A filmmaker in the eye of Ye's storm

For six tumultuous years, Nico Ballesteros followed the rap star, capturing his rawest highs and lows and resulting in the doc 'In Whose Name?'

- BY JOSH ROTTENBERG

DIRECTOR Nico Ballesteros, 26, was just a teenager when he joined Kanye West's inner circle and began documenting his life.

The black SUV rolls toward the White House, carrying Kanye West to a meeting with President Trump that's already destined to become a media circus. In the backseat, wearing a red MAGA cap pulled low, West leans into his phone, words tumbling out in a torrent to Trump's son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner.

"I need to go in the exact way that a foreign dignitary would go," he insists. "I'm not going to step outside and put my life in danger. I put my life in danger by wearing the hat and I need to be loved and respected as such. Because there could be someone out there that could be trying to take a shot at me. There's people who potentially want to kill me for wearing this hat. If I get killed for wearing the hat in front of the White House, you're not going to win any midterms."

Beside him sits Nico Ballesteros, a teenager from Orange County, camera in hand, worn down by months of near-constant filming and fighting to keep his eyes open.

To the public, the October 2018 White House visit was a surreal collision of politics and celebrity. West — who once blasted George W. Bush for not caring about Black people, and who now goes by Ye—delivered a rambling, live-streamed 10-minute monologue that veered from hydrogen-powered planes to "male energy" to his own bipolar disorder, one that was instantly lampooned on late-night TV, parsed on cable news and dissected across social media.