History
On July 21st, 2020, TikToker and rapper Mike Manik, using the username @the_kanye_east, posted his first video presenting as Kanye East, a bizarro parody of Kanye West. In the video, East reads a number of famous Kanye West tweets like West might (shown below).
Manik continued to post videos as Kanye East over the course of the year, growing a small following on TikTok. On January 29th, 2021, East posted his first significantly successful video to TikTok in which he asks viewers to answer in the comments, Who Was In Paris? garnering over 900,000 views in four months (shown below).
On March 3rd, 2021, Kanye East posted a video announcing he was going on TikTok live to rap users’ comments as they come in. East has since become known for this, with clips of him rapping user comments both live and on previous videos often going viral on TikTok. For example, on April 24th, TikToker @antijax posted a clip of East rapping comments including, “Fortnite balls, I’m gay, I kidnapped autistic kids, Lil Mosey is white,” garnering over 500,000 views in two months (shown below, left). On April 25th antijax posted a similar video titled “Obama Hamburger Sussy Balls” (shown below, right).
These audio clips became colloquially known as “Fornite Balls” and “Obama Hamburger Sussy Balls.” On April 28th, a YouTuber uploaded a compilation of Kanye East rapping making mention of “Fortnite Balls” in the title, garnering over 158,000 views in two weeks (shown below).
On the same date, East posted a video to TikTok rapping comments, garnering over 2.3 million views in two weeks (shown below).
Fortnite Ballz
On April 30th, 2021, Kanye East dropped an official studio recording of his first song “Fortnite Ballz,” named after a phrase commenters frequently make him say on his “Rap Your Comments” live streams (shown below).
Source: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/kanye-east