In the new issue of Paper Mag, which last year featured his wife Kim Kardashian nude on the cover, Kanye West pens an essay on his vision of the "American Dream" or as he calls it a "world dream." He addresses his thoughts on race, inequality, altruism, beauty, fashion, music creation, innovation and accusations of him being a part of the Illuminati, among other topics.
The essay is a pretty interesting look at the So Help Me God rapper because the magazine gave him the space to full develop his thoughts instead of limiting him to the stream of consciousness interviews we often here that are at times disjointed. Check out some noteworthy excerpts below.
On his mission to help other artists:
"I think it's so important for me, as an artist, to give Drake as much information as I can, A$AP, Kendrick, Taylor Swift, any of these younger artists as much information as I can to make better music in the future. We should all be trying to make something that's better. It's funny that I worked at the Gap in high school, because in my past 15 years it seems like that's the place I stood in my creative path -- to be the gap, the bridge."
On being part of the Illuminati:
"If there was actually an Illuminati, it would be more like the energy companies. Not celebrities that gave their life to music and who are pinpointed as decoys for people who really run the world. I'm tired of people pinpointing musicians as the Illuminati. That's ridiculous. We don't run anything; we're celebrities. We're the face of brands. We have to compromise what we say in lyrics so we don't lose money on a contract. Madonna is in her 50s and gave everything she had to go up on an award show and get choked by her cape. She's judged for who she adopts. F**k all of this sensationalism. We gave you our lives. We gave you our hearts. We gave you our opinions!"
On his desire to make music:
"I loved music. I loved it more than I love it now. But I think that can happen with anything. You can live in New York for 10 years and say, 'I now want to move to San Francisco.' It's just harder for me to do music now, period. It's easier for people who focus on it all day and who are younger in their concept of what they want to do with it. I am not what I would consider truly a musician. I am an inventor. I am an innovator."
On beauty:
"When I think beauty, I think of an untouched forest, only created by God's hand. I think of a gray sky that separates the architecture from the background and creates these amazing photographs because you don't have to block the sun above you when you're taking the photograph. I think beauty is important and it's undermined by our current corporate culture. When you think about the corporate office, you don't see the importance of beauty. I think all colors are beautiful and in a corporate world only one color is."
On racism:
On 'Never Let Me Down' I rapped, 'Racism's still alive, they just be concealing it,' but for the next generation that's not necessarily true. Racism is something that's taught, but for the new post-Internet, post-iPad kids that have been taught to swipe before they read, it's just not going to affect them as much. They realize that we are one race. We're different colors -- my cousins and I are different shapes and we're all from one family. We're all from one family called the human race. It's simple as that. This race is up against some interesting things -- poverty, war, global warming, classism -- and we have to come together to beat this. It'll only be as a collective that we can beat this, and we can. We can create a better world for ourselves."
On why he doesn't speak out about events in this country:
"The way I see it, it's not about a post on social media from me when there are people dying. There's people in Chicago dying. There's people all across the globe dying for no reason! There's people who'll never have the opportunity to live their lives for terrible, nonsensical reasons. I care about people. I care about society. I care about people being inspired. I care about people believing in themselves, because that's the scariest thing. The modern population cannot be controlled by the system -- they break the system."
On being remembered and not forgotten:
"It's fine to not get credit for everything; it's almost better. For the amount of things that I really want to do, it can only work if I'm credited for about 20 percent of them. Because if I'm really credited for the amount of things that I'm going to do and what I want to do, it's just too much. The reward is in the deed itself. The times that I've looked like a crazy person -- when I was screaming at an interviewer or screaming from the stage -- all I was screaming was, "Help me to help more! I've given all I've got. I've gone into fucking debt. It's all I've got to give. But if I had a little bit more opportunity, I could give so much more." That's what I was screaming for. Help me to help more."
Read the full essay here, and let us know what you think in the comments section!
