Kanye West has made a reputation for himself by being outspoken on social media and via other formats. This week, he headed to The Ellen Show, where the daytime talk show host asked him about this particular behavior. He responded in an 8-minute rant filled with nods to Walt Disney and Picasso before ending with commentary about how he needs to be like Michael Jackson in order to make the world--and especially the world of fashion--a better place. We can’t make this stuff up. Give it a watch, below.
Let me start by saying that Kanye West’s heart seems to be in the right place. He talks for a while about how his mom’s position as the first black female chair of the English department at Chicago State University really influenced him growing up. He says he was raised to make a difference and that’s why he asked Mark Zuckerberg for $53 million in that twitter debacle a few weeks ago.
That part, at least is pretty coherent, but there’s so much of this video that is straight up an earful of insanity. Kanye West tells Ellen he isn’t interested in thinking, asking her, “What’s the point.” He then contradicts himself by thinking out loud a lot. He “has ideas” that will make “the human race existence” better. Eventually, he talks about how people these days aren’t really limited to one art medium. Instead, he cares about people and he puts that into his music but namely his fashion? I’m not really even sure exactly where he is going with that entire section of his rant. There are also some comments about working with Payless and how his Payless deal will help solve bullying, too. If you don't have eight minutes to devote to Kanye doing Kanye, this is sort-of the definitive quote:
Picasso is dead. Steve Jobs is dead. Walt Disney is dead. Name somebody livin’ that you can name in the same breath as them. Michael Jackson and Russell Simmons are the reason I was able to go so far… I literally have to be the Michael Jackson of apparel in order to break open the doors for everyone that will come after I’m gone, after I’m dead, after they call me Wacko Kanye.
As I noted prior, there are a lot of germs of ideas in this rant but they don’t really extrapolate out into completely cohesive thoughts. It’s all very Kanye doing Kanye and it reminds me of a few of the things he said when he was freaking out on the set of Saturday Night Live just a short time ago. At the end of the video, he apologizes for "the realness."
I guess that’s something.
