2013 Jimmy Kimmel Interview (Part 2)Kanye West

[Kimmel]
So now, that was funny, right?

[Kanye]
I imagine the skit was probably funny too.

[Kimmel]
It wasn’t that funny, to be honest with you. It was a five, I’d give it. So I do want to ask you one more thing about the tweets because I just want to be clear--bring up that...yeah, that--do you really think I look like SpongeBob?

[Kanye]
It’s the first thing that came to my mind.

[Kimmel]
Where were you when you were writing those tweets. I like to imagine, on the toilet.

[Kanye]
Yeah, that’s when I think of the best shit.

I was just at my place here, my old home here in LA. As we were writing it, there was a frustration I was getting out, but also they were really funny to me as I was writing it, and I just thought it was so amazing that I was saying this in real time, in real life. You know, with my position, people are so scared to say anything, you know, as soon as you’re a celebrity, you’re not to say anything anymore. But just to completely wild out…

The only reason I could do that is because we could speak on a similar level, and we can go back and forth.

[Kimmel]
It was a crazy thing, to see that happen, as far as just the technology, and all of a sudden, everyone in the country knew you and I were having a really dumb fight.

[Kanye]
I just thought that that was amazing, to crack media, in a way. You know, I feel that media does everything they can to break creatives, to break artists, to break people’s spirits, and I do everything I can to break media.

[Kimmel]
From my standpoint, sometimes I’ll think of things and maybe it’s two o’clock in the morning on Saturday night, and my wife will go, “Don’t tweet that. Do not tweet that.” Because people take things out of context, but you just do it, you don’t care.

[Kanye]
You shoulda saw the second set of tweets…

[Kimmel]
Save them for next time.

I do just want to say congratulations on your new baby. In fact, I brought you a little gift. I made fun of this, but there really is such a thing as leather jogging pants, and there’s some tiny little leather jogging pants

[Kanye]
Fashion isn’t always practical. It’s more about emotion, it’s more about swag. It’s more about, you know, pussy. It’s more about, like, club. It’s more about style and stuff.

I remember me and my boy Virgil, that created the line Pyrex Vision. We sat as interns at Fendi like six years ago. We had cue cards and everything, and the leather jogging pants is one of the things we presented that didn’t go through, and the reason I brought that up in the Zane interview is because there are people who made whole careers off of creating leather jogging pants. It became a phenomenon over the past three years. And it was to say, you know, I would sit with Hedi Slimane, who’s now the head designer of Saint Laurent, and he’d say, “Stop giving these big brands your ideas and everything.” And it would just be like, what I was trying to express in the Zane interview was, like, me--I know I’m hip hop, and a rapper and everything--but I’ve got ideas that mean something if I could put the proper production around them. So when do a Nike Yeezy or a Louis Vuitton shoe, the production around it was at the same level as the production on my CD, or when me and Rick Rubin or Mike Dean of whoever are working together. But if I go out and make my own t-shirt or something, and I call it “Kanye,” everybody’s gonna think about when I just called myself a creative genius, and say “What’s so genius about this?” But when people line up for the Yeezy, they’re like, “Oh, wow, this is like really genius.” You need that production.

But currently in fashion and the way the fashion world works, there’s no black guy at the end of the runway in paris, in all honesty. And that’s what I was talking about when the Truman Show hit the boat.

[Kimmel]
What about a Steve Harvey collection?

[Kanye]
Yeah, no. There’s no Steve Harvey collection. No extra buttons on jackets or anything like that.

But for Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson had to fight to get his videos on MTV because he was considered to be “urban.” This is Michael Jackson.

[Kimmel]
That’s true. He was considered a Black artist and was not right for MTV at that time.

[Kanye]
Yeah, a black artist. So, for me, think about this: When I’m in Paris and I’m sitting in Fashion Week for nine years, and South Park makes fun of our outfits and all this, or people don’t understand why we’re there, I’m getting called names. Like stuff you can’t even say on TV. And I still can’t break that wall down. At a certain point, it’s like, Michael Jackson trying to get his videos on because, who do you know who’s known more for clothes than me? To not be able to do and produce to the highest level, and to have a meeting with everyone. I’m talking about Andrew Rosen of Theory, this guy over here, this guy who runs this company, Leanne [?]. These are the real people who produce the clothes that are on your back. Zara, out there with Ortega, Francois Pinault, everyone. And everyone just sort of looks at you like you’re crazy and like you don’t crash the Internet. And you’re just like, “How can you get a shot?” And then you try to do it on your own, and like, real designers will work for a rapper, and you just cannot overcome it.

I mean, my grandfather drove the first cars in the marches just to get clean water, and one of the parallels I wanted to do for you is, like, Richard Pryor used to always talk about, he just wanted a clean plate. He just wanted to serve his stuff on a clean plate. So if I do an interview in W Magazine, right, and they take all these classist shots at me because--it’s not about racism anymore; it’s classism, that’s what I talked about.

Paula Deen, she was old-school with it. They’re like, “We don’t do it like that anymore, Paula Deen. We’re classist now.” So this classism is what they do to try to say, “You’re a rapper,” or “Your girl’s on a reality show. You’re not up here with us. You know, we’re old money, we--

[Kimmel]
It’s snobbery--

[Kanye]
It’s snobbery. And 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. All we want is a real shot. Not: OK, I’m a celebrity, so that means my line has to cost ten dollars a t-shirt. No, I understand about quality. I understand about fabrics. I spent ten thousand hours at this. I’ve dedicated my life to this. And a lot of people say, “OK, you have to do music.” 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.” That was the point of the Zane interview, to say, people don’t stand up to protect their dreams. People are too scared of getting, you know, spoofed in a way. [Turns to Kimmel]

And the irony of it is, think about a creative person in school. When you picture them, you’re probably picturing them all the way in the back of the class sketching or maybe getting beat up, and I’m the one creative, and this is the reason why I did this, because creatives have gotten beat up my entire life, and 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.” No matter how many people tell me, “Stop believing in yourself! Stop seeing what you can do! Stop affirming what you’re gonna do and then completing that in real life.” That’s the improper way to do it. 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. The time you spend with your family, that’s the only luxury. So this concept of “luxury” is improper to me. You know, with Nike, with Apple, you remember there was phones that cost 4,000 dollars?! Somebody pull out a Vertu phone right now, you look ridiculous, but there’s people who still spend five-thousand dollars on this bag, ten-thousand dollars on this to say, “Oh, we’re better than you.” I mean, taste, culture, art, you know, just the quality of your life. This is what I’m here to do, so when I compare myself to Steve Jobs or Walt Disney, Howard Hughes, David Stern, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Jesus of whatever it is, I’m saying, “These are my heroes. These are people I look up to. This is the type of impact I want to make on the earth.” If I can make this type of impact up to this point, what can I do, if you call Bob Iger and say, “Yo, give him a shot.” If you call Oprah and say, “Yo, back this kid. This kid, his parents were educators. He wants to educate. He wants to look at curriculums and say, ‘How do we simplify that?’”

Exactly what I did in music, I want to apply to product, I want to apply to education. This is what my company Donda is about. I could rap all I want, but without that Roc-a-Fella chain, and Damon giving me that Roc-a-Fella chain. I don’t care how beats I sold to whoever, I couldn’t have made it to the point to make “Jesus Walks.” And now, even as a celebrity, I’ve reached a ceiling. And the way paparazzi talk to me and my family is disrespectful, also. We bring something of joy to the world. When people hear my music they have a good time. And I should be respected as such when I walk down the street. Don’t ask me a question about something you say in a tabloid. Don’t try to antagonize me. Cause, you know what, 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 and my family constantly.

And people say, “Well, you signed up to be a celebrity, blah blah blah…” It’s like, you know what, and I understand paparazzi, you gotta get your money, it’s hard out here, but let’s have respect for each other. You do help me get money, paparazzi, you show people how fresh my outfit is, that helps me influence people.

[Kimmel]
But when they show up at your house in the middle of the night, and your wife and your daughter are there, there’s no human decency there.

[Kanye]
It’s a lack of decency.

[Kimmel]
Kanye West, everybody.