It didn’t take long for Kanye West to start making promises. Not long into his first broadcast interview in years the 36-year-old rapper said “people are going to be talking about this interview in five years time”. They may well be. During the course of 60 utterly exhausting minutes aired on Monday night (September 23) Kanye addressed everything from leather jogging pants to Jay Z, wanting to run trillion dollar company to his daughter North – and how he’s the biggest “rock star” on the planet. He conducted almost all of it in one tone – LOUD. He hasn’t given an interview in years, and you can tell. This was a man getting it all out. The key theme was frustration, and lots of it.
We could have chosen 50 highlights – just take a listen – but here’s 24 of the wildest, weirdest, hilarious, poignant and angry highlights in quotes. As the chat came to a close – we say chat, this conversation was almost entirely one-way – you could hear DJ Zane Lowe saying “that was intense”. It was a full hour of headaches, inspiration and laughs. Here are some of the best bits:
On Music
“I showed people that I understand how to make perfect. ‘…Dark Fantasy’ could be considered perfect. But I’m not here to make perfect, I’m here to crack the pavement and make new grounds sonically and society, culturally.”
“I’m going to take music and I’mma going to try to make it three dimensional. Like on Star Wars, where the hologram will pop up out of R2-D2. I’mma going to make something which jumps up and affects you.”
On Michael Jackson
“There would be no Kanye West if it wasn’t for Michael Jackson.”
On Fashion
“I brought the leather jogging pant to Fendi six years ago and they said ‘no’. How many motherfuckers do you see with a leather jogging pant?”
“Both this song (‘Black Skinhead’) and ‘I Am A God’ were made after Hedi Slimane wouldn’t let me into his show.”
“Over the last 10 years I’ve spent 80 per cent of my time working on this and 20 per cent working on music.”
On Gold Digger
“’Gold Digger, I never really liked that song, but I always knew I would get paid for doing that song.”
On Lady Gaga
“Look at Gaga she’s the creative director of Polaroid. I like some of the Gaga songs but what the fuck does she know about cameras?”
On Yeezus
“There is no ‘Get Lucky’ on the album (‘Yeezus’). But it sounds like there’s hits on that album to me.”
“Rick Rubin – he’s not a producer, he’s a reducer.”
On The Internet
“The entire music industry was hit by a fucking glacier by the internet… Shit is changing.”
On Kanye
“People are going to look at this interview and say ‘Hey I understand what he’s on about’. I don’t like Kanye, he looks mad, I don’t like his teeth. They’re going to say ‘why doesn’t he just focus on music?’ ‘We like the old Kanye’. One thing they will do? They will play this interview in five years… They will play this interview in ten years.”
“If you’re a Kanye West fan, you’re a fan of yourself. I’m just the Espresso, the shot in the morning.”
“People classify my motivation speeches as rants. They say ‘why is he saying that, why is he doing that?’ I’ve reached a point in my life where my Truman Show boat has hit the painting. I’ve got to a point where Michael Jackson did not breakdown. I’ve reached the glass ceiling – as a creative and as a celebrity.”
“I don’t expect to be understood at all.”
On Megalomania
“People think a lot of my motivation is megalomaniac and self-orientated – to the contrary completely, I just want to help.”
On Kim
“Kim – she gave me everything. She gave me a family a support system. She was in a powerful enough situation where she could love me without asking for money. That was really hard for me to find.”
On Frustration
“You don’t realise. I am so frustrated. I am so frustrated. I’ve got so much I want to give. I’ve got ideas of colour palletes, ideas of silhouettes and I’ve got a million people telling me I can’t do it.”
On Kanye’s Code
“It’s in my code. It’s in my code. Have you ever seen Wreck-It Ralph? You remember how that girl in there – she was the glitch. You telling me people don’t look at Kanye West like the glitch, right now?”
On Global Brainwashing “Everybody is being served the nasty lunch food.”
On Dopeness
“Dopeness is what I like the most. People who want to make things as dope as possible, and, by default, make money off it. What I don’t like is people who only want to make money off things, whether they’re dope or not.”
On Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Control’ verse
“I don’t do diss records. Yeah, friendly competition, that’s cool. That’s fine. He’s one of our future messengers and I’m going to give him the jewels.”
Kanye Interrupting Taylor Swift At The MTV Awards
“To be a visionary all you need to do is make a decision off of your eyes, not your ears and your memory. So at the moment of the MTV awards, I made that decision off of my eyes. I was like ‘that’s not correct, that’s invalid’.”
You can watch the first of four 15 minutes videos of the chat below – or listen back to the whole thing*.
*Taking Paracetamol advisable
