Kanye West continued his recent publicity blitz by sitting down for an interview Thursday (Feb. 25) with BBC’s Zane Lowe. Kanye’s interview game is on point right now: honest, passionate, eminently quotable and simultaneously self-confident and self-critical. Who else could refer to “the future” as “the futch” and get away with it?
At one moment, Kanye burst into tears — apparently the first time he’s even done that in an interview — talking about Louise Wilson, a friend and mentor from the fashion world who died last year (“the baddest professor of all time of any fashion school ever”). Not long after, he joked about his frequent attempts to provide his daughter North West with a new sibling. He lavished praise on Drake, Paul McCartney and Ralph Lauren; he was equally vehement in his dismissal of people in the fashion world who condescend to him.
Check out some of the best quotes, and watch the full interview below.
“Nothing should be exclusive. Everyone should have the opportunity to drink from the same fountain.”
“I did not know how to communicate at all. I had my point — my message was simply like your egg, my semen, we change the world. I imagine that’s going to sound wrong — I like saying shit that sounds wrong anyway. We have the right to be wrong sometimes.”
On Drake: “Let’s be respectful and truthful: the hottest rapper in the game.”
“I didn’t come here to be liked; I came here to make a difference.”
“The whole cadence [of ‘Only One’] is trap. As soon as Paul starts playing, I start singing — in trap.”
“Fusion is the future.”
“Innovation gets too much credit. … As Steve Jobs told me riding down the West Side Highway one day, there’s no money in innovation. The money is in repetition.”
“I think people think I pander to fashion particularly… but I believe the world can only be saved through design.”
On rappers: “We can deliver the moments that will flash in front of people’s eyes before they die.”
“Everything that I ever said will happen, will happen.”
“Class is the new way to discriminate against people, to hold people down.”
“The Grammys are so twice a day. … If I had an assistant that could only give you the right time twice a day, at a certain point you would want to fire that assistant.”
“I’m super hypercritical — I’m a human being.”
On Drake again: “He’s delivering a level of product to humanity that is of high quality… I don’t have any advice for this young man, but what I can say is run, fly, go as fast as you can, don’t stop. And any time I can be of any service, any advice — whatever you need… anything that we can collectively do to deliver more awesomeness to the world as a team.”
Source Billboard