Kanye West's friend claims the rapper has been "kicked off" Twitter

The 51-year-old retired sportsman said: "My friend @kanyewest wants you all to know that he was kicked off of @Twitter for 12 hours."

Rick's post came seven hours after Kanye's last Tweet on the platform, in which he branded record contracts a "trap".

He posted: "90% of the record contracts on the planet are still on a royalty A standard record deal is a trap to NEVER have you recoup, and there's all these hidden costs like the 'distribution fees' many labels put in their contracts to make even more money off our work without even trying."

Earlier on Wednesday (16.09.30), the 43-year-old rapper had also been forced by Twitter to remove a post featuring the phone number of Forbes' Chief Content Officer, Randall Lane.

In another rant earlier in the day, Kanye slammed Universal Music and claimed the company won't tell him how much it would cost to purchase the recordings, and suggested the label was being racist as he tweeted "Black masters matter".

He wrote in a series of tweets: "UNIVERSAL WONT TELL ME WHAT MY MASTERS COST BECAUSE THEY KNOW I CAN AFFORD TO BUY THEM ... Everyone please cover me in prayer ...

"I AM ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS PEOPLE ON THE PLANET AND UNIVERSAL WONT TELL ME WHAT MY MASTERS COST BECAUSE THEY KNOW I CAN AFFORD THEM ... BLACK MASTERS MATTER (sic)"

And in other tweets, the rapper seemingly suggested musicians have become "comfortable with not having what they deserve".

He wrote: "We've gotten comfortable with not having what we deserve ... they allow us to have a little money from touring get some gold chains some alcohol some girls and fake numbers that feed our egos ...

"But we don't own our masters ... We our supporting other people's kids ... we could spend our whole life in the music industry but our kids gotta go work for another company when they grow up (sic)"