While everyone else can only repeat the “Yeezy taught me” refrain from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy‘s “Blame Game,” Andre Pitts can say he actually lived it.
This 19-year-old Visual Communications student’s life was forever altered this past Friday when his graphic design class at the Los Angeles Trade Technical College was guest-taught by none other than Kanye West.
Complex caught up with the aspiring graphic designer to get the inside scoop on what went down in the Professor Yeezy-taught class and what the L.A. native learned from “the No. 1 most impactful artist of our generation.”
“It was on Friday at about 1:30 in the afternoon. I walked into my class and…then all of a sudden Kanye walked in through the door after we were done with our presentations,” Pitts told Complex. “Well my heart dropped, I didn’t believe what I was seeing. For four seconds I was like, paused. I was like, “Is that who I think it is?” After that I just started to try to pull out my phone and get a photo of him.”
The “I Am A God” MC, who was leading the class to satisfy his court-mandated 250 hours of community service, needed no introduction. He just launched into an almost two-hour dissertation about his thoughts on life in general and his inspirations.
“He was all over the place, but I mean, one of the main things he was talking about was…he was giving examples of different things and saying that having a Rolex or a Benz is not something that actually represents your success because there’s always something more expensive to buy,” Pitt said. “So, he was saying that success was really being able to do things for others as well as the people around you and yourself.”
According to Pitts, ‘Ye bounced from topic to topic like a ping-pong ball.
“He reminds me of my brother, the way he didn’t really stick to one thing,” Pitts added. “He talked about Tupac. He was watching the movie “Juice,” and he was inspired by Tupac being in the movie. He talked about how Ice Cube is one of his biggest inspirations and one of his biggest letdowns. He mentioned a little bit about how the media portrays him negatively, but he’s saying that he’s not anything negative, it’s just him being real and calling out bullshit all the time. He spoke about his grandfather, actually, and him being in Chicago, and after that it was kind of cut off short.”
Then, Kanye opened up the floor for questions from the students. No paparazzi allowed, though — he made all of the students turn off their cameras.
“People asked him about different artists, really. And then someone finally did actually ask about the Illuminati, and I don’t want to say too much because he did tell the truth this time but I don’t have it on film so I cant really back that stuff up. Someone asked if he listens to his own music, or if he listens to other people’s music. He said he likes to listen to his own music since he thinks he’s the best artist, still.”
Surprisingly, Kanye, who at times used his “big voice,” didn’t talk about his upcoming Adidas collaboration.
“He said that he doesn’t care about his Grammys but he thinks of them as reference points,” he said. “And that he can point back to them and say, ‘I’ve proven that I can do this, so I should be able to do this.’ So that’s what he was trying to get out, that he feels that he is able to do these things but that he’s being shot down by the fashion industry.”
One of the students did manage to asked The College Dropout rapper about the status of his new album.
“Someone asked him about that, he said he’s waiting on it,” Pitts said. “He didn’t say anything else except that he’s waiting for it to come out.”
Just like the rest of us.
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