Fans were shocked last November after Kanye West had a meltdown during a stop on his Saint Pablo tour, which included him leaving the stage after only performing three songs.

It wasn't too long after when news broke that the superstar rapper had been checked into the UCLA Medical Center for "temporary psychosis due to sleep deprivation and dehydration."

According to 'Ye's childhood friend GLC, however, Kanye was exhibiting signs of the impending breakdown for years.

GLC is a fellow Chi-Town rapper who at one point was so close to Kanye he served as a pallbearer at his mother Donda's 2007 funeral.

“I wasn’t surprised,” he told Life & Style during a recent interview. “I saw it coming.” According to GLC, it was the death of Kanye's mother that put him in a "dark place" he couldn't escape from. “I tried to rearrange his brain,” he says. “But he tried to snap on me.”

After seeing Kanye in interviews over the last few years, GLC says he barely recognized the guy he grew up with.

“It’s like his body is there, but [not] his soul and his spirit,” says the 42-year-old. “It’s somewhere else.”

It was when Kanye married Kim Kardashian and made a 2013 appearance on his mother-in-law Kris Jenner's talk show that GLC says he knew things were getting really bad with his friend.

“I knew he was losing it. I was like, ‘Who is this dude? Did they put a trance on him?’ I thought someone had him hypnotized!”

However, GLC adds that he can't speak on the Kardashian clan. “I don’t know the Kardashian family, so I can’t blame them."

The full interview can be found in the latest print issue of Life & Style.

Source: Life & Style