Los Angeles, Dec 16 (IANS): Rapper Kanye West apparently has been expressing adoration to Adolf Hitler for almost 20 years. According to a new report, he has been praising the Nazi leader since as far back as 2003.

Kanye's former collaborators claimed that the 45-year-old musician had been expressing his controversial views when he was working on his debut album, 'The College Dropout', which was released in the following year, reports aceshowbiz.com.

One of the collaborators, who went anonymous in the Rolling Stone report, claimed that they would get into heated discussions on the topic of Nazis and the German dictator.

One other said that Ye was purposefully implementing Nazi techniques in his rise to fame.

"I feel like he used those techniques to get to where he is, to be honest," the source told the publication.

"He was just so fascinated by (Hitler) - someone that can have complete control over people and how he did it."

Back in October, Van Lathan Jr. revealed that Ye made anti-Semitic comments during his infamous interview with TMZ back in 2018, though that part was edited out.

According to the media personality, the 'Donda' artist professed his "love" for Hitler and the Nazis during the interview, in which he also enraged people by saying that slavery was a "choice."

"I already heard him say that stuff before at TMZ," Van told co-host Rachel Lindsay at the time.A

"I mean, I was taken aback because that type of anti-semitic talk is disgusting. It's like, I'm taken aback any time anyone does that, right? But as far as [Kanye], I knew that that was in him because when he came to TMZ, he said that stuff and they took it out of the interview."

He went on to say, "If you look at what I said at TMZ, it goes from me saying like, 'Hey Kanye, there's real-life, real-world implication to everything that you just said there.' What I say after that-if I can remember, it's been a long time-was, actually, '12 million people actually died because of Nazism and Hitler and all of that stuff,' and then I move on to talk about what he said about slavery."

Van also noted that the "12 million people" part was taken out of the final cut.

"The reason they took it out is because it wouldn't have made sense unless they kept in Kanye saying he loved Hitler and the Nazis, which he said when he was at TMZ," Van explained.

"He said something like, 'I love Hitler, I love Nazis.' Something to that effect when he was there. And they took it out of the interview for whatever reason. It wasn't my decision."

Kanye has been facing backlash for his anti-semitic comments on several occasions. Most recently, the ex-husband of Kim Kardashian got his account suspended on Clubhouse in addition to being banned from Twitter and Instagram once again.