind tour promoting his upcoming album, “Yeezus.”

West was in New York this week for a listening party stocked with models, rappers and athletes on a loading dock at Milk Studios, and he also celebrated his birthday with Jay-Z, Nas and Beyoncé at Miss Lily’s without his reality-star girlfriend.

While Kim’s stuck in LA weeks before the birth, West next headed to Switzerland for a secret album listening party for “Yeezus,” held at a design festival that runs alongside the annual Art Basel fair.

West will be in good company at the fair, as moguls have flocked there for a VIP preview of a reported $2 billion worth of art being shown.

Leonardo DiCaprio — dressed in his signature wool cap and trailed by an all-male posse including his longtime wingman Lukas Haas — was spotted perusing art along with billionaire Roman Abramovich and super-collectors Eli Broad, Peter Brant and Leon Black.

DiCaprio looked at Lichtenstein and Picasso works, spies said, at the booth of Edward Tyler Nahem. The Helly Nahmad Gallery sold a 1961 Alexander Calder mobile for between $10 million and $12 million to an anonymous buyer. There was no sign of Helly Nahmad himself, who was indicted for his alleged involvement in a high-stakes gambling ring.

A rep for West didn’t get back to us about Art Basel.

At the Design Miami event, West hosted an impromptu listening party for a crowd of 200 art enthusiasts and fashionistas, as reported by The Daily Beast. The rapper reportedly played samples from his album off his laptop, “danced rhythmically…as if he were alone in his own studio,” and delivered a lengthy speech.

West rambled about how he hates YouTube because “the player is so ugly, and it’s presented in such a terrible manner,” and defended the process of sampling music:

“What I want people to understand about sampling and producing is that it’s really similar to—and I know this is obvious what I’m going to say, because I’m a black guy so I’m gonna name the ‘most obvious artist in the world’—Warhol, but it’s very similar to the way Warhol would appropriate a Campbell’s Soup can is the way I would sonically appropriate a Ray Charles sample or a Michael Jackson sample.”

He recalled how he wasn’t embraced by the fashion world initially and compared the rejection to the civil rights movement. “So when I used to go to fashion shows with my boys and we’d be eight deep, it was almost like a civil rights, like a sit-in. They wouldn’t even let us in. They had no idea what rap would mean to this world, what rap would mean to the art world. Before the Kendrick Lamars and the A$AP Rockys, it was Kanye West in a hotel room at the Le Maurice getting a ‘No, no, no, no’ to every single fashion show.”

Finally, he addressed his status as Kardashian’s beau. “I fight in my position of being a very commercial celebrity boyfriend, I fight to push culture forward every chance I get. And I only frown because paparazzi ask me dumbass [bleep] all the time, and I think about changing the world, and I think about what I can do to make things better. And, without further ado, I want to play you guys my new album. It’s called ‘Yeezus.’”