Kanye West might be at the top of the rap game (even though he doesn’t rap much anymore), but he’s going to play struggling rapper MC Kenny West in the “Family Guy” spinoff, “The Cleveland Show,” next year.
When the spinoff was announced, Kanye blogged about how excited he was to see it and “Family Guy” voice actor/executive producer Mike Henry told MTV the show’s creator Seth MacFarlane was even invited to Kanye’s house a year or two ago. It’s possible the rapper/pseudo singer was lobbying for a role on one of MacFarlane’s projects because when he finally landed the spot, the “Cleveland Show” team was amazed at how seriously he was taking his turn as a failed rapper.
“It was surprising to us that [he] was so into it that he came to the table [read], and wonderfully surprising how cool he was, how funny he was and how unassuming he was,” Henry said. “He’s just a great presence.”
Executive producer Richard Appel told MTV that Kanye was very humble about working as a voice actor and stayed true to the script, except for in one incidence: “Before we came to the table … there was only one line he didn’t love, and he came up with another idea and in a completely modest, nice way said, ‘Would you mind if I changed just this one line?’ ” “And our feeling was, how many raps have we written? One? And how many has he written? Be our guest!”
The episode will air next year, but Kanye told the producers he would be glad to do more than one episode. “I said we could write him in to the next 21 episodes!” Appel said.