Transcript: BigBoyTV Interviews Kanye West About Jesus Is King

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BigBoyTV: Alrighty. Big Boy's Neighborhood. I've been waiting on this one. And this one felt like it's been a long time coming. And I don't mean production. I don't mean going to the studio. I just had a chance to kind of speak with you often. We were talking about tuition into the school of experience. Jesus is king, is a lot of tuition into the school of experience, correct?
Kanye West: Absolutely.
BigBoyTV: A lifelong tuition?
Kanye West: Yes. I mean, it's up to him. It's God's plan.
BigBoyTV: I want to play something for you real quick. I think we did this probably 10 years ago, six to 10 years ago. And just hear what you say here.
[Audio clip playing]: "I'm not just a musician. I'm a Christian revolutionary visionary products person. I ain't here to dance for you. I ain't here to do a two-step. That's just a piece of..."
BigBoyTV: So that was probably 10 years ago. Did you always feel like this was a plan? Or was that always in the, as far as the windshield? Or does it look like it was a plan now that we're kind of in the rear view mirror? Did you always know that this was, you were going to end up here? I mean, 10 years ago, you kind of said it.
Kanye West: Yes, but I definitely was lost. I got lost. I got caught up in my own ego, my own strategy, my own ideas. I tried to hold everything in my own brain. And then I had to let go and just let God and put it back in his hands. But it's also the test and the testimony.
BigBoyTV: Do you feel like if you didn't go through everything that a Kanye West go through that you could see and have the texture of what you're doing right now?
Kanye West: I think he had to send me through some more experiences to be able to cast a wider net when he was ready to use me. Mental health, you know, having a nervous breakdown going to the hospital and having the stigma of being called crazy, actually, it didn't make my, it made me more relatable. It made it, a wider idea, everyone is dealing with health in some way. Like, me, being taken to my lowest. You know what I'm saying? Being called a coon by my own people. The guy that said George Bush don't care about black people is a coon because I didn't say I'm going to vote on Hillary Clinton.
BigBoyTV: Right. Right.
Kanye West: And that actually made me more relatable. You can't imagine, when I go through middle America, like, let me tell you, it's like, I was driving fast, I was looking at a property that's like 4,000 acres we were gonna buy out here, and I'm trying to drive fast to the freeway, and I hit a red light, and the guy say, "Now, how you gonna, where you gotta go so fast that you gotta drive this and cut me up? What, Kanye? Oh, thank you for what you're doing for our country. Thank you so much."
Like, you have no idea. You be out here in LA and New York and they'll have you all jacked up on Mountain Dew. They'll be having you thinking that like this reality is not real. Are connected to the idea of having their own land. People are connected to the idea of service to Christ. This is the Bible belt. This is America. This is where we are free to worship Jesus in the open. And that's a privilege.
Also, the idea, I'm gonna just jump right into this because I was like talking to James Corden earlier.
BigBoyTV: Same.
Kanye West: Yeah.
BigBoyTV: Okay, I wasn't. I wasn't.
Kanye West: And I told him, I said, look, my father's a Black Panther. My mother got arrested for the sit-ins at age six. They were fighting for us to have the right to our opinion, not the right to vote for whoever the white liberals said black people are supposed to vote for. You get what I'm saying? Then James Corden went in and said, "Well, this president, you're Christian, and this president, I don't see anything Christian about him." I said, okay, so last year, y'all tried to tell me who I'm supposed to vote for because I'm black. Now this year, white liberals trying to tell me who I'm supposed to vote for because I'm Christian. That would be like, I live in Calabasas, so everyone in my car's gotta be a convertible, huh? It's just all based on y'all vision of what I'm supposed to do.
And I understand like a lot of people, it's not a matter of whether you like it or who like it. We are in a country where we allowed to like whatever we like. I love Jesus Christ. I love Christianity. I love the Sistine Chapel. I love all the paintings. I feel that Christianity, there's no, people make spoofs of it. I'll be looking at Family Guy and I like Family Guy. I like Seth MacFarlane, right? But he makes jokes about the Christian faith. And I'm sure that's the way he was brought up, but I understand because North, when she talks about church as a positive connotation, a lot of us in those four walls, it felt like we were stuck in the pews.
So like what we said 10 years ago that you inspired for me to go there, we are now actualizing that. Another thing is this idea of apologizing. We'll apologize for saying George Bush don't care. Apologize for running on stage with Taylor Swift. Apologize for wearing the wrong color hat. I ain't apologizing. Y'all dealing with grandpa now. I done been through too much. I'm the founder of a $3 billion company. You think I'm finna listen to somebody online tell me who I'm supposed to apologize for?
BigBoyTV: Do you feel like, and since you did get there, do you feel any of the pressures when people say Kanye did let him down? When we think about George Bush don't care about black people, that's when everybody was like, oh, Kanye. And then when we look at Kanye now, I mean, if we agree or not agree with you, just when you say the wrong color hat.
Kanye West: Yeah, think about this for a hat. This is one of my main things. It's like, what is the culture? It's like, man, this ain't for the culture. We doing something for the culture. We are orphans, bro. We are cultureless. We don't have our own culture. We signed two culture vultures. We signed our life away. Our contracts are culture vultures. Think about everything that's cultural. Taking a knee is cultural. Being on social media is cultural. Wearing high fashion is cultural. Pushing a foreign is cultural. All these things are not owned by our culture. So who designed the culture? What does it mean to do it for the culture? That's why I do it for Christ. And when you bring Christ in, that's a hell of a blanket. That's a beautiful big blanket.
BigBoyTV: But I do have to, and I do have to kind of sit with you and talk about when we say the beliefs, the things like that. And this isn't an interview that I wanted to talk about anything political, but you did kind of go there. You know what I'm saying? You did kind of go there under the guise of, you know... And I understand that. But do you feel, and we haven't had a chance to talk, do you feel like people didn't understand Kanye at the time? How much of that was Kanye? How much of that was Kanye not being on his mental game? How much of that was Kanye on the breakdown and the breakthrough?
Kanye West: I love this also because Kobe Bryant won five championships. He sprained all kind of muscles all through his body, tore ligaments. And for people to go to Kanye West, where I'm playing in the highest level of mental sport, I had Mark Zuckerberg wanting to meet with me. You know what I'm saying? I have people come and wanna meet with me that are makers of the world at this point. So I'm playing at this mental sport as a black band, post-Pac, post-Biggie, Puff Daddy, Jay-Z, in debt, completely controlled. The management knows how much exactly you're making on your tour, and it's just $2 less than what your house costs. And I'm ending up in debt every year.
And then I have a breakdown. I should have a hospital in the back of our room for what I'm dealing with. Don't NBA players got like knees iced every time? I need to just like leave every day, just go right to UCLA for the level of game and sport that I'm working at. But we don't make Kobe's legacy be about one torn ligament, and my legacy ain't about, oh, he got mental health. That just come with the level of sport I'm playing at. What you talking about? People's trying to sun me left and right. Strategize. I've been canceled. I've been canceled before they had cancel culture. I was canceled before they had the term.
BigBoyTV: Do you care about any of that?
Kanye West: I do. I care about everything.
BigBoyTV: Does it not rub you the wrong way, but does it get to your core when people do feel like...
Kanye West: It definitely don't rub me the right way. Johnny Gill up in this...
BigBoyTV: What do you say to people that say you turned your back on?
Kanye West: Exactly. 100%. I have turned my back on the idea of victimization mentality. We are locked up. We went from one and four. We went from one and four to one and three, but we always pointing at the white people, but yet we want to spend all of our money on foreigns. We want to spend all our money on luxury as opposed to going and buying some land. America is for sale and there's a lot of barren land. Disney bought a lot of it in Florida. But the culture has you focused so much on fucking somebody bitch and pulling up in a foreign and rapping about things that could get you locked up and then saying you about prison reform. Like, bro, we brainwashed out here, bro. Come on, man. This is a free man talking.
Democrats had us voting Democrats for food stamps for years, bro. What is you talking about? Guns in the 80s? Taking the fathers out the home? Plan B? Lowering our votes? Making us abort our children? God should not kill. I can't tell y'all how to feel, but what I can tell you honestly is how I feel. And when I sat there seven years in, six years in, to the Obama administration, when I was sitting at the Met Balls, when I was sitting in front of white people and they thought, I wouldn't thought you would like Trump because of the racism. So you mean to tell me I make every decision based off my color. The most racist thing a person could tell me is that I'm supposed to choose something based on my race.
If that was the case, I wouldn't have never wore pink polo. I wouldn't have never wear skinny jeans. Everywhere I go, people's pants smaller than mine. And I'm the one who, you eat fish sticks because I have skinny jeans on. I'm the guy who said, stop gay bashing, right? I took that L, Consequence took that L. He had to go to Queens the next day. He took, you know what I'm saying? Like hip hop was dropping F-bombs. And I said, stop, you can play the footage. I said, stop it. As soon as I said, close on Sunday, just like Chick-fil-A, there was LGBTQ articles saying they need to boycott my company.
I said George Bush don't care about black people. As soon as I wore a red hat, I'm a coon. You can't do enough for nobody out here. So how about I stop? You get what I'm saying? People forget so quick.
BigBoyTV: Think about that. The funny thing is people are like, man, this is going to be harmful for your career. Did you worry about that?
Kanye West: Man, I fear and love God. When you remove the fear and love of God, you create the fear and love of everything else. You're talking to somebody right now that only fears God and Jesus has won the victory, bro. This is my opinion. I'm not thinking about what I'm saying based on how other people are gonna feel. I'm just saying how I feel. And who you know do that? I ain't calculating nothing. And God is using us to show off. I'm talking about when I was calculating things, I was ending up in debt.
Next thing you know, I'm not even on Instagram and Yeezy is the number one Google search brand on the planet above Louis Vuitton, above Nike, above Adidas, Yeezy and I'm not even a part of the culture. I'm canceled. I'm canceled. I don't have no gram. I'm not doing it. I'm not on the gram. And it's the number one brand. This joint, last valuation I got was $3 billion. And these are people trying to buy it, so it must be worth six.
BigBoyTV: Yeah, we're going to have to, on a lot of stuff, we're going to have to agree to disagree. Because I think we're going to walk out the door with the same way that we walked in. You know what I'm saying?
Kanye West: But that's what I've been saying. Let's agree to disagree, people.
BigBoyTV: Yeah, and I'm fine with that. I'm here to celebrate you. I'm here to celebrate Jesus as King. When we want to sit down and really go at it, we can do that. You know what I'm saying? We haven't had a chance to do it on the phone, whatever. But I'm here to celebrate you, celebrate the music, this message, not message that you're trying to get out, but this presentation. I've had a chance to know you. I've had a chance to see your work. I was a fan first. And I've seen a transformation as well. And this transformation, sometimes it's not the most popular thing in hip hop, the most popular thing in our culture.
Years ago when you brought me Jesus Walks, we were one of the people that was like, man, we gotta play this record. And in the record, you told us, if I talk about Jesus, my record won't get played. It was almost like you almost dared us to. Now when you hear Jesus is King, why did you make this particular album?
Kanye West: Because Jesus is King. I was making I Love It a year ago. I denounced Christ. And God brought me the hardest year of my life and said, are you ready, my son?
BigBoyTV: What's the hardest year? What does that mean?
Kanye West: Come on, man. Trump hat, slavery's choice. Man, that's a lot on my health. I already got HSP. I already been diagnosed. Then you add that and I'm sitting in a plank position on every question I can't find out the answer. Like, man. I'm a human being, even though I can channel art. I work for Christ. Christ has, God has supernatural powers. He can cover all of this, but I still am human.
And when I was serving my ego and serving my legacy, serving my culture, serving my city, all this kind of stuff, I am a six star, I'm an 1800 star Michelin chef. And imagine that level of intricacy to the project that I put into music, that I put into stage sounds, that I put into shoes, you know, imagine a 1600 star Michelin chef having to serve 10 different tables every night. And that's what happened. That's what we be thinking about on Instagram.
There's a person, they can insert comments at will. They can assert comments that they wanna get you. Let me tell you something. There's something that Zayn denounced that I know for a fact. The game Angry Birds has a motion like this. And if you remember, girls are just not known for playing a lot of video games. This game was popular with girls. It was a scientific calculation that this set off a certain dopamine specifically in the female mind. What else go like this? Tinder. What else? Instagram.
Instagram. So, the funny thing is the people that control that, rappers be telling me, I got your bitch. Instagram got your bitch. Instagram got your bitch. Like, I'm sorry, I know my Christian scorecard just went down for using a profane piece of language. You ain't got your Instagram gap. Oh, y'all, because they're going to do it for the gram before they do it to you. They're going to send a picture to the gram before they send it to you. Social media doing more to hurt families than it is to help families, and families are the key to health.
BigBoyTV: You were in one of the most popular families on Instagram. How do you divide that up?
Kanye West: Oh, man, just come on. UCLA, pull up. I'm going to just have this hospital visit right now. UCLA. Right.
BigBoyTV: Are you afraid of losing your audience, Ye?
Kanye West: I told you I'm only afraid of God. I'm only afraid of my daddy, God. I done been 15 years. I'm telling you, God is showing that you can have your own thoughts, bro. I've been canceled before there was canceled culture. Who told you that my career would be over. The same people that are telling you that you can't have a right to say who you will vote for, those people will be soon to take Jesus out the school. Those people will be soon to remove Jesus, period, from America, which is the Bible Belt. Those people will be soon.
Man, come on, man. I ain't finna go Alex Jones level with y'all, man. Come on, man. What y'all want? Wake up. Wake up, Mr. West. Wake up, culture. Wake up. Everybody think they so woke, but they following the rules of what woke's supposed to be. Hip hop ain't never been about following rules. It been about doing what you feel. I'm going to take the Louis. I'm going to throw it like this. I'm going to do it with the polo. I'm going to do it like this.
Even like the way I talk, hold on, let me use my African American voice. Let me use my Disney approved voice. You know what I'm saying? We're not even speaking in our own language, bro. Like, we talk louder than this. Africans talk louder. Italian moms talk loud. We talk louder, but we speak in our corporate voice. Or we don't want to ruin the deal voice. Or this why...
Bro, I love y'all, man. And I love me. And I love Christ. And y'all should love to see this. I'm not gonna tell y'all what y'all should do. I'm just doing what I do. If you love it, then cool. If y'all wanna me, it ain't gonna make a difference, honestly. I done been killed so many times on social media and I'm still here. I'm still talking, look at me.
BigBoyTV: Do you care?
Kanye West: I told you I care about everything.
BigBoyTV: Okay, perceived. Which could be a crazy word, perceived, as far as like how people look at you. Do you care about that?
Kanye West: I need people to just... I don't even need anything. I'm praying that people can see that Jesus won the victory. When I was making raps in service to the devil, talking about you a hoe, I love it, all this, I was in debt. Now that I'm in service to Christ, God is showing off. He's showing off in my life. He's showing off in my family. I'm just saying, like, y'all gotta think, man. Black people are like the housekeepers of America. Think about how your housekeeper, you know what I'm saying? They got a certain volume. They supposed to talk in the house. We got a certain volume. We supposed to talk in America.
So what do you think, if a housekeeper is screaming in my house, what do you think the other housekeeper gonna tell him? Be quiet. Be quiet, yay. Be quiet, yay. Don't disrupt the house. Don't disrupt America, yay. We orphans out here, but don't disrupt.
BigBoyTV: There is... What if some people feel like you siding with the slave master too? If we're in the house and it's the Trump household, it's like shit, you siding with the slave master. If we're both in the house and I see you rolling through wearing the red hat, I'm like, man, he just like this dude over here. Am I speaking that? Maybe. Are others speaking that? Maybe. But I'm saying, how do we separate that? If we're both in the house, we're like, man...
Kanye West: I'd rather deal with somebody who called me an N-word to my face than a person that signed me for a lifetime deal on a 255 page of my contract.
BigBoyTV: I got you. I got you.
Kanye West: I'd rather know what I'm dealing with. That's why when I walk in with anyone and keep nothing on my chest, I'd be like, this is what I'm dealing with. But I'm here. This is what I'm dealing with. It has been institutionalized slave mastery and slavery. Our mentality is only one of the two. Now we need to find freedom. You got two forms of freedom, financial freedom and freedom through serving something higher than yourself.
BigBoyTV: Are you free now? Are you working on being free?
Kanye West: I'm a human being. I'm delivered and everything happens for a reason. I'm yay.
BigBoyTV: Are you still our voice?
Kanye West: Absolutely.
BigBoyTV: Thank you.
Kanye West: Absolutely. That's the thing. You are quite easily controlled if they know everybody going to be blue. If you go to a white bar, you're going to hear people talking about independent. You're going to hear people talking Republican. You're going to hear people talking Democrat. I'm not telling nobody to not vote Democrat. I love Obama. I love Lemonade. I love Wingstop. I love Polos. I love Jordans. I love Michael Jordan. I hate the back of Forest Whitaker's neck.
BigBoyTV: Where was that from? I forgot. Man.
BigBoyTV: Hey, Kanye, I do want to get into the music as well, man, because we can go in circles. Why did you start Sunday service? With Jesus is King here, why did you start Sunday service?
Kanye West: When I went to the hospital, one of the things that I wrote down was start a church in Calabasas. Now, this year, after this year, 200 tweets, all this type of stuff, I was like, look, God, take the wheel. You know how people say, Jesus, take the wheel? I let Jesus take the will, and I didn't even know what it meant to be slave, what it means to be saved. I didn't know what it meant to be saved.
I was talking about the Life of Pablo was a gospel album, and still it got a picture of a girl in a thong on a cover. I'm talking about this is a gospel album. But it shows you that people could want something, and there's no one around standing up and saying, this is how you get it. Like, it's people around us in the music industry that want to get out of debt, but ain't nobody saying, this is how you get it. It's people who want to get out of being... A brainwashed and they want to wake up for real, but ain't nobody saying this is how you get it. It's simple. The truth is right here in the word.
So I was four months in working on an album. I had the best luxury shock treatment of gospel possible. You know what I'm saying? 40 people singing, 60 people, 80 people singing about Jesus. And I had one of my friends come over and we were just, we're just having a good time and it's a good feeling. He said, man, it's just like one of them LA churches where everybody come around just talking about it's good. Where the word at though? People going to need some solid food.
And then we started talking about Christ. And then my dad, I was in the car. And I was talking about, man, you know, someone was saying, like, you know, we need to have a word. And he's like, yeah, you got to have some word. I was like, but, and now me and my dad got to this biggest argument about it. My dad was like, you got to have a word in church. Google it. Google it. And we got to it. I was like, dad, you know how many things I had to Google because you wasn't here? It was like... But he was right.
And I don't know if Google has that information exactly, but to insert the word, to put the gospel in it, it's funny because as I go on this road right here, there's still a thing where there's like a constant, you did this wrong. This was not culturally cool. It's not culturally cool to have a mental breakdown. It's not culturally cool to wear. Bro, I'm done with trying to like live for the, I got designs in me, man.
I used to watch Pole Position when I was a kid and make a car out of duct tape. And my mom would come in the room and be like, my son's a genius. And now we look at that product like that, and people are responding to that product. They responded to what we did with the 350s. We were sitting in a room, Demna, head of Balenciaga, Virgil. Jerry Lorenzo. All these designers are sitting in the same apartment that my wife got robbed at a few years later. We sat there and I remember when that soul came in and the turtle dove upper happened and it might have been 2 AM in the morning. Now that shoe is selling four million pairs a year. It's the new shell toe. It is the most impactful design in shoes.
And do you remember interviews when I was telling people, yo, I am the Tupac of fashion. I was like, I might not be the biggest musician because you got Michael Jackson, you got Tupac. You know what I'm saying? But with apparel, I knew it. And we just hit the beginning. This is the number one Google brand on the earth. And now I'm praying and saying, it's like we said 10 years ago, how do I do this all for Christ? How do I bring it all to the church to be a Christian innovator? Everything we do is for the church so we can heal, so we can go on missions, bring food.
We was down in the Bahamas with Rick Fox working on hurricane-proof homes. Soon as somebody, we figure out collectively how to fix that, that works for Haiti. That works for the Dominican Republic. That works for third world countries around the world. The amount of energy and engineers that went into turning the iPhone camera from one camera to two, and guess what we got here? We got three cameras on you. That takes super long to take a photo if anybody got the new iPhone. The amount of information and thought that went into that can fix the Bahamas, can fix Haiti.
So many people at MIT, let me tell you MIT right now, y'all in a box. They have you in a box. You can save the world, but you are working on things that are too small. Take a step back. Stop worrying about your college, your loans, stop worrying about what job that they got waiting for you in Silicon Valley. MIT, you can save the world. Kids in college, you can save the world. I'll put my life on this interview right now. It's up to y'all.
Y'all have the ability to just step back from what you think culture is today. It's not about any candidate. It's not about red or blue. It's about humanity. Y'all talking about it's 12 years of oxygen left. Talking about we gonna kill the earth. We can't kill the earth. We're going to kill the things that keep us alive on the earth and the earth going to survive. It's up to y'all. Y'all the future. Y'all the future. But what y'all working on right now? I'm working on this 3D printed thing that is funded by who though? Y'all could do it.
BigBoyTV: Sunday service, Kanye. You gotta get in the bars, man. Pac gave me these same bars, bro. That's why I'm here. And I'm saying, I was just asking, why did you start Sunday service? But the simple fact of, like I said, it wasn't the most popular thing to do. The world was watching. I would even go and I'd hear people say, oh man, you're going to that cult. I have a great experience when I go to Sunday service. And I actually see people relax. I've seen people stand like this at Sunday service. And then as we start to go, I start to see them. You know what I'm saying? So I see what Sunday service is.
Kanye West: Man, I mean, dressing people in all white all the time was kind of cultish, you know what I'm saying?
BigBoyTV: But that was just a... That was just a...
Kanye West: Tuition to do the school experience early on?
BigBoyTV: Yeah, that's just an early idea, you know what I'm saying?
Kanye West: I'm going to tell you what. We... When Rocky got out of jail, he came to Sunday service. And I'm here, I got the all white on. And it's funny, it's like, I helped get Rocky out of jail and he helped me get out of jail. Because when Rocky, I'm just standing next to him, he just all like swagged out with all the you know, ASAP and Aug and all his brothers and stuff. I was like, man, while I'm standing here in this white outfit, I can put some dickies on. I can put these power fades on or something, man. We ain't never have an all-white outfit again. Thank you, ASAP Rocky, for... For pulling up to Sunday service.
But you know, that's what I'm saying. Y'all on this journey with me, man. I'm your brother, man. I'm your brother. I'm your family, man. Wake up, Mr. West. It started early. It started from college dropout. We've been on this ride together. Now I'm in this place. I have four children. I am married for five years, bro. I am married for five years and I have four children and we have an anticipated rap album coming out. A lot of the information that's in rap ain't going to keep you married. I tell you that.
BigBoyTV: Is Jesus is King, is it a rap album, gospel album, or is it an album that you can't categorize?
Kanye West: It is. It is a rap album. I mean, as you might have heard, there was times when I said, I don't know if God want me to rap. I was thinking, I was like.
BigBoyTV: I heard you say with your pastor that you felt like you were making devil's music.
Kanye West: Yeah, because you're such a fucking, oh, I love it. Excuse me, Christian scorecard down a little bit, cursing some more. But I got to a point where I was always letting that Playboy magazine that I found when I was five years old had an effect on my music. It could never be 100% everything it could be, because I had to add that in, always. And it got to the point where literally I went from Jesus Walks to You're Such a Fucking Hoe, I Love It.
Oh, I bet you the devil was happy on that day. And where that record went, straight to what? Number one, quick.
BigBoyTV: Why did you make it?
Kanye West: Because I was asleep. Because I was drowned. Because I was lost.
BigBoyTV: What do you want us to get from Jesus as King?
Kanye West: The title right there. The fact that everyone says that is enough. There was times we would think about, well, let's call it Christ Jesus. You know, that's what the old folks say in the church. Let's call it this. Let's call it... And, oh man, you know what, Jesus King is too affirmative. Because Christians, we be out here, because on one hand, it's like, are we too judgmental? Are we not judgmental? Are we saying what we're supposed to say? Christians, it's hard to have a position because we so drowned out by music and culture. Oh, that's not cool. Take that preaching over there.
So it's Christians that told me the title Jesus is King is too heavy handed. Now people be hitting quints like, man, when that J.R. King, when that's dropping, when that Jesus King dropping. So there's an opportunity where people are coming for the music, but they may leave with salvation. It's easy, man. It's very simple. It is Paradise or Fahrenheit?
BigBoyTV: I hear you.
Kanye West: Either it's Paradise or it's that hot get down. Or it's Fahrenheit. And let me tell you, it's like, working for God. I told you 10 years ago it's all I ever want to do. Now I'm here. These interviews, to me, they remind me of when I first got with my wife. And people was like bringing up other women's name in the interview, and they was trying to diss my wife. And you're going to see some documentation. I'm spazzing on people. This is one of the most beautiful people ever lived. And now I've given my life to Christ.
I got this rap to say, what have you been hearing from the Christians? They'll be the first one to judge me. Make it feel like nobody loved me because literally the process of being delivered, you really be by yourself when it happens because the Christians don't believe you and all the people that's not Christian is like, oh, you weird now, you Christian.
BigBoyTV: How do you deal with the enoughs? And when I say the enoughs, I mean Christian enough, hip hop enough, street enough, corporate enough, black enough, brown enough, cool enough. Like, how do you deal with all those enoughs?
Kanye West: I done had enough. Right. Y'all done saw it. It was done. I was fed up. I was through with it. You know what I'm saying? I'm through with it, bro. I'm telling you, like, it's like, I serve Christ. You gonna give my opinion? It don't even matter no more, almost. You know what I'm saying? It's like, look, that's yay. That's your brother. I'm here. I must be here to stay. I ain't went nowhere. You got somebody. That always stated exactly how they felt. And really, you got to take flaws and all. We're all learning. You know what I'm saying? We're all learning.
BigBoyTV: I don't think that you're sitting here saying that you're perfect. But I do have to ask you, Jesus is King, the album. You know how you heard so much, man, I miss the old Kanye. I miss the old Kanye. Now this seems like it's even further when we were saying we miss the old Kanye. What does that do for Kanye, like your catalog? I go to a Kanye concert, do I hear Good Life? Do I hear Ninjas in Paris? Like what does that do for your old catalog that we enjoy so much?
Kanye West: Well, they made movies about Steve Jobs so y'all can understand who I am. Now, when you go to the Apple store, I don't be seeing no iPod 4.
BigBoyTV: We missed the old iPod 4, though.
Kanye West: We're going to go take you to eBay and get you the old Kanye and get you the old Avengers iPod 4 while you're at it. And we'll get you a Sega 8-bit.
BigBoyTV: Would you say you probably may never do another one of those songs again live?
Kanye West: It ain't even a probably. Like, no, oh, we could play that beat. I'm just adjusting. Even when I do Jesus Walks, I say, we ain't trying to turn atheists into believers. Now I say, we are turning atheists into believers. And it'd be all off beat and everything. I'd be like, yep. Yeah. There you go. Like we just, he can make it all good for him. He meaning specifically Jesus Christ. You don't get it mixed up with green juice and air one. You ain't getting mixed up with yoga. You don't get mixed up with, but I'm a good person.
Okay, that's what you gonna say you get to the gates. But I'm a good person. Take your, go on down there with that. You do not accept Jesus as your, but I'm a good person. And this is not dissing good people. Obviously, there's some Christians that's bad people. Real mean. I had an auntie that was real mean. This made me hate church, you know what I'm saying? I ain't want to be nowhere near it.
My daughter, I showed her a round image from James Turrell and she saw it and she said, that looks like church. My daughter was crying and said she needed to go to church every Sunday and it needs to be here. What six-year-old you know, or anybody that you know, when you think back to being six, that your idea of church was a positive, you had a positive thought association to church. In HMOs, you'd be like, oh, summer camp, or I played basketball, or I did this, you know.
BigBoyTV: Yeah, church did have a kind of stigma to it growing up. You know what I'm saying?
Kanye West: And we had a stigma because we started small. Because we only did church with our friends so we could learn before the whole world saw it. That thing needed to be tight to grow. And now it's a place where we pull up to Jamaica and people are well receiving it. And I appreciate the journey. I appreciate the suffering so that we know how Jesus suffered. I appreciate the doubters. I appreciate all the dynamics that humanity has to present because it allows me to be the only kid in a pink polo. And now it makes sense.
BigBoyTV: Do you think all this will make sense to some that feel like it doesn't make sense at the moment? Like at some point we like, man, now I see what brother was doing.
Kanye West: Not everybody going to make it across the gates. It's a very specific, you know, it's very, but since we're here for the interview, let me, talk about the idea of sin and repenting. When people have their own relationship with Christ, a lot of times, I got my own relationship with Jesus. It's because they know they are dealing with sins that they don't want to have to repent for. The difference, once you're delivered, everything that you do is in service to Christ, and anything that you realize wasn't in service to Christ, you will repent for.
I need to repent more. I'm sure there's things where I'll look at this interview and say, was that self-serving? Or was that in service to Christ? This is a big, big thing. They say, look, just focus on... Yep, I almost fell off that chair. Go ahead now.
BigBoyTV: God got you.
Kanye West: They'll say... If you talk about politics, then you are not in service to Christ. But to mute an African American's voice at this level is a form of slavery. And being a slave to the system and to people's perceptions and the reality of what people have chosen for our culture, since we are orphans, is not in service to God. And in the Bible, there's many topics of slavery. And we are African-Americans and we are still dealing with modern day slavery. We still have record contracts, publishing deals, touring deals, management deals. Radio deals. That we not the owners.
Until we really own our own community and really make Wakanda for real, this is going to take more than the Jesus chain.
BigBoyTV: We got to make Wakanda probably with us, too, though. You know what I'm saying? Man, I've been waiting. You know what I'm saying? The only one that can. I'm talking to Doc. I'm talking to y'all. We got this. Ain't nothing even need to say on camera. Even right now, I'm delivering the message. I'm praying that the kids at MIT know what I'm talking about. And other schools, Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Howard. Clark, like Parsons, all these schools.
Kanye West: You gotta know, here's another thing I'm gonna say factual is like, high school and college kids love me. I don't really like being called a celebrity. A lot of times people think celebrity, I take the celebrity, when people call me a celebrity, as a demotion. I don't take it as like somebody giving me props, so they put me in celebrity category. Or even when they say your career. I've been killed my career. But let me explain something to y'all right now. If you go to any high school, any college, I'm they favorite.
If you mix Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Steve Jobs, every version of any, or even Spider-Man, whatever y'all wanna put in it, it's like, yo, that guy, it's actually in Hollywood. This man didn't been put on medication. This man had to pay million dollars of paparazzi fees for slamming the Britney Spears paparazzi call. This man had been called crazy. This man had his whole culture turn his back on him. And he still is himself and given glory to God, a humble servant to Christ.
Because what I'm saying is I have love and fear of God and nothing else. So it's not in service of Christ for me to bow or be concerned of men. So I might come off away, but I'm working for my daddy. This is my personality. We're going to grow. It's ebbs and flows. We made it this far. It's going. Sunday service on a roll. I know people was up there. Even like, I love this right here when people come and give you like a, they want to tell you something. I told people, man, don't be like talking about them. What made you think I wanted to hear that? But bro, God, Jesus has won the victory.
This is the bottom line, man. You got different people working for you, right? No human being is perfect. The most amazing employees that I have have personality defects. Something I would like to change about them that they do all the time. Boo always get on the phone in the middle of interviews.
BigBoyTV: Right, right, right.
Kanye West: Boo trying to wrap the interview up. See? Case in point. Free? He don't ever be here. And every time he hear, he need a first class ticket. You get what I'm saying? But these people are powerful. These people are powerful. So you say that. Look at me. I work for God. I'm obviously imperfect. Obviously. But Kanye West, the Kanye West. Adidas, $2 billion in debt. $15 billion company, $2 billion in debt. Now I got a $62 billion market cap. That person now works for God.
There's going to be some ups and downs. I'm not always going to say the right thing. Matter of fact, it's my favorite to say the wrong thing.
BigBoyTV: You do that well.
Kanye West: I do it well. Every time someone asks you a question and you try to give the right answer, your life is a test.
BigBoyTV: Yeah.
Kanye West: And then you'll never have the right answer anyway. We're human beings, bro. Jesus is king.
BigBoyTV: I appreciate your time. I wish you nothing but the best, bro. And thank you for sitting down with us, man, and giving us your time. And like I say, man, sometime what's unpopular has to be said. Some things I don't agree with you on. But there's a lot of things I agree with you. And we got to continue to talk.
Kanye West: Yo, I just got to tell you before I leave. I was talking to... Man, I'm out of here.
BigBoyTV: No, go ahead.
Kanye West: I was talking to a friend of mine. I'm not going to say his name.
BigBoyTV: Say his name. Say his name. Say his name.
Kanye West: No, it's not Jay-Z because that made sense. I was talking about Jay-Z.
BigBoyTV: No, no.
Kanye West: But it was not Jay-Z. It was Jay Brown.
BigBoyTV: Thank you.
Kanye West: And I'm just talking. And he said, man, would you have a normal conversation? And he's like, you know, I don't always agree with a lot of stuff. I said, wait a second. I didn't ask you if you agree with the stuff I'm doing. I'm not looking for your validation. I'm only looking for God's validation. I don't care about what Black Twitter got to say about it. I don't care about it. I was just going in. I haven't talked to Jay Brown since then. But Jay Brown, I love you.
BigBoyTV: You care about what white Twitter say?
Kanye West: I'm happy that that's a term. Yes, and matter of fact, I do. I love Jack Dorsey, the owner of Twitter, that comes over my house and gives me business advice, looks at contracts, respects me, honors me. He is my favorite founder.
BigBoyTV: Jack Dorsey, Steve Jobs, Adidas. Don't forget about us.
Kanye West: Ray West, my dad. He has a water purification center. My dad couldn't tell you one rap. I might try to use that again. It'd always be like, you know, the commercial like, where'd you find a weed? I got it from you, dude. I got it from you, dude. It'd be like that. I got this rap on my album. They'd be like, like Tyler Perry made a movie for BET. Explains the best when it'd be me and my dad because it's me. My dad is me. And he's right there. And he's smarter than me.
Like he had to go to school. He couldn't cop out, but I'm gonna do this music. Like, and he was in a time where the world was more racist than it is now, if you could think that was even possible. And I was like, dad, you know, you don't even know one rap lyric. And the funny thing is I barely know any of my rap lyrics now. Cause I'm so focused on God. I'm so focused on my family. I'm so focused on building communities. You know?
You know the funny thing is, if you got so many black people, I don't know, we can just talk over here. We go.
BigBoyTV: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Matter of fact, I was just gonna stand up as soon as you started again.
Okay, that was Kanye West, Jesus is King, the album. Make sure y'all go grab that. Thank you, Kanye.

Event Date: October 25, 2019