THE ongoing slow-motion Kanye West trainwreck continued today, with the antagonistic rapper dropping by the offices of tabloid news site TMZ for a bizarre live broadcast.

Speaking to interviewers who seemed unsure of how to handle the increasingly unstable star, West declared that America's dark history of African-American slavery was in fact a "choice" by those who were held as slaves.

"For 400 years? That sound like a CHOICE. Like, you was there for 400 years, and it's all of y'all? It's like we're mentally in prison. I like the word 'prison', because slavery goes too direct to the idea of blacks. It's like, slavery - holocaust. Holocaust - Jews, slavery is blacks. Prison is something that unites us as one race - blacks and whites being one race," he ranted.

Whatever you think of West's recent political 180 (elsewhere in the same interview he enthused: "I just LOVE Trump, that's my BOY!"), the statement "slavery was a choice" couldn't go unchecked.

Later on, as West prowled the TMZ offices on camera, he asked those present if they agreed with him.

"Do you feel that I'm being free and I'm thinking free?" he asked.

Silence - until one TMZ staffer, Van Lathan, stood up from his desk.

"I actually don't think you're thinking anything. I think what you're doing right now is actually the absence of thought," Lathan told the star.

"Kanye, you're entitled to your opinion, but there is fact and there is real-life consequence to everything you just said. While you are making music and living the life you've earned by being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives," Lathan continued.

West's face suggested he probably wasn't expecting to have his outbursts challenged:

Lathan didn't stop there, though.

"We have to deal with the marginalisation that has come from 400 years of slavery that you said for our people was a CHOICE. Frankly, I'm disappointed, I'm appalled, and brother, I am unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something, to me, that's not real."

Kanye approached Lathan to try to hug it out, but he wasn't having it.

"Bro, you've got to be responsible, man. Your voice is too big," he told West.

Watch the full interaction below:

West's sudden dismissal of slavery was a step too far for many already burned by his controversial social media antics of the past week:

.