Transcript: Kanye West Interview Before MBDTF Releases 101.3 KDWB
Kanye West: You know, reporters, they'll bash me because I'll do comparisons of myself to Maya Angelou or to Karl Lagerfeld or something. But any creative can compare themselves. Like, there's five-year-olds that you can compare to me if they're completely creative and completely one with the energy and their dreams. And I think, like, Alexander McQueen, Marc Jacobs, Lagerfeld, certain Warhol, Kondo.
People ask me about that cover with the phoenix. I'm like, if I was five years old and somebody had that drawing, I would be jealous of it. Like, man, how'd you come up with that? The girl with no arms, with the wings. Like, man, that's awesome. Look at those colors.
Because society has kind of broken us down to not really feel what we feel anymore. And so many people base their stuff off of trends or what's happening on radio, what they heard before. And there's only a few characters. Not so much that we're geniuses, but we're dreamers. And we're just bringing our dreams to life constantly. And everything I'm trying to bring a piece of my childhood out in every piece of music that I put out there.
So there's no way a reporter could break it down and say, you're doing this, you're not doing that. I mean, I'm offering so much more. The songs are seven, eight minutes long. How do you even send this in for reviews? Why would people even play themselves to even review it? How do you review songs where Rick Ross comes in six minutes after a guitar solo? You haven't even heard that before.
And then just for the sake of showing that you have some type of hip hop intelligence or knowledge or love of the first Wu-Tang album, you knock a half star off of it. I've never got a classic rating or a perfect rating. But I made College Dropout, Late Registration, Graduation, set the tone for all rap music after the fact. That thing was coming in and getting 3 and 1 half stars and just dumb shit that writers wanted to. It's like, please, just don't even give your opinion.
It's only a couple of people walking the earth that's really going to be up to 8 o'clock every morning dedicating their entire life. I put no anonymity. I put myself in a line of fire. It's like straight up the kid in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese kid in front of the tank right there. I'm in front of the social, the media tank. I said, Jesus died for our sins. Michael died for the sins of our media. Jesus had the Bible. He had Wikipedia.
Just fighting. I feel like fighting that battle that Mike had. And I fight it also with explanations. People say, oh, you're over explaining yourself. Well, there's things that won't ever be explained within my time. And I feel like when I explain myself, I'm explaining Michael. I'm explaining McQueen. I'm explaining the kids that just committed suicide two weeks ago in Chicago. I'm explaining all of that because I felt suicidal. I felt hurt. I felt compromised in a way.
At the Grammys, when I got exposed to blogs, it was like the worst thing that could ever happen to me, getting exposed to blogs. Do you remember this outfit I had, where I had these really cool shades on, and my chest was out with all these chains and stuff? Basically, like how I dress today. Not today, but you know how I dress on the VMAs. I was like, this is what I want to do. And then the next day, I saw these blogs. It was like, he was wearing gloves, and he had this. And they basically tried to compromise me and beat me into the submission of regular walking down the street-ness.
And I can't do that anymore. I don't base my taste level off of what the trends are, what the common perception is. Or it's just like, say, with the Bush comment when I originally made it. People agree with it, so I got hell for it. And then when I cut Taylor off, people disagree with me. Cutting it off. And it completely ended my tour. And I lost everything because of it. Nonetheless, both things is exactly how I saw it.
And I stand up here. I'm like, am I the only one that's not crazy here in this situation? And everybody's like, it's the alcohol. No, it's not the alcohol. It's the system, it's the way it's set up. It's the fact that the last four albums of the year at the Grammys are Dixie Chicks, Herbie Hancock, Ray Charles, and Taylor Swift. And that's not accurate. It's just not accurate. And that has nothing to do with race. I just named two black people.
You can see the amount of work that we put into this. I put my entire life into it. I put my life on the line. I say shit people would not say on record and have to face up to and go to church the next day after I made the porn song and be like, hey, I liked it. I made a song about it. Now what you going to do?
Just to deal with that level of compassion and sincerity, it's actually not what I get written off as an asshole or so arrogant. And it's like, what's so arrogant about that moment? If anything, it's selfless. If anything, I'm walking around now with half an arm trying to sell albums and having to go in and walk in rooms and be afraid of my food getting spat in. And people, I lost all total respect for you. And no one wants to just sit and look at the reality.
Let's just look at the 2 plus 2 equals 4. It's the best video of the year. No, it's the best video of the decade, the most influential, most memorable. You can't tell me anything that we remember more in the past 10 years. So the audacity of it losing anything, anything. It should be like Lauryn Hill when she won all those Grammys. She just couldn't lose.
It should be like, because guarantee if it was the other way around and Taylor Swift was 15, 12, 15 years into the game and on her 40th video or 50th video and she made the video of her career, do you think she would have lost to a brand new artist? Hell no.
So hey, I'm not pandering to try selling records to get people to like me more. I would like people to like me because I'm likable. One of the reasons is the Twitter. If Michael Jackson or Mike Tyson, if they had Twitter, what if Michael Jackson could really explain on his Twitter why he hung the baby out the window? And then people would be like, oh, man, I kind of feel you on that. That makes sense to me now. And that's what's so good about having Twitter.
And people didn't want me to have it, because the press, they always take little sound blocks, little sound bites, and they'll try to flip it to be a negative. I don't know why it's like they don't want me to make music. OK, you want this to not be available this year? No Kanye West album? Oh, you want me to be taken off Earth? Like, for real? Like, die, nigga, die, like what it said on Twitter? Word?
OK, so no Jesus Walks, no Gold Digger, no Heartless, no Stronger, no Runaway, no Toast for the Douchebags, no Power. None of this. Just me die because I told the truth.
I want you all to Google Emmett Till, if anyone knows his story. But it's basically a media neo-Emmett Till situation. His girlfriend was white, and he whistled at her from across the street, and someone, some guys that saw that, he whistled like at this white girl. And he got beat to death. And his mother left to open cast it because they wanted to show the world what they had done to him. And I remember seeing that in Jet Magazine.
And if you could read the amount of comments or the people who commented on it in this situation, you know, the idea of cutting somebody off at an award show, I didn't know that was so new. I didn't know this was the first time the music ever played on someone. Like, if you take The Dream, who wrote Single Ladies, and he was at the Grammys, as soon as he wanted to say something, they completely played the music before he could even say hi to his mom or anything.
And then the fact that an award show, let's deal with the Truman Show aspect of it. The next day, they're probably giving some type of conference about how you should eat salads on Wednesdays and stuff like the next day at the same spot, at Radio City. So it's no reality to the situation. But then also what I learned, there's no reality to celebrity.
And because of everything that I've been through, it's led me to the point to be able to be a way more expressive artist, deal with way more reality. You can't take anything away from me at this point. Canceling tour. I was touring with Lady Gaga. I was going to have, like, you know what I'm saying? Who also went on to, like, Meteor, and I completely lost everything, but I gained everything because I lost the fear.
I used to pray for God to deliver me from pain and fear and all these different things. And in a way, he did. Say, if I'm getting sued by a gangster or something like that, what you going to do? Go over to my mama's house? I don't have no mother. You going to go to my girlfriend? I don't have a girlfriend. I don't have a daughter. You know. What are you going to do? Cancel everything I ever had? What more can you take away from me?
And that's what I'm saying about any media, any person. And I think without, you know, releasing all the fear and all the what if this happens, I wouldn't have been able to make the runaway film like the way we did it. I wouldn't be able to make the music. And I'm just at the very beginning. Now I've finally cracked out of the shell.
And there's no... As you can see when I talk now, it's not really that same joke of the ego and the arrogance and the dumb cocky shit I used to say. I'm really past the concept of ego. My whole thing is I really want to just help people by bringing levels of culture, ballerinas and crashing them right next to hip hop or sitting with Beyonce and working.
How can we take this to where Michael took it and even take it further? In music, we respect the past so much that we almost, if Steve Jobs respected the first computer so much, we wouldn't have iPads and iPhones today. So we have to use our technology to be able to put out better music. Technology is the reason why we can do Good Fridays. You couldn't have done that in the back in the days when they had 24-track reels, and it took so long.
Literally, I'm programming Good Friday things over the phone and saying, put this chorus here, and checking it on emails. And because of that, you all get more product, better, high-quality product. Did you hear the beginning of Dark Fantasy? Just the layers of those vocals crashed up against RZA, and that's using us the history of everything we have.
It's like Chris Martin would talk to me about the drums, the black drums and stuff, the 808s, and how rock wouldn't have that. And for us to juxtapose and crash the guitar sounds with synthesizer sounds with strings, with cellos, with classic Broadway melodies, with very little kid type. If I was a little kid, I would make a song called Toast for the Douchebags. That would be what I would sing in gym or something against 808 drums and then hard Wu-Tang sounds above it with amazing raps and then with poetry and everything.
And that's what this art form, these are like paintings, especially for this album. Sometimes we go on Good Fridays and just joke around and put out what we're feeling off the cusp. But this power, 5,000 hours. 5,000 man hours to make the song. And you can hear it. So much work rewriting, rethinking about every line.
I just needed time alone with my own thoughts. Got treasures in my mind, but couldn't open up my own vault. My childlike creativity, purity, and honesty is honestly being crowded by these grown thoughts. Reality is catching up with me, taking my inner child. I'm fighting for custody with this responsibility that they entrusted me. As I look down at my diamond-encrusted teeth, thinking no one man should have all this power.
But when I'm... The subjects... Of the battle of creativity. And I feel like I'm a crusader of opening people's minds. Because in America, to have taste, the way we bash people, the way we call people gay if they look at the mirror too long. And not that there's any wrong with anyone being gay, but just the fact that just thinking of high schools, it's like taste has been thrown in the shallow box.
Like, you're shallow if you're into putting yourself together better, or if you want to take time to actually look at a black and white movie as opposed to looking at a bunch of explosions. And you can't masculinely do that. But if you look at Fellini films and back in the days when men used to really get suited up. And actually, it's almost like you're borderline not masculine if you open the door for a woman. Or if you have some taste in that aspect, and it's just growing.
And what I really appreciate about what the Runaway film shows, and people like kids vibing with it, is that it does show a protective male figure with some type of taste that would be protective of his lady under any circumstance. And that type of imagery needs to be an option.
So once again, that's another reason why, even though if, as Pink, the most credible artist in the world, says, I'm the biggest piece of shit on Earth or whatever, even if that's the way people feel and they feel like they've lost respect for the reality that threw me into the racist box, I have to like white people more than any rapper ever. Look at my pants and stuff. That's like. Look at the people I collaborate with.
Even for me, where I visited my father, where I was the only black kid during entire summers because he stayed in the suburbs. And where I stayed with my mother, we stayed in gang-infested communities and having to navigate between those two worlds. And learning how to speak both of those languages and still be myself. And that's helped me so much to be able to communicate, because that's exactly what I do. It'll be super gangster rap right next to really, really pop melodies.
So it's just saying, in this, I don't think that my journey or my struggle or what I want to do can be solved within one album process or maybe in one life process. But just like Mandela, and forgive me for using, you know, grandiose political comparisons. But just as Mandela blew up the buildings and eventually became president, sometimes, contrary to popular opinion, you have to blow up the buildings. You have to make a change.
If you could see the emotion in Justin's face when he lost to the Dixie Chicks. And CeeLo was sitting right next to him, broke crazy. I don't know what song. I can't even tell you a song that they won for. And I have nothing against the Dixie Chicks. It was just wrong, though. It was so incorrect.
And oh, why do you care about that? Well, you're a musician, so you shouldn't. But Kobe cares if they deduct 12 points that he just put in the basket. What if the Lakers right now just took it away? No, you don't win a championship, no. We know you won, but no. Come on, man. You know what it is. Be happy you got a car, man. No, that's what they asked us to do.
Going to award shows is like getting dressed up, spending all your life getting dressed up, giving everything you have to your girlfriend and everything, making sure that she's straight and everything. Now you're putting on your suit. You go do red carpets. You take pictures. And then they open up the curtain, and there your girlfriend is there cheating on you. That's what you got dressed up to see. And then they tell you, come back next year. You get to see it again.
If you say anything, then you lose everything. If you say anything, then you lose everything. If you say anything, then you lose everything. So with that, thank you very much.
Event Date: November 5, 2010