[cheering]

>> So, I could just start with one question

because I want to

vibe off of of an idea to take your idea

and then I could riff off of that for

uh they said I have 20 minutes to speak

or so

uh and I might go longer.

Can you Can you hear me all the way in

the back?

>> Yeah.

>> All right. So,

you see

All right. So, anyone ask a question,

raise your hand.

Put the hat right there. You're the

first one to raise your hand, I saw.

>> Yeah, I wanted you to talk about and

reflect on your progression from the

clothing strap down from freshman

adjustment actually. Like freshman

adjustment to the Yeezus in your future.

I just wanted to wanted you to talk

about your aesthetic and how it's

progressed.

Okay. So,

I'll be so actually adjustment as well.

Okay.

>> So, the the keywords that I heard there

>> I could bump this.

>> And everyone, please be completely quiet

because I can literally hear a whisper

and it'll like throw off my stream of

consciousness and the best thing is like

when I can get a stream of consciousness

going, it's like you can get the best

like illest quotes.

And literally if you whisper like can

throw it off.

Uh

So, the two words that I um

I vibed off right there was uh

aesthetic and progression.

And I was having a discussion with the

designer that I want to

use

for my next season. That actually I I I

saw it's working. and even realize he

till I talked to him that he had studied

with a comic book artist. And I felt

that type of energy through his work.

Uh

anyway, but I was

uh

discussing my background because a lot

of people didn't realize that I've been

in art school since age five and in art

competition since

age 14.

And

I ended I ended up going to college for

a bit on art scholarship and I uh

went to

I I had a scholarship to three schools,

the same same Xavier, the American

Academy of Art, and the Art Students

League of Chicago.

And

I went to the American Academy of Art

because it was the biggest scholarship.

Uh and because my mother couldn't afford

to, you know, put me in any of those

schools. And she was a professor at a

school that I could have went to for

something that she could have could

afford since she got a discount.

Uh

today was the first time that I

realized that if I could do that again

that I would have went to the Art

Institute

over the American Academy of Art.

That I would have

researched

where I could have gotten the best and

the strongest education.

Uh

and I'm sure this will end up online, so

I don't want to

diss any of the students that are

currently at the American Academy of

I'm sure it's equal to the Art Institute

of Chicago by now.

But at the time that I was going

you know, I would look around at the

work in the class and not feel inspired.

Not feel inspired by the teachers.

Uh

and I kind of

you know, the idea of being a fine

artist, you know, that's a really

difficult profession to get into to

you know, be respected in to make money

at.

And and maybe maybe the goal for some of

the people were just to, you know, work

at

uh advertising agency or work at a

reputable or two, you know,

you know,

not truly end up, you know, being just

colonels of something.

Uh,

my goal, if I was going to do art, fine

art, would have

been to have become Picasso.

That was

or greater.

Um,

and that always sounds like so funny to

people. The idea of comparing yourself

to someone

in the past that had done so much, that

in your life you're not allowed to even

think

you can do as much.

You know, that's uh,

that's the mentality

that suppresses

humanity.

I talked to Ray Kurzweil the other day

and he just

the conversation was quick, but he, you

know, touched on the idea of thinking

faster and

reading faster and I just thought it was

like super important to go

meet with that. And I'm going to touch

into aesthetic field coming to the

stage.

Um,

uh,

and the progression from me doing

abstract art work to

uh, so that we got, you know, artwork.

Um,

so, some of you here probably remember

the night when McDonald's treats came

through me

and I started talking about probably

professions that you guys are going into

in the future that seemed like they had

nothing to do with Iraq.

Uh,

but what I was talking about was a

a band of thinkers

that could remove

religion, race,

gender,

and politics

and somehow come together to find

solutions for broken play.

Uh we

we have the resources

as a civilization to find utopia.

But we're led by

the most greedy

the least noble

and

what I notice

about creatives and one of the reason

why I get in trouble

is

not only did I want to

design video games or make music or

ride bikes

I think one of the most important things

to my ability to create so much in the

past 12 13 years is

my desire to play sports.

And I approach creativity like a sport.

Where

if I had a drawing, I would react just

like a child. LOOK AT THAT

DRAWING RIGHT THERE. YEAH.

>> [laughter]

>> AND I GUESS, you know, of course we've

been taught as for, you know, people in

this room that that draw or, you know,

sing

on the aesthetic

that's that creative aesthetics because

we're all creatives here. We're all one

artist. But some people are artists of

business. And some people are artists of

conversation. Some people, you know,

uh but particularly for

the aesthetic driven creatives

you know, we were taught to

you know, hide our

black fingernail polish

and put our head down in the back of the

class

and not be noticed

out of fear that someone might laugh at

one of our ideas

or that our idea could become a mockery

or

uh a failure in some way.

Um

There's a

uh

a Bible saying, "No weapon formed

against me shall prosper."

The

So, recently I've been doing interviews,

and I had to go back to this verse

because

I don't think there's a living celebrity

with more weapons formed against them.

But, I also don't think there's one more

prosperous.

So, what weapons have prospered?

The smoke and mirror of opinions.

You know, I I was sitting with Steve

McQueen because he shot

my He shot the the visuals for All Day 2

days ago.

Uh and it's completely different than

the Brit Awards.

Um

And I told him

this so it doesn't get taken out of

context, I'm going to use the word like.

I'm not saying it is. I'm using it as a

comparison

for people who want to say, "Kanye goes

to Oxford and tells everyone that this

what I'm about to say."

And I'm not telling you this. I'm

telling you what I told Steve McQueen in

private.

Well, what I said was, "The Matrix is

like the Bible

of the post-information age."

I compared it like

when the hundred guys, the thousand

guys, you know, come at Neo.

Like those Those are opinions.

That's perception.

That's tradition.

Attacking you

from every which angle possible.

But if you have a focused why

and you have master senseis like

Laurence Fishburne

and you have a squad behind you

you literally

can put the world in slow motion.

Like Michael Jordan talked about the

rim, you know, being wider.

And it's felt to me from, you know,

first hand

as

first hand experience

you know, it's still February, right?

Listen.

I can't say this statement anymore, but

for the first two

two months, me and my team would like

look at each other and say

Uh by the way, I don't know days of the

week, so I I don't know my days of the

week. I just go to executive with my

appointments.

Uh

we would just look at each other and say

it's still February.

For the sheer amount of

work that we were able to put into the

world. Some of the stuff that they've

worked on for

uh

years coming, months coming

but nonetheless, they just came back to

back to back to back to back answering

every crazy interview question slam

dunking, blocking every shot, catching

every rebound. And aside from

the

right that I don't have to give my

opinion publicly about artists.

Uh

I probably would have been mad in 2000.

I know that's incorrect, also.

Uh

You know,

this humanity that I talk about, this

civilization that I talk about, this

future utopia idea that I talk about

can only happen through collaboration.

One of the things that I loved about

Elon Musk, and I kind of, you know, I

love Steve Jobs. You know, that's like

my favorite person. But, there's one

thing that disappointed me.

It was when Steve passed, he didn't give

the ideas out.

That was kind of selfish.

And you got You know that Elon was like,

"Yo, take these ideas." Because maybe

there's some companies outside of Apple

that could work on it and push humanity

forward.

Maybe the stock brokers won't like that,

you know, the stockholders wouldn't like

the idea of Steve giving his ideas out.

But,

you know, ideas are free.

And you can't be selfish.

And

I think that that's the

progression of mind

with

the advent of a human being named Drake.

Uh

You know, this idea of holding onto a

number one spot.

And then you get this guy

that comes and blows out the water every

number one of any band ever.

Be it me or Paul McCartney.

Um

And at that point,

you know, when you've

lost the ideal of holding on to that

concept,

you can leave the mountain top finally

and walk down and readjust and see what

your position

on Earth can be.

And

I've had all of these mixed emotion,

mixed feelings based off of uh

you know,

bigotries, walls, perceptions that I've

had to deal with. Ones that drove me to

titles like black skinhead or

I am a god.

Now, I understand

that I'm

a servant.

And with

my voice

and with the information and my ability

to build relationships with

amazing people, speak to amazing people,

or call Elon Musk out of the blue,

or call Obama out of the blue. He calls

the home phone out of the blue.

Uh

the

With that, I have a responsibility

to serve.

But why do I say the Matrix is like the

Bible?

And what is my definition of

the Matrix?

I worked with this artist named Vanessa

Beecroft.

And she, before our uh presentation in

New York, the Adidas collaboration,

she bought my daughter some um

some toys. And it'll be interesting cuz

I would see people toys that, you know,

people would buy my daughter. I'd say,

"This toy is a problem. I don't want my

daughter playing with this. It could

seem some Adidas or like that. I'm was

"No, it's not enough love put into this.

This is just manufactured, you know,

with the will to sell, but not the will

to give an inspiration."

So, Vanessa is very irreverent and very

focused. She's like my eyes. She's a

piece of my brain.

And

um

she bought my daughter these three

wolves knowing that the whole collection

would play the song Wolves that we based

off this concept.

And when my daughter saw these wolves,

I had never seen her happier.

She was going so crazy. She was grabbing

one. She was riding on top of one. She

was just running around. I've never seen

her happier than this moment.

Uh

and

that level of happiness seems to be

the thing that we're fighting for every

day. That we're trying to buy back. That

we're trying to work for. That we're

trying to hope that you know, especially

in America.

Like, you know, America, people really

do wear like $3,000

shirts. You know, it's like for real.

Like, I've been here and here in

Stockholm, they the few of us that come

on do this like $3,000 shirts.

I'm assuming that I'm probably like

$2,000 I got to freaking live by.

Um

but that joy

that idea of joy. What makes you happy?

What makes you happy inside? We've been

sold a concept of joy constantly, you

know, through advertising, through

car advertising, through, you know,

fashion branding.

You know, it's not the concept of time.

And time with your family, time with

your friends.

The little time that we do have on

earth, the existence of the human race,

and what do we do with that?

It somehow

was sold to us through a Gucci bag or

something.

Uh

I I have something I say all the time.

I'm saying it again. Time, in my

opinion, time is the only luxury.

It's the only thing you can't get back.

If you lose your

luggage

I'm not going to say the obvious thing

that I would normally say cuz I would

normally say it cuz I actually have a

meeting with Kanye, so

Uh

But if you lose your expensive luggage,

uh

at the airport you can get that back.

You can't get

the time back.

And everyone knows that when you're

younger, time moves

way slower. Summers take so much longer.

Class takes so much longer.

Uh

It feels like

people

do everything in life, you know, I'll

speak from American perspective, to get

this like BMW or this Benz, to get this

town home, and you get 2.5 kids and a

Uh but what happens is small, you know.

And uh

And you're looking for this moment

where

you sit in your BMW after all the work

that you've done and all the accolades

that you got and all the, you know, how

big your house is and everything.

And

somehow you think you're going to get

that level of joy

you know

that my daughter had when she received

those bulbs.

And as you're sitting in traffic in your

BMW,

it's something that,

you know, feels empty

to everyone who reaches

that point.

You know, this concept of the selfish

human,

this idea of separation by race or

gender or religion or age or

my favorite thing to hate,

class.

Mhm.

People say a village

uh uh it takes a village to raise a

child.

People ask me, you know, how my daughter

is doing.

Uh

she's only doing good if your daughter's

doing good.

We're all one family.

Like, literally, last names aside, we're

all one family.

And we have the ability to approach our

race

like ants, or we have the ability to

approach our race like crabs.

And there's so many ideas that create

division.

There's certain things that have been

beat in a way, some way, race, whatever.

You know, this I

This is a generation that is

far less racist. It's only very, you

know, we have small remnants of even

thinking of calling someone separately a

racial slur. Like, the white people that

listen to rap say that

in the privacy of their own mind.

>> Um

So,

that idea,

you know, it's past.

It's an older idea. We had Cosby Show,

Barack Hussein, you know, stuff like

Beyoncé, it's great, you know. Just

That's past.

But, there's still something that you're

being taught

every day, and especially

in the UK.

And that's the division by class.

Our main focus, in my opinion, this is I

have the right to say this in front of

you guys, to give it an PSA, you know,

if you like it, you like it. If you

don't, just send it right back. The

Our main focus, or picture a world,

imagine a world, imagine a world with

Let's remove war first off. Imagine a

world with no war, and imagine

if

everyone's main focus, more so than how

they look when they go to the club, more

so than how many followers they may get,

more so than how many fit they get, you

know, you know, their main focus was to

help

someone else.

You know, I was joking with the uh

interviewer, you know, earlier today

that

people talk about, you know, the amount

of viewers that uh

the Brits get, or the amount of viewers

that the Grammys get. And I said they

need to do award shows for the Nobel

Peace Prize, but I guess that doesn't

sell as many MasterCard commercials.

Why did I mention a brand? I had two

things that

I'm trying to like get a flawless

victory on my exchange. the game.

And I've already had two demerits, uh

Rims,

two missed free throws.

Uh

no offense to MasterCard.

But that was a big load off,

Rims.

Um

um

you guys are being taught, without you

knowing it, ways to separate yourselves

from each other.

If you're separated, you can be easily

controlled.

If you're too busy pointing fingers at

each other as opposed to holding hands,

you can't get anything done.

You know,

Chris Rock called My Beautiful Dark

Twisted Fantasy

um

Chris Rock and everybody else in the

civil liberties publication called My

Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy the best

album of the last three five years.

Uh

this only came through collaboration.

One of the most memorable things about

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

was Nicki Minaj.

And the fact that she kicked my ass

on my song

on one of the best albums, the best

album.

I'm just saying what the Brits said.

of past 25 years.

That and that the best album of the past

25 years that I spent

a year and a half baking after I was

exiled.

Exiled from my country. It was a

personal exile, but exiled.

>> [laughter]

>> from my best feet to come back and

deliver the magnum opus of a work and

outshine to be beat by a girl basically.

Um

This

was necessary. I think it was one of the

most important points of working on that

album.

was to

not stop her from her moment because of

how good she did.

So

just to give a comparison but not a

complaint.

If you think about why did it take so

long for the new Yeezys to come out? Why

did it Why did I have to leave

you know, one group and go to the other

group? Why did that group

not want to speak to me?

I think that the Yeezys I was doing over

there were comparable to that Nicki

Minaj verse.

Because these guys would work 3 years on

a project. We got We going to break out

this shoe and it's going to We going to

wrap it up by the Olympics and we're

going to put it on this celebrity and

this and then the heads

stumble come and say, "My favorite shoe

is the Yeezy." AND I

CAN'T HEAR ABOUT THESE YEEZYS ANYMORE.

LIKE the verse is like, "My favorite

verse is Nicki." I care about that verse

anymore.

But, because

I'm not saying just because cuz she was

she was it's going to work for her

anyway.

But, let's just say that in some way it

helped give her some exposure.

She was able to go on

and become a successful and fly and run

and dream and provide.

And it was not bought

because of my name.

You know, one of my biggest problems,

one of my biggest Achilles' heel has

been my ego.

And if there

and I, Kanye West, third person, can

have

can remove my ego,

I think there's hope for everyone.

>> [applause]

>> When you talk about when I talk about

collaboration in the creative process,

the best idea wins.

I study the way Steve Jobs approached

Pixar, the way Steve Jobs approached

Apple, the way Disney approached Disney

with the animates, because you get these

creative animators that come in and

this idea I got this idea of that fit

there, we do this and that and if people

are saying like

I'm proud of the consistency of the

performances that I've done since I've

been out here.

Uh,

and it comes from

four would-be egomaniacs being forced to

work together.

The best light guy on the planet, the

best staging guy, the best video

director guy, another staging guy, a guy

with back problems. week. Just put that

Cuz all of like, "What are you doing?"

He's like, "I got

Um

to just deliver back-to-back-to-back

extremely successful

inspiring

groundbreaking

visual

visceral creative moments

that otherwise would have been

challenged.

And

the kid from Chicago

screaming in interviews and screaming

from the top of the stage four events in

a row.

Had to pull that card out a few times.

Not particularly

screaming but remember I will scream. My

mama taught me if I was in a grocery

store

in a aisle by myself

and a stranger

grab my hand

scream at the top of your lungs.

So whenever I I'm when I'm at a work

show and a stranger grabs my hand and

says, "Okay

uh

So we're going to use these movie lights

or we're going to go play the music

right now before we define the look or

we're going to just keep the cameras

cutting in a traditional TV way."

I'll scream at the top of my

lungs.

People say I have a bad reputation. I

think I got the best reputation in the

building.

Because they want you to have the

reputation of tucking your black nail

polish into your pockets and sitting in

the corner of the class and not fighting

for your ideas out of fear of being

ridiculed.

Someone not

liking your thoughts, being embarrassed,

being talked about, you know, the next

day.

Not being accepted.

Being an outsider.

Being crazy.

That's another one of my favorite ones.

To be called crazy.

Um

I'm

nowhere near as smart as either of my

parents. They were both educators, both

had PhDs.

Um

So

I always feel embarrassed when I speak

in comparison to the I mean, my mom was

head of the English department.

You know, my dad is an incredible,

you know, orator and humanitarian.

Just 5 years ago

he

stayed at College of Charleston

to help

to help.

He worked on an idea of good water and

created these water distillers in

uh somewhere in between Maryland and

Delaware. I'm forgetting the exact

location.

Uh

and

he put together this

good water distiller cafe where kids

could also be poems,

dances and play.

People could come and just read,

get on the internet.

It had everything driven by clean water.

I remember calling him when he was busy

nailing the planks of wood together

himself.

You know, I gave him

uh some money to to work on the idea.

I remember when I was young and I saw

my dad working on computers. This is

before Steve Jobs. Like everybody just

felt they could start a computer

company. My dad just going to computer

company.

And uh

I remember the guy that he was working

with

ended up being a bad guy. And that told

everybody he's doing and you know, just

being like uh

borderline like a scam idea. Like

computers could be the next thing. Let's

start our own computer company.

And

the guys that

helped him

that he had the voice to find that he

looked at whatever the version of

Craigslist was back then uh to find

didn't have the same motivation, didn't

have a high enough skill set to match up

to his vision to his dream for it to be

considered to be a success.

But the success is that his successor

will be successful

in his lifetime.

And you could say

oh, when you are successful

I'm successful in learning

about

the beauty

that is afforded rich people.

But in learning that, being growing up

middle class

it's something that's beating out of my

chest that screams out

wait a second, I was middle class and I

didn't get to see none of this

So, let's have an NBC telethon moment

and say that beauty has been stolen from

the people

and sold back to them under the concept

of luxury.

It's not

illegal to not listen to music.

It's illegal

to not wear clothes and also possibly

extremely cold.

Um

So, that means

that someone is proposing an idea on you

that you legally

have to do.

Clothing should be like food.

There should never be a $5,000 sweater.

You know what should cost $5,000?

A car

should be $5,000.

And you know who should work on a car?

The people who work on the $500,000

cars.

All the best talent in the world needs

to work for the people.

And I am so serious about this

concept that I will stand in front of

anyone

and fight for it.

Because I was 14 and middle class.

I know what it felt like to not be able

to have.

So, if people say to me

"But you're successful.

What are you crying about?"

I'm crying about the people.

I'm crying about their dogs,

our dog as one family.

What good is it?

What good is anything that everyone

can't have?

Every ism

They think they're with done with

racism.

What about elitism?

What about separatism?

What about classism?

That's all.

>> [applause]

[applause]

[applause]