The man who has gone viral for shutting down Kanye West at TMZ is from the boot state.

Van Lathan has become quite the overnight sensation after confronting Kanye West during the rapper's visit to TMZ. During the visit, Kanye sat with TMZ head honcho Harvey Levin and suggested that slavery was "a choice."

You hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years? That sound like a choice.

After Kanye made his controversial statement he ranted to the TMZ Live crew about his new method of "free thinking" when reporter Van Lathan stood up boldly and told Kanye his recent ramblings have been way off base and out of touch.

I think what you’re doing right now is actually the absence of thought. While you are making music and being an artist and living the life that you’ve earned by being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives. We have to deal with the marginalization that has come from the 400 years of slavery that you said for our people was a choice. Frankly I’m disappointed, I’m appalled and brother—I’m unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something, to me, that's not real.

Lathan is from Baton Rouge and often refers back to his Louisiana roots. As recently as yesterday he acknowledged his hometown on Twitter.

His followers are increasing rapidly as people continue to praise Lathan for saying what a lot of us have been thinking—that Kanye basically lives in a "Calabasas bubble."

Kanye did approach him apologizing profusely, but we don't know what became of the conversation after the tape stopped rolling. Yeezy did hop on Twitter to clarify his comments, but much like his previous ramblings, it was too little too late.

Are you surprised that it took someone from Louisiana to put Kanye in his place? I'm not.

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