Surgeon who operated on Kanye West's mom defends himself, asks not to be put on album cover

On Saturday, in the middle of his ongoing heel turn toward Trumperism, Kanye West dropped the surprise announcement that a photo of plastic surgeon Jan Adams—the man who performed the surgery on West’s mother, Donda West, that ultimately led to her death in 2008—would appear on the cover of his next album. Rather than a weird and extremely dark revenge move, West said that he wanted to forgive Adams and “stop hating” altogether. Now, Adams has released a statement about West’s album art to The Blast, and while he seems touched that West has decided to go for such a public message of forgiveness, he really does not want his face to be used like this.

Adams’ letter is long, and it specifically asks West to “cease and desist” from using his photo to promote the album, noting that—if West’s message is truly about spreading love—then it’s “inappropriate to drag the negativity of the past with it.” The rest of the statement is largely built around Adams defending himself from what he sees as a decade of misrepresentation by West, the media, and the Los Angeles coroner who refused to say what he “believed to be true” because he feared litigation. Essentially, Adams doesn’t believe he was at fault for what happened to West’s mother, indicating that the surgery itself went fine and that the real one at fault was West’s cousin Stephan Scoggins.

Adams says the original coroner report indicated that Scoggins (who has medical training) was supposed to make post-surgical arrangements for Donda West’s care, and yet he allegedly left her alone while she was experiencing symptoms that possibly could have been caught if a doctor had been on-hand. Thus, Adams believes Scoggins is the one who made the mistake that resulted in Donda West’s death, telling West in his latter, “perhaps you should put your cousin’s picture on your next album.” He also says that West can’t be “about love” if he puts Adams’ photo on the album because “loves deals with the truth.”

West has responded on Twitter, naturally, thanking Adams for the message and saying that he can’t wait for the two of them to meet up and “start healing.”