In the wee hours of the morning in America, Kanye West was in the U.K. sitting down for a live interview with SHOWStudio’s Lou Stoppard. Participating in the coveted In Camera interview that the likes of Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood and Lady Gaga have done in the past, West discussed his Yeezy Season 2 fashions, as well as a plethora of other topics in the two-hour long interview. Touching on topics from his wife Kim Kardashian, to the whereabouts of his upcoming album, to his unborn son, the interview gave an insightful view into the life of the man who just announced his potential run for president.
As one might imagine, the lengthy talk included memorable one-liners and streams of consciousness from the one and only Mr. West. Peep some highlights from the SHOWStudio In Camera interview below:
On his unborn son:
“I don’t have a name for him, but what I hope for him is that he can feel purpose. That he can learn that he has the opportunities.”
On bringing down the prices of his clothing:
“I’m not H&M; I don’t have big factories. How can I get the price point to where it needs to be if I’m running an eight-person design team? I’m saying it’s going to take time to get there. This is what I’m saying.
On Kim Kardashian:
“What we have is the highest level of communication that has ever happened in human existence. My wife, she’s like MTV, NBC, blah-blah, all that combined. She’s number one Instagram. And then, the entire family. And then you have me, and my entire music family. So basically, there is no ad you could put in any magazine that could somehow add up to me, or my friends, or my family, just walking on the street and getting photographed. That is the fucking reality of 2015, people.”
On why he wants to run for president:
“Certain things that I’m compelled to do in life, I don’t feel the need to find justification for. It had been talked about for the past five years with my team, and I decided that I was going to announce it.”
On Barack Obama:
“I don’t want to make comments or give opinions on what other people have done. I think he’s done a lot of great things, and I think there would be no chance of people even considering the concept of me running, if he hadn’t have won.”
On racism:
“If you could put racism in the battery of your phone, it would never stop working.”
On whether or not rap is exciting for him anymore:
“I get excited by ideas, not by responsibility. So sometimes when I’m writing a rap, it starts to feel like a big responsibility.”
On being respected as a designer:
“People are like ‘Man, I know I saw people lining up for three days for your shoes, but one day will you be respected as a designer?’ I designed that shoe didn’t I? Nobody else’s shoe is getting lined up for. So I think there’s a lot of 14, 15-year-olds, 25-year-olds, 35-year-olds who respect me as a designer.”
On his regrets for not getting an education:
“I think I would be further and more dangerous. Education is important. I’m envious of people who have read multiple novels and multiple philosophy books. I wish I had more information; I’m thirsty for knowledge. I’m busy with my own ideas and I have A.D.D., as soon as I pick up a book, then I’ll hear or see something that sparks me and it makes me think of 30 things I wanna do, so I put down the book and start working on that. I’m envious of information. So College Dropout, now me at my age, I’m looking like ‘What were the reasons I lost money doing this? What were the reasons I failed at that?’ It all came to not having the playbook. To not having the information.”
On Caitlyn Jenner’s coming out:
“The first thing I thought about was black radio hosts maybe possibly making jokes about it, because the black culture is generally so homophobic. And news cycles are just constantly trying to find some news and some interesting things like, ‘this rapper has this transgender person in his family.’ But then it was like f**k what people say, f**k what they think. I feel proud to be in a family that has so many people breaking ground for the generations to come.”
On changing his album name to SWISH:
“I wasn’t sure if I was gonna keep that name [SWISH]. I just felt like I didn’t wanna walk around with the name So Help Me God for the amount of time that I was making the album. I just felt like that was a heavy backpack to carry. So SWISH just kinda lightened the load, so I could just let it be what I want it to be, so I could just work on the painting and find something.”
On his personal fashion ambitions:
“I just want to be five years old. When I was five years old, I picked out my outfit for kindergarten. I would go to discount to a discount furrier – my mom would bring me to a discount furrier – and I would keep grabbing furs. ‘What about this, Mom? What about this one?’ And they would always be too expensive, the ones I liked. So I just want to be five years old. I loved clothes before I knew a f**k about the fashion world.”
On My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy being heralded as his best album:
“So many people rate Dark Fantasy as like one of the best albums, and Yeezus and 808s are so much better and stronger. Dark Fantasy is almost like an apology record. ‘Power’ was the least progressive song that I ever had as a single […] People want to talk about how much they love that like it’s Thanksgiving dinner. But how long has Thanksgiving dinner been cooked for?”