Der Kanye West Guide to Life

Foto: Jason Bergman

Immer, wenn Kanye West etwas macht, ist das ein Ereignis. Ja, Kanye West ist der wohl berühmteste Rapper auf unserem Planeten, also wird alles, was er macht, automatisch abgedeckt, weil sich Leute für ihn und das, was er macht, interessieren. Aber anders als beispielsweise Jay Z, mit seinem sorgfältig gestalteten Image, oder Drake, der trotz seiner emotionalen Texte in erster Linie ein Entertainer und eine Semi-Kunstfigur ist, ist Kanye West ganz einfach Kanye West. Im Guten wie im Schlechten, zu jeder Zeit. Wenn er einen Song veröffentlicht, kannst du dir sicher sein, dass es der beste Song war, den er schreiben konnte, als er ihn geschrieben hat. Wenn er ein Konzert spielt, spielt er dieses als ob es das letzte Konzert seines Lebens wäre. Wenn er aus Versehen in ein Schild läuft, läuft er so dagegen, als ob er das verdammt nochmal so geplant hat. Ihm ist es egal, dass er manchmal wie ein Idiot aussieht; stattdessen ist er sich sicher, dass das den Leuten das Gefühl gibt, Kanye West besser zu verstehen. Manche mögen das egoistisch nennen, wir bevorzugen es, es als selbstbewusst zu bezeichnen.

Das ist ein Teil davon, was Kanye zu so einer interessenten Figur der Presse gemacht hat. Einige Zeit nachdem Graduation releast wurde, hat Kanye West aufgehört, Interviews zu geben und sich zunächst auf seinen Blog und später auf seinen Twitter-Account konzentriert, um uns alle Dinge mitzuteilen, die er in seiner Musik nicht eingebaut hat. Und uns war das recht so—Kanye ist eindeutig ein musikalisches Genie, und manchmal braucht Genialität keine Erklärung. Letztes Jahr, als Kanye HipHop durch Yeezus neu definiert hat, hat Kanye sein Schweigen gebrochen und mit den beiden unterschiedlichen Medien The New York Times und dem W Magazine gesprochen. Seitdem hat er soviele Interviews gegeben, dass man sich alleine dadurch ein Bild davon machen kann, wie er denkt und dass er einer der größten Musiker auf dem Planeten ist. In diesem Sinne haben wir Kanye Wests letzte Interviews als Zeichen seiner Weisheit herangezogen und geschaut, was er uns über das Leben sagen will.

Foto: Jason Bergman

"Dopeness is what I like the most. Dopeness—people who want to make things as dope as possible and by default make money from it. I don’t follow rules of normal celebrity. Sandals with socks. Keep it gangster."

„I’m a creative genius and there’s no other way to word it." Dopeness is what I like the most.

„Everything in the world is exactly the same."

„Fashion isn’t always practical. It’s more about emotion. It’s more about swag. It’s more about, you know, pussy."

„Life is life, there’s ups and downs. It’s like a car crash—you could just be driving, and just out of nowhere it happens. The point of life is getting shit done and being happy."

„In order to win at life, you need some Kim K skills."

Foto: Kim Kardashian's Instagram

„I’m totally weird, and I’m totally honest, and I’m totally inappropriate sometimes. And the thing is for me to say I wasn’t a genius, I would just be lying to you and myself. I’m not running for office, I’m just here to make good music, and make people feel good when they hear my music."

„The person who wrote that, were they involved with anything last year that was as culturally significant as the Yeezus tour or that album?"

„Don’t ask me a question about something you saw in a tabloid. Don’t try to antagonize me. It’s not safe for you in this zoo. Never think that I’m not from Chicago for one second and think you can walk right up and disrespect me in front of my family."

Foto via @tonyhawk auf Instagram

„I’ve got my astronaut family. Becoming famous is like being catapulted into space—sometimes without a space suit. We’ve seen so many people combust, suffocate, get lost in all these different things. But to have an anchor of other astronauts and make a little space family …"

„I think there’s something kind of depressing about a product being final, because the only time a product is really final is when you’re in a casket. As my grandfather would say, ,Life is a performance.'"

„The longer your ‘gevity is, the more confidence you build."

„Okay, now I’ve got the Will Ferrell sample, so I need to say something that finishes the verse. But people have to know not what it means. So it’s like problem solving to get to the point where you’re saying, ,Going gorillas!' It’s difficult sometimes."

„,New Slaves.' The second verse. I argue that it’s the best rap verse of all time. It’s the Coming to America or Anchorman of a verse… it’s everything that a rap verse is supposed to be.

„What the media calls ,meltdowns', I call ,turn-ups'. The media does everything they can to break creatives, break artists, to break people’s spirits, and I do everything I can to break media."

„When you say justice, it doesn’t have to be war. Justice could just be clearing a path for people to dream properly. But you can’t win every single fight. It’s a long war, and if you’re out there trying to blow up every single building, you won’t win the war."

„I hang around architects, mostly."

„The concept of Kimye has more cultural significance than what Page Six could write."

„I’m not into all that snobbery. Because you know what? We have the loudest voice, we have the loudest communication, and all we want to do is make awesome stuff—god flowing through us, and us being little baby creators and shit."

„Like, you remember when you’d see future movies and everything was in the sky. Like, it moved in the sky. That’s the internet. That’s our future sky. We thought we knew it was in flying cars. We didn’t get flying cars, but we can send movies like in two seconds."

„I knew when I wrote the line ,light-skinned friend look like Michael Jackson' [from the song ,Slow Jamz'] I was going to be a big star. At the time, they used to have the Virgin music [stores], and I would go there and just go up the escalator and say to myself, ,I’m soaking in these last moments of anonymity.' I knew I was going to make it this far; I knew that this was going to happen."

„There’s moments when I stood up to drug dealers in Chicago and said, ,You can’t have my publishing. Come and kill me. Do whatever you’re gonna do, but you’re not going to bully me, you’re not gonna stop me, because my mother made me believe in myself.'"

„Go listen to all my music. It’s the codes of self-esteem. It’s the codes of who you are? If you’re a Kanye West fan, you are not a fan of me. You’re a fan of yourself. You will believe in yourself. I’m just the expresso. I’m just the shot in the morning to get you going, to make you believe that you could overcome that situation that you are dealing with all the time."

„I don't like walking around with people thinking I'm doing uncool shit, because there's nothing I'm doing that's uncool. It's all innovative. You just might not understand it yet. But it's cool. Family is super cool. Going home to one girl every night is super cool. Just going home and getting on the floor and playing with your child is super cool. Not wearing a red leather jacket, and just looking like a dad and shit, is like super cool. Having someone that I can call Mom again. That shit is super cool."

„,Fuck you' is my message."

„When a kid falls in love with an airplane or a bike or a dinosaur—especially if you're an only child and it's not because of the book that the sibling was reading—it's like, fuck, you mean to tell me that the dinosaurs walked the earth and stuff like that?! That's amazing! You mean to tell me that these giant multi-ton crafts can fly that fast and that loud, and they can flip, and there's danger, the possibility of them exploding? That's fucking cool! You mean to tell me that this girl with this fucking body and this face is also into style, and she's a nice person, and she has her own money and is family-oriented? That's just as cool as a fucking fighter jet or dinosaur! And just as rarely seen."

„People told me I couldn’t rap. People had all this advice for me about how I shouldn't try to rap. And I wouldn’t even say I’m a rapper, I’m more of a messenger than a rapper. I want to utilize the best resources that we have and have a conversation. And this new place that I’m going to and what I want to do it has to be someone that says because I’m—the thing is I’m speaking to everybody, but I’m also speaking and sending queues to the right people to say, ,come and help me, help everybody else, you will win with me' you will win."

„Yeah. I’m not trying to regurgitate myself. I showed—showed people that I understand how to make perfect. Dark Fantasy could be considered to be perfect. I know how to make perfect. But that’s not what I’m here to do. I’m here to crack the pavement and make new grounds, you know, sonically and society, culturally. I’m gonna keep doing music, but what if people told me I couldn’t rap, what woulda happened? What if people told me I couldn’t perform. I’m only 36 years old; I have other goals and other things. And I’m gonna use my platform, every platform, to stand up and say, ,I want to make something, I want to make the next Ralph Lauren.' I always felt like I could do anything. That’s the main thing people are controlled by, thoughts, their perception of themselves. They’re slowed down by their perception of themselves. If you’re taught you can’t do anything you won’t do anything. I was taught I could do everything, and I’m Kanye West, aged 36. So just watch the next ten years."

„Steve Jobs made the internet usable. This is the information age, we barely scratched the surface. There is things that are moving. The entire music industry was hit by a fucking glacier by the internet and Sean Parker, just like that glacier up in there, and Steve was like no, no, wait a second, come on, give him a little time. There won’t be any music, if you just give it away like that. You know what I’m saying, but shit it’s changing."

„People are going to look at this interview and say, ,Hey, I understand what he’s talking about.' People are going to look at this interview and say, ,I don’t like Kanye. Look, he looks mad. I don’t like his teeth.' They’re going to say, ,Why doesn’t he just focus on music? I liked him as music.' They’re going to say, ,Hey, I want the old Kanye, blah blah blah.' But one thing they will do, they will play this interview in five years. They will play this interview in ten years and say, he called that, he called that, he called that, he said that was going to happen, that was going to change. I refuse to follow those rules that society has set up and the way they control people with low self-esteem. With improper information, with branding, with marketing … I refuse to follow those rules. It’s about truth, it’s about information, it’s about awesomeness, and the only luxury is time. Like I could care less about any of these cameras, all I care about is my family, I care about protecting my girl, protecting my baby, and protecting my ideas and my dreams.

Mit viel Liebe zusammengestellt aus Kanyes Interviews mit W Magazine, GQ, The New York Times, Interview Magazine, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, und Zane Lowe.
Von Drew Millard, Eric Sundermann, Kyle Kramer, and Aliza Abarbanel.

**

Folgt Noisey bei Facebook und Twitter.

MEHR VON NOISEY

In diesem Video von 1996 seht ihr Kanye beim Freestyle-Rap in einem Plattenladen

Wir sollten dieses 105-sekündige Video von Kanye beim Freestylen zu schätzen wissen, denn eines Tages wird alles Wissen auf der Welt einem Mann gehören und die Menschheit wird aufhören zu existieren.

Wir haben den Typen reviewt, der Kanye West auf der Straße überfallen hat

Am Wochenende hat ein unbekannter Rapper Kanye West aufgespürt und ihm seine Rapkünste vorgeführt.

Kanye West kehrt zum Banaroo zurück, damit er es ein für allemal erobern kann

Wir werfen einen Blick auf Kanyes desaströsen Auftritt beim Bonnaroo 2008, um herauszufinden, warum er beschlossen hat, dieses Wochenende nochmal dort aufzutreten.