Whenever Kanye West is interviewed, you can expect it to be an event. If he’s not promising that he can make the “human race’s existence better,” he’s detailing his “rich people problems.” And in his newest interview with Annie Mac on BBC’s Radio 1 show, he drops some new gems on his design aspirations, the recent shootings across the nation, and that political promise he made last year.
On wanting to create an affordable sneaker with adidas: “I’m going to adidas and I’m like adidas, ‘I know you’ve never made a shoe under $50 but we have to make a shoe that costs $30 and I’m gonna be the coolest shoe of all.’ To me, this thing I’m saying is the thing I’m most excited about of anything I’ve ever done. To be able to take all of what I’ve learned from the best designers and making collections with fashion people ripping me up alive and dissing me saying ‘don’t quit your day job’ and all that, to be able to get to the point of being able to make something that everyone can touch and have that visibility.”
On wanting to work with IKEA: “I have to work with IKEA, make furniture for interior design, for architecture and I know that if I do a minimalist apartment inside of a college dorm where the TV goes on the side of the wall. ‘Yo IKEA, allow Kanye to create. Allow him to make this thing because you know what, ‘I want a bed that he makes, I want a chair that he makes – I want more products from ‘Ye.’”
The three stages of witnessing a Kanye West rant
On violence in America: “We are numb, we’re numb to 500 kids getting killed in Chicago a year, we’re numb to the fact that it was seven police shootings in the beginning of July. We’re numb to places on the earth that we don’t live, like our life is okay but it’s okay for other people’s lives to not be okay.”
On that 2020 presidency run he announced last year: “When I talk about the idea of being president, I’m not saying I have any political views, I don’t have views on politics, I just have a view on humanity, on people, on the truth. If there is anything that I can do with my time and my day, to somehow make a difference while I’m alive I’m going to try to do it.”
On his 2015 headlining Glastonbury set: “I started off the show and I completely messed up the music. And me, as you can imagine by this phone call, I’m a bit of a perfectionist…so it really put me into a slightly depressed state and it put me back in the position of when I was in high school and I got fired from my job, or when I played my music for R. Kelly and he told me he was going to sign me and then three months later I didn’t have any money, I couldn’t afford a haircut, I couldn’t take my girlfriend to the movies and I’m still in my momma’s bedroom, working on beats and I was that close to being signed by R. Kelly. I don’t usually get nervous, I prepare, I get fully prepared. When that music messed up in the beginning, it tapped into my nerves and when you’re nervous or vulnerable something special and something different can happen.”
West’s interview will air 2 p.m. EST today (August 1).
REVOLT hit Kanye West’s “Famous” music video premiere. Watch below.