• Kanye West

“[I hate YouTube because] the player is so ugly, and it’s presented in such a terrible manner. I want everything I do to be presented in an art context, as this is a form of sonic art. I was an artist originally, I have been in art school since I was 5 years old. I got scholarships to three art schools, Art Institute of Chicago, Saint Xavier, and the American Academy of Art, where I ended up going—and I dropped out because I had an assignment where I was supposed to do an ink painting or something, and I would take two weeks to do it, and when I looked at my work, I just felt that I would never be one of the great visual artists of the world. I just felt like I would end up like—and this is no knock to anybody that does this—but I felt like I would end up working at an ad agency or something like that. I wanted to make something of impact. I found that when I would drop samples, my friends would react to it more. I felt that I had a real talent in chopping and appropriating music. What I want people to understand about sampling and producing is that it’s really similar to—and I know this is obvious what I’m going to say, because I’m a black guy so I’m gonna name the ‘most obvious artist in the world’—Warhol, but it’s very similar to the way Warhol would appropriate a Campbell’s Soup can is the way I would sonically appropriate a Ray Charles sample or a Michael Jackson sample. Right now it’s a fight against the separation and constant dumbing down of culture, and I’m standing in the middle of it. So if you know what people say are my lowest moments, those moments where I sat and saw them try to dumb down culture, and I would not allow it to happen on my clock. So when I used to go to fashion shows with my boys and we’d be eight deep, it was almost like a civil rights, like a sit-in. They wouldn’t even let us in. They had no idea what rap would mean to this world, what rap would mean to the art world. Before the Kendrick Lamars and the A$AP Rockys, it was Kanye West in a hotel room at the Le Maurice getting a ‘no, no, no, no’ to every single fashion show. But I thought it was so important to get close to the artists who worked so hard on making a usable form of art—like this furniture right here, like everything that is in all these rooms that inspire us so much—and I fight in my position of being a very commercial celebrity boyfriend, I fight to push culture forward every chance I get. And I only frown because paparazzi ask me dumbass shit all the time, and I think about changing the world, and I think about what I can do to make things better. And, without further ado, I want to play you guys my new album. It’s called Yeezus.”

“I will be the leader of a company that ends up being worth billions of dollars, because I got the answers. I understand culture. I am the nucleus.”

• Kanye West
• music
• quote

“After I graduated from college with a theater degree in the mid-1980s, I learned that the most artsy and psychedelic folks with whom I went to school had gone off to Silicon Valley to become programmers. It just did not compute. So I flew out to California to find out what had compelled these Grateful Dead–listening hashish eaters to get so straight-laced and serious. Of course, it turns out they weren’t straight at all. They were building cyberspace—a task that required people who were not afraid of seeing their wildest dreams manifest before their own eyes. They programmed all day (and scraped the buds of peyote cactuses at night).”

• quote
• books

“Here is the secret news: All people are afraid. No one knows what they’re doing. Everything is getting worse. Your money is worthless. No one is properly dressed. The system is rigged. Your house will never be completely clean. All teachers are incompetent. There are people who really dislike you. Nothing is as good as it seems. Things don’t last. No one is paying attention. Shhhhh.”

• quote

Ben Bernanke's Princeton Commencement Address

• quote
• speech

“Once’s there’s a label for it, it’s all over.”

“We needn’t be slaves to the network’s schedule, but neither must we submit to the notion that we are equally disposed to all activities in all time slots.”

• books
• quote

“I COULD WRITE THAT BOOK! Well, I have no credibility, but…”

• dad

• me

• Kanye West
• video
• youtube

The New Aesthetic: The Police State is You