Go ahead and watch “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” if you want. But if it’s real drama you’re looking for, there no greater show on earth right now than the slow roll-out of Kanye West’s epic one-hour interview with BBC Radio 1’s Zane Lowe.
In the latest edition, West, no stranger to outrageous claims , goes off for more than 13 minutes against the corporations he said are keeping him down. But it’s the collateral damage left in his wake that might really shock you.
West took aim at two of the most beloved directors in Hollywood, Lady Gaga, and, most surprisingly, his biggest radio hit in the second clip, where he also got his Nostradamus on and warned that he’s more “futurist “than pop star.
Here are the five essential quotes from part two:
Got my eyes on you, Spielberg and Lucas
Angry that he’s not given enough credit for his creations, West talked about “the most innovative take on theater” he came up with for his
short film.
“I designed the set … okay, ‘Surround Vision,’ there should be a screen above you, below you, to the left, to the right and in front you also,” he said. “Then I pay my own money, that I get paid for doing ‘Gold Digger,’ which I never really liked that song, but I knew I would get paid for doing ‘Gold Digger.’ “
He talked about shooting the video, editing it for 30 days, building a pyramid set on the beach at Cannes, France and getting a standing ovation. And then? He does an interview in the New York Times to talk about his feat only to have his thunder stolen by two of Hollywood’s biggest moneymakers! “It doesn’t get mentioned in the interview, and then a week later they do an interview with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and they’re talking about what the next frontier of theater is gonna be and how it will be higher-priced tickets and it will be something that’s surrounding you and ba, ba ba! I said, ‘Wait a second! I just only did the interview to tell you people that I invented it! I made it!’ “
$90,000 kicks
The conversation kicked off with ‘Ye complaining that, yes, he makes music, but he’s frustrated that he’s limited to only a few lanes of creativity. “You guys don’t understand. You guys don’t understand that I did the [Air] Yeezys and they E-bay’d for $90,000!” he said of his custom Nikes. “And people wanted them … bad as whatever. But I didn’t get a call from Nike the next day! You guys don’t understand that I’ve met with companies and they say, ‘What we’re trying to figure out how we can control you.’… If you’re an architect, if you’re a world builder and you have all these ideas … if you don’t ever get that out what’s going to happen?”
School uniforms are next
Laugh all you want about Kanye’s $120 sold-out A.P.C. , but he said that that’s all he’s been allowed to create so far. “T-shirts! That’s the most we can make, T-shirts!,” he said. “Our best perspective on T-shirts. But if it’s anything else, your ‘Truman Show’ boat is hitting the wall … I want to make uniforms for my high school basketball team. I want to make that one step, and then another step. And then eventually do uniforms for the entire city. Then I want those uniforms to be hot and make money, then I eventually want to be the anchor and the force behind a billion-dollar company … And I eventually want to be the anchor of the first trillion-dollar company.”
What does Gaga know about cameras?
West recounted a meeting he had with an agent at William Morris (not for nothing, but it was major cheese Ari Emanuel) and how he was told that no, he is not an inventor, but a celebrity who is useful to sell product. “If you can communicate this product, you can make money off the product,” he said he was told. “Cuz look at [Lady] Gaga. She’s the creative director of Polaroid … I like some of the Gaga songs, what the f— does she know about cameras?”
I AM a god
“We got this new thing called classism,” West explained. “It’s racism’s cousin. This is what we do to hold people back … And we got this other thing that’s also been working for a long time where you don’t have to be racist anymore, it’s called self-hate. It’s like the real estate of racism. Where, just like that, when someone comes up and says something like ‘I am a god,’ everybody says ‘Who does he think he is?’
“I just told you who I thought I was! A God! I just told you! That’s who I think I am! Would it have been better if a I had a song that said, ‘I Am a n—er?’ Or if I had a song that said, ‘I Am a Gangsta?’ Or I had a song that said, ‘I Am a Pimp?’ All of those colors and patinas fit better on a person like me, right?”
No Comments