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Joe Rogan: Hello Mr. West.
Kanye West: What's up?
Joe Rogan: What's going on man good to see you.
Kanye West: Good seeing you too.
Joe Rogan: We finally did it we're here we made it happen.
Kanye West: We're in the building yes sir.
Joe Rogan: So what what are you doing you running for president?
Kanye West: Yes.
Joe Rogan: What made you decide to do that aren't you busy enough clothing company successful rapper family man?
Kanye West: It was something that God put on my heart back in 2015, a few days before the MTV awards. It just hit me in the shower and when I first thought of it I just started laughing to myself, and all this joy came over my body through my soul. I felt that energy, I felt that spirit.
Two days later I accepted the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Awards at the MTV awards and instead of performing my array of hit songs, I gave just my perspective on award shows. I knew at the end I was going to tell people I'm running for president in 2020. It even took heart to say it in that context and people's minds were blown.
Then I was hanging out with different friends - some people in the music industry, some tech elites - and they really took it as a joke. They were telling me all these millions of reasons why I couldn't run for president. I remember running into Oprah two days after that, and she's like "you don't want to be president." People were projecting this on me.
One of my responses to the naysayers was, "Well, I'll definitely be a billionaire by that time." Not that that's a reason why someone should become president, but at that time I was around 50 million dollars in debt, and I knew I had the confidence that I would be able to turn that around.
Joe Rogan: I know what you're saying.
Kanye West: I don't want to go off into a—
Joe Rogan: No, it's okay. What you're basically saying is you know how to set goals, you know how to achieve them. But what was Oprah's rationale when she said you don't want to be the president? What was she saying? Because remember when people were saying that's our next president? Remember when Trump got elected, they showed Oprah and they were saying like there was I believe it was like NBC tweeted it "this is our next president." A lot of people wanted Oprah to run and they felt like if Trump could win Oprah could win.
Kanye West: When I saw Trump win I was like "see you can win." You can win if you're coming from outside of politics. I was young when Ronald Reagan was president.
Joe Rogan: I don't remember. Ronald Reagan was the governor of California before he was the president. He had actually proven himself as a politician at least somewhat, which is an idea that people have thrown out at me to be governor of California.
Kanye West: To be governor of California?
Joe Rogan: Anyone's better than this guy. Just go ahead start there, give it a shot, open things up again man.
Kanye West: But I think I think my calling is to be the leader of the free world. Not that if it's in God's plan that part of my path is to be the governor then that's fine, but my calling is to be the leader of the free world.
Joe Rogan: When you say this, when you say your calling is to be the leader of the free world, what does that mean to you? Does it mean you have a plan that's different than the plans that have been implemented before? Does it mean that you have ideas? What kind of plan? Like the plan to be the leader? What would you do if you were the leader of the free world? What would be different about the way you would handle things? What is it about that that is your calling? Why would you want to do that? What do you want to do differently if you were the leader of the free world?
Kanye West: Well, there was a couple questions in there. You said, why is that your calling? There's people who will say to me, they'll say, well, music is bigger than politics or more influential than politics or celebrities are more influential. And I thought of it like if I was a pastor of a 100,000-person church, but then I was also a captain, a sailor. And then we went to war, and I said, I'm going to man this ship that has 1,000 people, 1,000 soldiers on it, because God is calling me to take this position.
Even though I'm the pastor for however big my audience is in hip-hop and music or as just an influencer or celebrity or just as a dad and a husband in my house, the world is like, there couldn't be a better time to put a visionary in the captain's chair. And that's not to say we haven't had visionaries before. I'm not coming here to down any of the other, I'm not here to down Trump, down Biden. I'm just here to express why God has called me to take this position.
Joe Rogan: So when you say a visionary, you think of yourself in terms of like as an artist, as a creator, as someone who has these thoughts that they manifest in terms of music and art and creation and design, the things that you do. That's why you think you're different, as a visionary.
Kanye West: Yeah, I think that I think I'm different from, I mean, we're all different. So I'm definitely different from everybody. We're all different from each other. I mean, I do bump into people that seem to be like the same character inside of—
Joe Rogan: I've seen one of those before.
Kanye West: Yeah, people play the same role. It's like, well, I just met you before. You're just like the head of this company over here. You're the same kind of person. But yeah, I mean, I manifest, I see things. I'm a great leader because I listen and I'm empathetic. And I feel the entire earth and I feel us as a species, as the human race.
Like I, sometimes people think of utopia as almost like a negative word. That's like, we couldn't have that. But I do believe in world peace. Like the people hit me with the, oh, one of the things Oprah said is she said, you got to bone up on your foreign affairs. I remember this, like, because it's Oprah talking, so I'm going to remember a lot of what the conversation was. But that's the first thing she said was foreign affairs and foreign policies.
I think the reason why I say leader and not politician and not even specifically president is this is the time. You know, when the Constitution was written, that was an innovation. Now, the world is innovated all around our political system. But we have not innovated and simplified our political system.
I met with this gentleman, Sam, one of the founders of Y Combinator. Y Combinator is a contract that my friend, the head of Dropbox, use and that a lot of tech guys use. And it's a standardized deal. So one of the ideas I had when I was in this process of innovating, I'm not in war with the music industry. It's just, it's time for us to innovate. And we need to have contracts that make sense with exactly how we sell music.
Every vicinity, and that's like every 20 years, that's like decade is 10, vicinity is 20. And as you see now, it's like the world has just stopped for a second. And there's an opportunity to look and say, what are the things we need? What are the things we don't need?
So I don't know if you saw when I posted my contract, I had 10 contracts that kept on putting me inside a labyrinth. And there's things that we don't need. Now, I believe that the distribution partner that the label is, like Prince would go and say, oh, we don't need the distribution partner, especially if Prince was really alive and thriving in this internet era.
I'm the kind of person where I'm not trying to go and eliminate anyone's job. So record labels are afraid of saying, okay, we're going to hand over the distribution completely to you guys, which is, you know, that's a possibility. There's a way where both parties can be happy and that these infrastructural partners can be of service to the influencer, to the artist. Like these deals can be flipped in a way that they're just more fair.
Joe Rogan: You know, a record—
Kanye West: Let me just go into this specific place with the record labels for a second.
Joe Rogan: Yeah, please do. Because it's a confusing thing for people on the outside.
Kanye West: So before, when I told my father I wanted to rap, he was very leery of that idea. He said, I heard this business is terrible. And, you know, he's right. People are all seeing things that are wrong inside of contracts, turning blind eyes to it, and everyone's responsible. Everyone's a part of it.
It's like when the Me Too movement happened, it wasn't just the guys that were getting tagged. Some of the guys should have got hit with it, some guys shouldn't. That's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm saying that in a way, everyone's responsible. Everyone's a part of the problem.
That's why I really love that Black Mirror episode when everyone was making comments, and anyone that even made a comment, the bees—it was about these mechanical bees—anyone who made a comment, the bees came to go get them. And that's the thing about what you put in the universe, even a thought. It's another thing to say something negative and put that into the universe. It's another thing to see someone being raped.
That's the reason why I compare what's happening in the music industry to Me Too, because artists are raped. You've heard that term before. This is not like a new thing that I'm making up. The contracts are made to rape the artist.
I put my—this is like a thought right now—is this a negative thought that I'm putting into the universe? But I have to say, when I was going on Twitter, I was thinking about Bruce and Brandon Lee. That crossed my mind to say, this is Sony. This is Universal. And I'm willing to put the blue paint on my face and go out and do this because it's the right thing to do.
Music, at this point, it loses me money. It doesn't make me money. My $5 billion net worth and $300 million of cash that I see a year, music is like negative $4 million for me. So these contracts for me were kind of like Wangro and Heat where this guy had everything but he still said, Wangro messed up this heist that we were going to do.
I look at the music industry, not music and the love of music itself but the music industry, I look at it like Wangro. I blame the loss of my mother partially on the entertainment industry. Always fighting to represent who you are against media, entertainment industry that's trying to tear down anybody that's not going with the flow.
I've got those kind of reasons personally, but vengeance is mine said the Lord, so it's not a matter of going in for revenge. That's just me as a human being where I fall short. I'm not a monk.
Joe Rogan: Can you explain what you're talking about with Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee? I lost you there.
Kanye West: Okay, so Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee were both murdered.
Joe Rogan: Well, Brandon Lee died in an accident on a movie set.
Kanye West: Yeah.
Joe Rogan: Do you think it was a murder?
Kanye West: I felt—that's a conspiracy, right? The conspiracy was that the Chinese triad killed him the same way they killed Bruce.
Joe Rogan: But the coroner's report was that Bruce died from a reaction to a medication, right?
Kanye West: Yeah, I mean, but I think about that anytime I go to the hospital. I'm very mindful of that stuff. You think about like Bob Marley, they didn't just JFK or MLK him. There's like reports that it was something in his toe or...
Joe Rogan: He had cancer, right?
Kanye West: I believe he had skin cancer.
Joe Rogan: Yeah.
Kanye West: Like I went to go, I got a shot in my hand because just from texting and stuff, my thumb was like hurt. And then I posted—
Joe Rogan: Did you text so much you hurt your thumb?
Kanye West: Absolutely. Just texting way too much. So I post a picture of the screen at the hospital and then I was asked to take it down.
Joe Rogan: By? By who?
Kanye West: People just called me. I'm forgetting exactly who asked me, but it was like they got to my management, they got to this and he said, take that picture down. Like the hospital, it was in the weirdest place.
So I think it had some information on it that they didn't want to go out, like an address or something like that. But I don't want to go down these rabbit holes. I'm just saying like Michael Jackson not waking up one day, Prince not waking up one day, Bruce and Brandon Lee, Bob Marley, all of these things have crossed my mind as I'm going and saying, I need to innovate what these contracts are. Not just for me, but for all artists.
It's not about me getting my masters back. It's about freedom. And I say on a new song, I say, if I would put myself in harm's way to get my masters, they would put themselves in harm's way to stay the master.
There's a complete parallel to the way the music industry works and the way the world currently works, and the influence that America has on other countries and the way governments work. The influence and the way government and the way people in power and control deal with disaster relief, deal with Haiti, deal with the Bahamas. Like, where is the money going? Why aren't things being built?
And this concept of money, right? I asked myself this, I asked someone a week ago, like, how much is America in debt? And they were like, this many trillion. And then I asked a rhetorical question, but the dumbest question I've ever asked myself, I said, well, you know, how much does the earth cost?
Joe Rogan: It's not a bad question.
Kanye West: How much is the earth worth?
Joe Rogan: Yeah, what is the earth worth?
Kanye West: All the things on earth. And it's saying we can't buy it. We couldn't make enough money to buy the earth, right? So that means we made money. So if money is the key to all people's happiness and will solve everything and everyone's doing things for money, let's just make more money. But it's not about making more money. It's about keeping poor people poor and rich people rich and keeping people in their place.
Right now we're experiencing the fall of Rome or the Titanic has now hit a glacier and there's people who would prefer to go down with the Titanic than to get on a lifeboat because they don't want to get seawater on their dress or on a nice outfit. People are so programmed and brainwashed into classism and protectionism that it's difficult for people to embrace innovation unless it has a tag on it. It's got a name brand connected to it that says with this innovation you will be better than the person, you'll be better than your next door neighbor.
When I made Sunday service, I completely stopped rapping because I didn't know how to rap for God. All my raps always had like nasty jokes on it. When I went to the hospital in 2016, I wrote "Start a Church in Calabasas." And as we left from 2018, going into 2019, I said, I'm not going to let one Sunday go by without starting this church.
There's people who said it wasn't a church and different things, but to start a ministry, I'm like the little drummer boy where I'm saying, this is all I got to bring, my drum. I might not be well versed in the word, but I know how to make music and I know how to put this choir together and all things can be made good for God.
So it like quickly became the best choir of all time because all the best singers moved to California. A lot of them grew up in the church, so it's like the opportunity for them to actually get paid singing for God because I would be funding it. And that for me was like a tithe for me to fund Sunday service. And I was four months in before I gave my life to God. I wasn't saved, it's just I had a calling saying, just go make this church.
The whole thing, the comparison to this church, to me going and saying, okay, why am I running for president, is to be in service. And that service to my own ego—I feel like God says to me like, haven't I given you enough? I gave you an ego that helped you overcome all these road blocks and smoke screens and people telling you what you can't do. Now you need to realize when you're doing things for your ego and when you're doing things for me.
This is like God, what I feel God is saying to me. Because it really irritates me when people say, God told me to tell you. So I'm very mindful with this kind of wording. I'm saying I have a feeling that that's what God is saying. For me to be in service.
So the ultimate service position is leader of the free world, to be the president of the United States. Sometimes you see me on Twitter, I'll say I want all the smoke. I want all the problems. Because the problems are the opportunities. There's an opportunity to solve things.
Kurzweil, he created the keyboard, Kurzweil. He has this video that Mark Romanek, this director that shot 99 Problems for Jay-Z, which is like my favorite, maybe like top five or top two favorite videos of all time. He also did Closer for Trent Reznor. And I like, I just grew up on MTV in the 90s and I love Mark Romanek videos.
But he would share little bits and pieces. And I remember Ray Kurzweil talking about the ability for us to have a utopia, but us being led by the least noble and the most greedy. But if someone or when someone gets in a position of leadership that is in service to God and in service to people, period, but immediately the American people.
I had this joke, I was saying like, man, no one outside of our country should be able to see these debates. This is family business right here. This is only for America to see. We can't let anyone outside the country see it. But to be in service.
So I stepped away already from my rap career for a year and served God every week, sometimes twice a week, three times a week, never missed a Sunday until COVID. And this is the thing. There are people inside of the church stealing, doing different things, trying to just take them away. And God still provided a way for us to keep that boat afloat.
We never missed a service. And then one of my pastors, Pastor Adam, who is the way he preaches is called expository. It's like one-to-one by the word. I like all different kind of preachers, but there's some type of preachers, they get up, they have the Bible in their hand, then they close the Bible, and then they just talk for two hours.
And some do have anointing, but the expository preachers go line for line. And for me, it's like I come from entertainment. I got so much sauce. I don't need no sauce on the word. I need the word to be solid food that I can understand exactly what God was saying to me through the King James version, through this translation or the English standard version.
So Pastor Adams was coming by my spot. I got this 300-acre spot in Calabasas that we had a little house in that I was recording. And I would play this music, these chords that I love, they're almost like monk-like. And that's going to go into something we'll talk about later because I'm building a monastery that will then be the future of monasteries, this like full, sustainable energy.
Now, he says to me, Pastor Adam says to me, when I was thinking about should I rap or not, he said, my son just said, you know, I want to hear yay rap. Do an album about Jesus, a rap album about Jesus. And it was through the mouth of babes, like this person, I'm going to listen to the kids, bro. I'm going to listen to my daughter. I'm going to listen to kids before I listen to super programmed out adults.
And especially if that adult hasn't done something that I am looking to do. So it's so funny how people are so free and almost arrogant with their advice. And I'm just like, why would I listen to you? You don't even ask me for any advice. I'm the most successful person I know.
So he said my son wants to hear a rap album from yay. And that just, that was the paradigm shift for me. I use that word a lot. I like that. I like paradigm shift. It's one of my favorite words. And I made this rap album and for a lot of people, it was the first album that they could play with a certain production level in the house with their family.
Now, you know, you could argue if the Watch the Throne production was stronger or better than Jesus is King production. But when I go and I've been working with Dr. Dre and some of the beats and just be like the hardest beats possible. And it's something that was very spiritual and meditative about the mix on Jesus is King, that it wasn't hitting as hard as Jesus or hitting as hard as Watch the Throne. It was like, this is how God wanted me to make this sonic painting and the way he wanted me to communicate.
Then, so we did that album and then we did the Jesus is Born album, which also I get that idea from Pastor Adams. And I mean, there's people who that's the only album they play and it's just bringing these gospel. And I'll tell you like my formula for these hymns I'm writing because I'm writing the songs that we're doing at Sunday service is basically my book of hymns for the future gospel university that I'm creating, where I've envisioned and will manifest a 200,000 seat stadium circular with a hundred thousand gospel singers.
And people will go to this university and they will train the way a Russian Olympic swimmer, you know, a picture, like they would be in the pool six days a week, at least if not seven days. But for people who sing for the church, it's a tide, it's pro bono, all this—people don't practice that as much as we practice going to studio to rap or practice playing basketball if we're in the NBA.
So it's making the NBA, so to say, the Coliseum for God. Have you heard like soccer chants? So I envision that for God, a hundred thousand people, sometimes singing in harmony, sometimes in unison, "Glory, glory, oh, God almighty, we lift our hands and give you praise."
But picture a hundred thousand people in unison and that feeling, what that would do for our spirits, our souls, it's healing. There's natural forms of healing about our environment, the friends that we're around, what we're wearing, what we're eating, our diet.
So Donda is a design company that I formed around 10 years ago and some of the people that worked at Donda are now have went on to become heads of fashion houses like Virgil's the head of Louis Vuitton and he was the head of Donda at a certain point. Another guy that worked at Donda is now the head of Givenchy.
So this is like the talent pool and this Donda is basically my version of like a cyber extension of my brain. Like here's something that I'm thinking of that you can't touch, but we need to bring it into fruition. We need to manifest it. And we have to see how to use things of our past and things of our now to create our future.
So it's an organization created to guarantee the future of the human race. Really, I thought about even calling it Edna because I see us all as superheroes and Edna was the designer in the Incredibles, which is kind of almost really similar to Donda. I'm just seeing these lineups and stuff.
So now our focus is food, clothing, shelter, communication, education, and transportation. So at the school that I just created, Yeezy Christian Academy, we call NASA, we call different places about this hydroponic vertical growing garden. And I remember sitting, the idea of the garden is from A to Z, you have to be able to make your food right there, fully sustainable, right there on your land.
And it's a bunch of people like, "oh, I made this salad right here." It's like, that's not good enough. You still got to go to the grocery store for 80%, 60% of your stuff. I remember this one farmer we had, he wanted to build this class for the kids and all this. And we're going to show the kids this thing. People always make the kids version. I don't like this, the kids version thing. Like kids need to understand how, what if the pandemic was, you know, they lost all their parents and it was lost. The kids need to understand early how real life works.
So physics is one of the anchors of the school that I'm creating. I remember the city is all self-sustaining. So it works off of our four main resources, earth, wind, water and fire. And 90% of it is running off of water with like aqueducts, like the city of Masada. And I was talking to this engineer and saying, I need the whole thing to run off of water. And he said, well, we're going to have to use solar power.
And I said, I don't, and please don't take this as any offense. I don't like solar panels. I feel that they're part of still of what Edison's idea was. I don't feel like they're really in line with what Nikolai Tesla really wanted to do with alternative current. Get into the whole Tesla and what Edison did to take Tesla down. And the fact the world would probably be free by now if Tesla wasn't basically destroyed by the media that Edison controlled and the propaganda that Edison controlled.
So I'm talking to my engineer and saying, this needs to run completely with water. And I don't want to use solar anyway. And he says, no, I'm saying we're going to use a mirror and it's going to connect to a steam engine and that's going to push the water back up. And I was like, after like screaming at the guy, I was like, look, if I had known physics, I wouldn't have been screaming at my engineer.
So if we think about what we're learning in school to learn physics, to learn farming, I was talking to a friend of mine. That's a rapper and super God following spiritual, super smart. And I was showing her some of the designs for the monasteries and some of the designs for the fully sustainable communities, all the same thing. And then it said bioengineering on it. And she said, well, what do you—for her bioengineering has a negative connotation.
And my response was, isn't like farming and cooking, like bioengineering at the simplest form. Like we went to going from grabbing apples off of a tree to, oh, we put this boom in the ground. Oh, and we could grow this and we could grow this, we could grow this harvest right here.
So I want to just simplify, round up the principle behind the Donda way of thinking is we've got all this information and all this science, these scientific exploration, these things that Tesla never completed, these things that da Vinci never completed. And we can look at all of these things and see how do we create the most primitive versions of this to create a fully sustainable ecosystem, which is what COVID actually helped us to get closer to our families, get closer to our children, understand like, oh, wow, that was mapped out for us to be 50 minutes away from our home and our kids' school to be 30 minutes away and to put us in traffic for that amount of time.
And these cities have been designed to promote industry and just to make more money. They haven't been designed to promote happiness. So we're at this paradigm shift in our existence. When Muhammad hit the market, I think that's who it was and brought money because before it was slave and trade. And this is something dishonorable men honor money. I got this bar from Dave Chappelle on that, trying to steal his bar.
And we as human beings, this race on earth have like been honoring money and money isn't, it's not even real, you know, it's not even backed by anything. I don't want to go too far into that, but when you unprogram yourself, you see that there's other forms of currency now, like relationships are a more important currency than money itself. And that's what we really saw.
It's like the end of the movie that our existence would be pre-COVID, post-COVID. And so as the Titanic is crashing and sinking and Rome is falling, there's got to be this new civilization, like the end of Tron, where everything starts to light up and it's been under this like dark cloud.
So God is using me and he has a calling in my life to make the world better for all people. Like people say it's bad people. There's good people. No, there's people that are possessed that have demonic ways, but we were all children at one time. They say some people, no, they were born bad. You got to remember, like say, oh, there's bad people. Even the devil's an angel, a fallen angel, a lost angel, like Los Angeles, if you think.
Joe Rogan: Let me, but that's a city of angels. Let me, let me, let me start from the beginning. So you, you essentially deconstruct things. So when you say in, in many ways, when you're describing yourself as a visionary, this is what I'm saying is you're looking at all the systems that are in place, whether it's the record industry, the contracts that are wrong with artists, the way civilization is set up.
Kanye West: I think visionary is too glossy and too saucy of a title.
Joe Rogan: Okay, well, whatever it is.
Kanye West: More of an engineer.
Joe Rogan: You're deconstructing all of these things and you find flaws in the systems. So all these systems, whether it's the music industry system, whether it's the political system, whether it's the system of gathering food, whether even a religious system. Like, I remember when you started doing your Sunday service and my friend was like, what is he doing? I go, he's making, going to church cool again. Like, you don't think that's, look at all these people having a great time. You have thousands of people that are chanting and singing along. Like, he's not asking for anything. I go, look, if anybody should be doing something like that, it's him. I go, cause he's making great music. Everybody's having a good time. And what do you get out of that? The best thing that people ever get out of church is sense of community, a time where you get together and you all agree, this is where you're going to concentrate on good. You're going to concentrate on goodness. You're going to concentrate on trying to find these shared values that are going to help the community. Now you're doing this in this mass form. You got the superstar musician who's doing this in this mass form with thousands and thousands of people in these gigantic areas. Like that's nothing but positive. So you deconstructed the idea of how to do a religious service, but make it cool. And now you're thinking about deconstructing all these different things. You're thinking about deconstructing how food is harvested. You're thinking about deconstructing how we make energy. You're literally trying to deconstruct and reimagine the idea of civilization.
Kanye West: Yeah, exactly.
Joe Rogan: So talk me through how this starts with you. Have you, were you always religious your whole life?
Kanye West: Yes, I was. And then I, you know, then I hit high school.
Joe Rogan: So, but you, you know, when you're a young man and you're, you know, you're a superstar musician and you know, you live in a wild life. What, what was it that led you back to this? Just a feeling in your life that there was more to life. There was more to your position. There was more to, you know, this idea of a calling that you felt like you could do more and that it resonated with you more to, to, to produce these Sunday services and to, to start thinking of, of life in this way, like you can improve things.
Kanye West: Yeah. God knocked me off my horse. God, like literally called me and said, okay, now I need you. I need you right now. I need, I mean, not that God needs, needs me. We need God, but he called me to serve him. And I was tired of serving the music industry to start tired of serving, you know, filling up stadiums. The last concert and last tour I did, we had a floating stage and actually it was a hanging stage, but it looked like it was floating. And that's just another thing. That's illusion where we need to dispel the illusion. I wouldn't even call it the floating stage today, but the whole thing about is people used to say how I would lose money on tours because I would put so much into the creative. And I, and I was like, wanted to prove, but prove to who, you know, prove to man, prove to greedy people, you know, that I could make more than anybody. And that's like the gladiator position that all artists are put into. Like we're in the middle of this Coliseum. Let me show you, I can kill more lions and tigers and bears and people and blah, blah, blah than, than any other gladiator that happened. So that's what I'm, that's what I was doing.
And then I remember talking to James Terrell and I was like at the top of my lungs, like screaming about saving, saving ourselves and humanity. And the reason why me and James needed to connect. And then I went to my show and then it's like my, like this, like my head popped back and the spirit jumped down and it felt like it was like my mom talking. And the last thing I said was this thing is over. And I'm saying it like, I sound like my mom, like Donda, like that's something she would have said if she was in the physical form when she sees her son, you know, exhausted.
Like I had just went through, I had this fashion show. We had this fashion show where we took over MSG and just broke all boundaries. So 20,000, 16,000 seats and played the new album. And it was, you know, a thousand black people in the show. And yeah, like all the young thug plugging in the iPhone and, Travis and Cuddy dancing. He had 50 Cent there, Jay-Z there, Lamar Odom. The first time that people, you know, saw him in a walk again, was we walked together into the stadium, and he's camo, Yeezy jacket, all head to toe. And the reason why that was so important is like when he was in a coma, I would come by and play him the new music. And once he was out of the coma, he said that he remembered that music when he was in a coma. And that was the album I was playing that day. So that's the reason why me and Lamar walked in together.
And then the next few months later, I did a fashion show and it started 45 minutes late and the media, they just killed me. They LeBron'd me, as I would say, like when LeBron went to Miami and they said, you know, who are you to have a choice? You know, like what, one of my other heroes, Tom Brady, he left. I didn't see no jerseys getting burned like when LeBron left.
So then less than a week after that, my wife is robbed in Paris. And so we, we just, cause I'm, I'm in the middle of tour while I'm doing the fashion show, while I'm doing this. So we cancel the tour cause it's, it's very, you know, traumatic. And then, you know, we start the tour back up and we get back into it. And then I just keep on saying, I want to go to Japan. I just want to go to Japan because Japan is like a way that people treat, there isn't like this systemic racism embedded in every single individual that's inside of the place.
Like in America, black, white, anything, there's a systemic white supremacy. Like when I tag, you know, white supremacy or we say this, it's like the yes, that is America. That is the world. Currently we've been taught that my first superhero was Superman, you know, and my dad was a black Panther, but you know, when Disney makes Black Panther, now, when you look it up, you don't see my dad protecting his neighborhood or snatching a mic out of somebody's hand while they're lying. I don't know, you know, like father, like son right there. But you see this character that's made for black people to idolize that was designed by a white person and put out by a white company.
So it's controlling the narrative to say, we're going to show you Harry, Harriet Tubman. We're not going to show you Nat Turner. And they do every chance they get Maleficent. They called her, her race of people, the Moors and the Moors are, and I just saw it again. I was just like, yo, if you erase our history, like most black people, we don't know where we come. We think we came from slaves. We don't know our bloodline and we're, we're given black history month. And we take that like, it's some gift to us. No, it's a programming to us.
Racism doesn't end until we get to a point where we stop having to put the word black in front of it, because it's like we're, we're, we're putting the rim a little bit lower for ourselves. Like it's when I say I'm the second wealthiest black man in America. Like, why do I have to say that? Because, you know, obviously if we just go on wealth period of what we call wealth, like financial wealth, that scorecard, you know, I'd be like, I'm the, I'm the 78th wealthiest man in America, but we shouldn't have to have a special box, a special month, because also what they show in black history month is us getting hosed down, reminding us that we were slaves.
Like, what if we had, remember when I cheated on you month? Like, remember when you first found the text messages? Remember, how does that make you feel? It makes you feel depleted and defeated. You know, it's no matter what religion you are, what we can agree on is it is always now, but now is the shortest moment of our life. It's gone in an instant. The longest moments of our life are our memories and our imaginations. Think about how long a kid imagines Christmas before, I mean, versus how long Christmas really is. And when you think back to your Christmas, are you under the table, like Jim Carrey and Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind, like under a chair, or are you a giant? Are you a king? Are you what Black History Month has told you you are?
And this is me speaking to, you know, Black people, specifically in America, that, you know, I know people who would, you know, kill someone in or have a gun or, you know, in their own hood and be afraid to go downtown and literally be like afraid of white people. Like the most gangster gang of gangsters wouldn't go downtown. And that's just a programming, but that program is inside of the curriculum. It's inside of the media, and it goes to this whole idea of yay.
When people say, is yay crazy? Is yay a narcissistic? Is yay an egomaniac? Is yay self-absorbed? Is yay all these? No, yay know who yay is. I know who I am, and I'm not fint to bow to an idea that you want to have of me. I am going to be the full idea that God has of me. And when I do things that are, that God don't like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm being the lesser version of me. This is where I, you know, in my weakness, God becomes strong. I have to be the higher me when, when people are downing me. It's not like me fighting fire with fire and me attacking, or as you say, like, you know, stooping to, stooping to that level. It's like the devil will use you against you. You become your own, you become your own worst enemy. And I just went on a riff right there.
Joe Rogan: But the thing is, these, isn't that what you do though?
Kanye West: Yeah.
Joe Rogan: One of the things that I, when, when anybody ever talks about you to me, they, they, they say, well, he's all over the place. And I say, I think that he's got a different power source. Like if you look at the way everybody interfaces with the world, if there's a universal power, most people have like a 20 watt charger. The way I describe you, I say, I think that motherfucker's got like 150 watt charger. And these ideas are just coming at them. So you do go on these rants that sometimes need to be dissected into individual things. But overall you're incredibly productive. So my question is, why do you, why do people think there's something wrong with you?
Kanye West: Yeah.
Joe Rogan: This is, but I legitimately, like you've been medicated, they've, they've put you away, right? They've brought you to med, how did that happen?
Kanye West: Well, well, I'll say these two things. I think very three dimensionally, I don't think in the black and white lines that I've been programmed to think in and I, and I think in full color. So when I talk, I have to describe a thought in five ways. You know, we, we enjoy food that has multiple seasoning in it. We enjoy music that has multiple instruments. So when I talk, it's not a rant, it's a symphony of ideas. And when you collect them, you say, oh, these are all these things that connect. Yeah. You know, I, I, I just tell the truth and telling the truth is crazy and a world full of lies.
Joe Rogan: That's simply it. But none of the things you're saying are crazy. None of the things you said are crazy. It's fascinating the way you think, because I can see that you're thinking in all these different layers and you're looking at things from all these different perspectives and they all come together out of your mouth and like a tornado of ideas. Now, if someone wants to just have a conversation with you back and forth, I could see where they would go, the guy's crazy. He just doesn't stop. He's just ranting. But what I'm seeing is just, you're a very thorough thinker. You're thinking of things independently, but you're thinking of things in a massive perspective. Now, who convinced you that that's bad? Is it, have you always been this way or were you less, is it, was it less manageable before? Did you have issues with it before?
Kanye West: Yeah. I believe before I found Christ and gave my life to God, I would try to lean on my own understanding. And that's the universe is like a black hole of information.
Joe Rogan: What do you mean by your own understanding?
Kanye West: Meaning when people ask Einstein said, you're the smartest person, what would you like to know? Einstein's response was, I'd like to understand the mind of God. Meaning God is all knowing and we can only know or see. And for me as a visionary, we can only know or see what God allows us to see and what he feels we're ready to see and understand to maximize what our Maslow's hierarchy of need chart is. You know, what sets our dopamines? What sets our serotonins off? What makes us feel good?
Basically like, you know, we, we did a good deed and it's like, it was somehow where, you know, just doing a beat for a famous person or just doing a beat for a local dope rapper really meant a lot to me when I was 14 years old. Doing a beat for just anyone famous that had a major record deal was a lot to me at age 19. Me being able to, you know, put out my own music and put my own, I was a lot to me at age 24. Meaning as I grow, God sets new stages in the game of life for me that you get your satisfaction. Like Maslow's hierarchy of need is like our satisfaction chart. What makes us feel whole and accomplished as a, as a, as a human being.
So as I go through these different levels, there's times where I would use confidence when I knew what I was doing and I would use arrogance when I didn't know what I was doing. But I'd rather use arrogance than to let someone diminish my idea of myself because that is what keeps us going. Hope actually keeps us alive. Anybody you ask, most people is like, do you want tomorrow to come? And they say, yes, they, they have, they have hope for it. But I went from having confidence and arrogance to having faith and faith is the opposite of fear. And that created this fearless approach that I have.
And that's what made now has made me the fearless leader that I am, that I've like crystallized into the leader that my mom always knew I would be when kids followed me in preschool. The leader that people saw when we changed the sound of music, the leader when we changed the sneaker industry, the leader and what we're doing with, with farming and with, with shelters. When I was building, you know, the homeless shelters a couple of years ago and visiting parks and, and then going to skip row and understanding the dynamics and empathizing with what actual mental health issues are not someone, you know, telling their truth or being exhausted and then being labeled as such. Like I am.
Joe Rogan: So that's what you felt happened to you. Like you were telling the truth and you were exhausted and they labeled you as mentally unhealthy.
Kanye West: Yes, absolutely.
Joe Rogan: Am I saying this right? That what happened with you is you feel like maybe, or you probably feel like that having this higher calling and recognizing this higher power was the, the glue that kept your thoughts together. It kept your mind straight and it kept you on a righteous path. So instead of being scattered with all these crazy thoughts and being exhausted and being labeled manic, right? Like we talked before and you were saying that they had you on medication, but the medication fucked with your creativity. It fucked with all kinds of things.
Kanye West: Oh, it blocked my ability to channel what God wanted me to do. But we're all, we're all on medication right now. Did you use toothpaste with fluoride today? It blocks your pineal gland and they put children on it. And we put, we put our kids on it. It's inside the deodorants that we use. It's all these things to create like a disconnect to God, to serve that. It's like, are you serving man? Are you serving the one and only master?
Joe Rogan: But what did they tell you when, when they said that they were going to put you on medication? What did they put you on? And what did they tell you?
Kanye West: One of my favorite things that they did is they put me on this medication that made me gain a lot of weight. And I said, I'm not going to take this. And they said, okay, we got a medication you could take, but you won't gain weight. And this shows you, they were trying to kill a superhero slowly, trying to kill genius, trying to make me not feel like I could run for president, make me not feel like I can go be born in Atlanta, grow up on the South side of Chicago, go into music, go and win all these Grammys, change the sound of music and the look of stage performances, all that, and then still end up in $53 million of debt.
The music industry has people going to the exact debt of the house that they think they're going to buy after the tour is over. And it's, and it's, it's strategized. There's criminals all over everyone's almost accounts in the music industry. It's not a safe place. It's a, it's a treacherous place. So filled with money, as soon as things are filled with money, they're filled with people that are trying to take advantage of other people.
Joe Rogan: It's filled with money. Bees come to honey.
Kanye West: Exactly, exactly.
Joe Rogan: So they put, they put you on this ship because you were exhausted. What did they put you on?
Kanye West: Um, um, I'm, I can, I can research. I'm like, I'm, I'm actually forgetting the exact medication that they had.
Joe Rogan: Um, but what did it do to you?
Kanye West: Uh, you, the main thing that it did is it destroyed my confidence. It made me this shell of who I really am. It like grayed over my eyes. It, it, it made me, it made the Mustang that buck anymore.
Joe Rogan: Hmm.
Joe Rogan: They sedated you.
Kanye West: Yes. Yeah.
Joe Rogan: And they, what was the, the thought process behind it? When you talk to a doctor about this, what did they tell you was wrong with you?
Kanye West: Uh, they, they told me I was bipolar and I remember going on TMZ and saying, you know, slavery is a choice and they medicated me for saying that, for having that opinion and saying it out loud. But as I put those contracts up, I'm saying this is a choice as I, you know...
Joe Rogan: You didn't mean people being abducted and brought into slavery and put into chains was a choice. What you were talking about is people making decisions that would enslave them financially and enslave their life.
Kanye West: Yeah.
Joe Rogan: It was taken out of context and it was taken in the least charitable way. And they decided to try to say, look at crazy Kanye, look at this shitty saying.
Kanye West: Yeah.
Joe Rogan: Then they medicate you.
Kanye West: Yes. And the media is always taking anything out of context that isn't a part of the overall narrative that because there's, you know, like Hollywood and media has control so much of the narrative. And then you had Silicon Valley and that's what's so beautiful about one of my heroes, Steve jobs, because there wouldn't be a Silicon Valley or the Silicon Valley wouldn't be what it is today. If Steve jobs didn't make information accessible like this, which is still a bit controlled, but it feels like Twitter is the, the safest fleet, freest, mass platform to communicate on. And, you know, it's like they mess with Jack because of that, you know, you know...
Joe Rogan: Well, it's, it's still censored. There's a lot of issues now, but I think that's internal. I think that's people that are working there that are woke, that want to stop people from saying certain things and there's a lot of struggles with that today. And I, it's unfortunate because I, I do agree that it's an, an unbelievable way to get ideas out there.
Kanye West: Yeah.
Joe Rogan: So, but it's also, it's a new thing and it's mismanaged by the people that use it often. They don't know what they're doing or why they're doing it.
Kanye West: Yeah. Every version of anything that man has made will be flawed.
Joe Rogan: Sure.
Kanye West: And it has to go through a bunch of different steps of evolution.
Joe Rogan: It has to, it has to evolve and change. So why did you agree to let them do this to you? Why, why did you agree to let them medicate you?
Kanye West: Cause if that, if that, look, I'm crazy for sure.
Joe Rogan: But if someone came to me and go, Hey, we're going to put you on some medication. That medication is going to calm you down. I'd be like, everything I do is because I'm not calm. Everything that I've ever done that's made me successful is because I have more energy is because I have a wildness. Like I'm not calming that down. Like I know how to calm myself down. I can self-medicate with exercise and meditation and marijuana and a bunch of different things, but I'm not gonna, I'm not going to take some medication that removes anything that's unique with you and all these wild ideas that come to your head. Like very few people could string together these thoughts the way you're describing them today. If somebody asked me if there's anything wrong with him, I can just fucking, he's filled with awesome. Like what's, what's wrong with that? If you can keep that together, what you just did, the way you just described re-imagining civilization, re-imagining church, re-imagining the food supplies. There's nothing bad about that. This is all very interesting and very good. Like I would never say that's bad, but are you this way all the time? Or is there good versions of Kanye and versions of Kanye where you don't feel like you have a grip on these thoughts?
Kanye West: You know, what I love is there was some perspectives that people showed about what a true manic episode really looks like after I was in South Carolina. And this one guy was talking about his mom being in an episode and kidnapping his brother. And, you know, like proper extreme cases, you know, I cried and was gut wrenched. Like at the, I don't even like to say out loud what I, what I said on South Carolina.
But the idea of, you know, I'm just trying to word it in a way that's really safe and covers my family. Well, people saw this clip of me crying. Some people didn't know what I was crying about. But I was crying about that there was a possible chance. You know, I'm just, I'm looking at a way to say this.
Joe Rogan: I know what you're going to say.
Kanye West: That there was a chance that, you know, that we didn't make, that Kim and I didn't make the family we have today. That's my, that's my most like family friendly, you know, way to word that. And just the idea of it just tears me up inside that I was a part of a culture that promotes this kind of thing.
Like one of the major statistics on the subject of life is that the greatest advocates for the A, the A word is our men from ages 31 to 37. And that's how old I was. And I felt like I was too busy. My dad felt like he was too busy for me. And we have a culture of that.
And they have a child rebel soldiers that were in Africa that would be doped up and psyched out and made to kill their parents. Well, in our culture, we're doped up and psyched out and made to kill our children. You know, we have to decouple the conversation of Planned Parenthood and woman's choice.
Now, so of course, I'm Christian, so I'm pro-life. And when I go into office, I'm not changing laws because I realize we live in an imperfect world and an imperfect society. What I will be presenting is a plan A. And we've already started to work on plan A to change the connotation of orphanages, to change the connotation of foster care.
And that just changed the connotation, you know, verbally, but to create places that are to the level of like the Amman, Giri and Dizzy World had a kid. You know, what is this like? And we have so much land that this can be created and then spread across the world to orphanages in Africa and in China and just across the globe to create these environments that when there's expecting families, moms and fathers, that they feel like there's a place.
Even if they don't feel well off enough to bring another life into this world, that there's a place to go, there's a plan A. Because Plan B and Planned Parenthood were planned by a eugenics that set out and said out loud, I'm doing this to kill the black race and to create population control. You know, if we...
Joe Rogan: Wait a minute, what are you saying? Plan B, meaning the pill, meaning the morning after pill.
Kanye West: You know what? Let me...
Joe Rogan: And Planned Parenthood.
Kanye West: Let me decouple those things. Let me talk about Planned Parenthood.
Joe Rogan: Okay.
Kanye West: There's... The last figure I saw is there were 210,000 deaths due to COVID in America. And everywhere you go, you see someone with a mask on. With A, the A word, A culture, I'll say it one time, with abortion culture, there are 1,000 black children aborted a day, daily. We are in genocide. We... So more black children have died in the past, since February, than people have died of COVID. And everyone wears a mask. So it's a matter of where are we turning a blind's eye to?
Like, the media can control, a lot of times, or has control, what we care about. I even heard somebody say at one point, this is the actual sentence I heard someone say, Puerto Rico so played out. Meaning there was a time where people were caring about it. And now the media says don't care about it. But these people, it still hasn't been solved. The hurricanes still have hit. The earthquakes still have hit. And people are still suffering from that. And no one has really gone to fix it.
And when that 11 billion goes to Haiti, and it doesn't get to the people, you know, the Daily Mail posts a swimsuit pic or something. And deters our energy to what we have to do collectively to help our brothers and sisters. You know, I look at society as one body.
I want to just go into this riff, because my thoughts are like these clouds in Mario Brothers. And I'll jump to this, and I'll see another one. I'll jump to another one. It's like, oh, yes, I'll jump to another one. I need to express this story. I believe that, you know, love will heal all. And we have to look at, I believe that world peace is possible.
And I believe it's us looking at each other as a moment in time. Time is love. You love the things you put time into. That's what I meant, time is love. Like, because this is like this intangible thing, this thing you can't grab. You can't just grab time in your hand. You can't grab love in your hand. But we feel both of these things are real.
For us to love one another, just as simple as that, like love will heal the world. This is what it's going to take to heal the world. But we have a competitive spirit. We like having a bad guy. We like having a competitor. So what we need to do is change the bad guy, change the competitor, make the competitor be the Roman era, the Roman civilization.
Make the competitor be the Egyptian kingdom and say we are the first society, we're the first civilization that ever became civil. Because we are still just as much in the dark ages as medieval times or as Game of Thrones, you know, level, Black Mirror level.
I know I went past future other dimension for a second. But we kill each other. We kill each other on social media. We kill each other in high schools, like in the way that we talk to each other. We physically kill each other in our own neighborhoods and outside our neighborhoods.
You know, this planet, when we keep turning a blind's eye to our brothers and our sisters and our family, which is us as a whole, as all of humanity. Then, of course, it's going to get to the point where there's, you know, homeless sleeping under, you know, a bridge in Calabasas because we ignore the homeless person sleeping in front of the Gucci store.
How do you how does this just look at that visual? It's a homeless person sleeping in front of the Gucci store. We have builders. We have people who know how to make communities. We have people who know how to cook and how to make food and how to how to bring this food.
People are fighting over land and not really realizing that we're not we're not maximizing our resources and our existence. We've got genius level scientists. We've got people who rogue, you know, people who have broken out of the chains like Elon.
Like, imagine if Elon was working at GM on the third floor somewhere. You know, we wouldn't have electric cars. We wouldn't have that new Porsche hybrid. We wouldn't have what's happening with, you know, Hyperloop.
Imagine if the guy that started Airbnb was shut down or the guys who started Uber were shut down. All of these people who break away and then create the new society and the next frontier of where we're going.
People like I've said, like, it feels to me like MIT is a place that has to be funded by people who want to take the smartest people on the planet and make them work on the smallest things that won't change anything. And I've talked to people from MIT and I could look at these like this brilliant person.
I was talking from MIT and he was he was afraid. Everything was fear. Everything was about his girlfriend's pregnant. And, you know, we just got a house and I don't want to do anything to change this. And this is like one of the most brilliant people on the planet.
But if you mix brilliance with bravery, that we can ignite something, even this conversation alone can ignite the people that are going to change the world. Because there's people who have been anointed. You can't teach the brilliance and the anointings.
There's people who hit the game of life and they've got something that they're going to do no matter what school they go to. They know they just know how to do it. They knew how to do it before they got here and they were going to do it.
And these people just need to see what it looks like to overcome the smokescreens of public humiliation, of bankruptcy. I was in debt. The fear of loss. I lost my mom or the fear of death. You know, what other fears are there? There's a lot of fears.
But the thing is, when you remove, like even in the schools, you remove prayer, you remove God, you remove the fear of God, you create the possibility of the fear of everything else. But watch this. If you instill the fear of God, you eliminate the fear of anything else.
And it's not that I am fearless. Nevertheless, I am deftly, literally deftly shaking and in so much fear of my father. I fear God and I don't fear nothing else. There's some power to that, right?
Like it just has a mental management tool. There's some real power to that because so many people are afraid of every single little aspect of life. Bills and debt and love and relationships. And if you have a higher power, and this is one of the things that I've always said about it. What's the main word that you use even for fear? This is the main disease that people use in politics. It's the main fear, is it? But it's the main word. It's the disease attacking the world because it destroys your, it changes your posture. It changes your idea.
Joe Rogan: It's worry.
Kanye West: Yeah.
Joe Rogan: Worry.
Kanye West: Worry.
Joe Rogan: Anxiety.
Kanye West: Yeah, anxiety. That's what it is.
Joe Rogan: Stress.
Kanye West: Like it can kill you. You can't be free. You can't be free to take chances. To be worried about stuff. Like, and I, so to be able to anchor and eliminate worry and say this, I am walking in a righteous path and I don't have to worry about anything.
I don't have to worry about going to jail. I don't have to worry about being killed. I don't have to worry about bankruptcy. I don't have to worry about, you know, humiliation, you know, because this comes, this is where smart aleck prayers can get you. I used to have this really smart aleck prayer. I said, God, deliver me from pain. And then he took my mom. So it's hard to hurt that much ever again.
And create it almost like a character, like Deadpool. I'm like Deadpool for God. Like there's no noise. There's no human noise that can. And, you know, someone tried to like, there was, there was a friend of mine that did like a really bad move where he tried to say, I was using this, this, this lawyer and I was about to work with him.
And he said, the lawyer said he wouldn't work with you until you get my contract done. And I was just like, do you not know me at all? I'd be the type to cut off my, if my hands are like this, I'll cut off my own hand. I come back in the room. They'd be like, yo, what you doing here? I thought we tied you up. I'd be like. And then I'd go just make like a Luke Skywalker, you know, you know, hand.
And this is one thing I want to say, like, and this is about to make me mad right here. The first time you can see me get mad in an interview. They said that George Lucas's prequels are worse than the corporate made Disney Star Wars.
Joe Rogan: I'll get mad at that too. Like that's fucking ridiculous.
Kanye West: Revenge of the Sith. We saw how Darth Vader was made.
Joe Rogan: Yeah.
Kanye West: Like I watched that like 10 times during COVID. Like don't jump Anakin. I got the high ground. Those early movies were pure. They were pure.
Joe Rogan: No, no.
Kanye West: I'm saying even the prequels are better than anything that, and I'm sorry, Disney Star Wars design team. I know you're going to like put my face up in the, you know, office and be like, forget. No, man, this is George. This is his baby.
That thing was set in his heart to show us as children the hero's journey, you know, and these like how can we run it back and replay? Like even at Disney, you know, there's people, you know, at Pixar that have left. People have left, you know, where they call, I've got the exact title, but saying like every time it's a new idea, they call it like an unproven idea.
So they'll get to Toy Story 800,000 and Frozen Trillion before there's a new concept. That they take a chance on.
Joe Rogan: Yeah, they take a chance.
Kanye West: And we've been programmed, like when you see the, you know, the homes, the style of homes that I've been developing, they're far closer to the way the galaxy looks, the way water looks, the way our makeup and our body feels.
We've been put into these boxes, and that was, you know, due to money, due to construction, that we have to be in these boxes. And we've been stuck in a loop, like on Westworld. And this is not, I feel like Tandy Newton on Westworld, where she had to use the people that enslaved her, that trapped her to make it, to make it out.
You know, the, and it's funny when I, like the box, and when I'm talking about farming, I had a point about farming that I didn't finish earlier. I hired this guy to do the A to Z concept. I made it plain as day. Make it so everything we cook in the kitchen at the school, we plant it here. And they would just do it to 70%. They do it to 60%.
Earlier when I had that point, I went to this whole riff about children needing to learn physics and children needing to learn how to really do things and not having this separated thing. Like, we are programmed to lock ourselves in a box.
And what's amazing right now is the opportunity and the platform that we have that the world is hurting for everyone, for those that are in power, for those that are inside the program. Even those that are in power are still a part of the program.
And, you know, I read this tweet that someone said, I finished watching Netflix, what's next? And that's so true that we can't even program enough to satisfy ourselves. The program is done. Forrest Gump has stopped running and just turned around.
It's like all of this thing is a setup, the concerts that musicians go to where we don't, you know, we're not thinking about the fact that we're not getting the lion's share of our masters because we're making the money on tour. And then tour has girls and tour has the, the, the, the, the, the, the arena singing your song, I need you right now. Did you do good champ?
You know, like with Floyd Mayweather is, is such a hero of mine and so excellent because he is a champion. Right. But then also he wasn't afraid to say, I do my deals, I make my money.
And what I like is, you know, he didn't let the, the older system tell him how to spend his money or how to show his money. It was up to him because he's the, he's his own king. You know, God is the king of us all, but he's his own king.
And a lot of times in America, we haven't seen, we haven't seen kings. We haven't seen the, the, the, the, the, the, the royal blood in our bone marrow and the way it comes through.
Now we could show it in, in rap and the way we put our chains on, the way we dress, we could show it in the way we play ball and things like that. But it's another frontier to being, to being a king.
Joe Rogan: Well, there's also something where you feel diminished in the fact that you know that your money is being stolen by people that don't deserve it. So if you have some record executives, if you have some people that you know have looped you into a fucked up deal and they're making millions while you're making thousands, that fucks with your head.
Kanye West: Yeah.
Joe Rogan: It just does. Makes you worry. Makes you stress. Gives you anxiety.
Kanye West: It eats at you. It could drive you crazy.
Joe Rogan: Yeah, it could drive you crazy.
Kanye West: Yeah.
Joe Rogan: Yeah. So I still don't understand how they talked you into medication, man. I wish I knew you better back then because, uh, I would have just had you exercise. I would have had you, I would say, so what, whatever he's doing, you can't do like, you have to understand that there's different people have different amounts of energy.
They have, you, you have this ability to, to have these like really all encompassing thoughts where you have these long trains of ideas and thoughts in your head and you're implementing them. This is all good. This is a, this is a powerful thing. I don't, I don't think it's a negative thing at all.
Kanye West: I mean, some of it comes to, you know, I'm dealing with issues that are not just, you know, black and racial issues. I'm dealing with, uh, maverick, you know, innovator issues.
Joe Rogan: Yeah.
Kanye West: I'm dealing with, you know, just as many, uh, you know, issues where there's walls of, you know, invisible walls and invisible chains as, you know, Michael Jackson dealt with as a black musician or urban musician where he had to go. And I'm urban and he came with thriller. He's like, I don't, let me go get this person who directed, which is a Eastwick to, I'm gonna get a movie director. And he changed, you know, uh, movies forever.
I'm dealing with some, um, some walls that, you know, people have done to hold back, uh, agents of change throughout history. You know, it's like the movie is here. Like this part, you know, us talking right now may be a scene from my life's movie.
Uh, like Tesla was, you know, a, a, a white guy that was a, a ladies man and he would be going to all the like fancy events and everything. And like, he stopped having sex at age 40 and said, you know, I'm going to focus on it. And, and I mean, he died, he died penniless at the end, you know, I'm not going to say like he turned evil, but he's trying to sell a bomb.
And he had all these like answers, uh, that would change the construct of society. And like, my best example is like Kodak is there in a place where they can barely pull it together now, but they invented the digital camera and they didn't bring it to market because, um, because, um, they had all this film to sell.
But one of the things is really, you know, that's a challenge for me is, you know, I, I, I designed this thing, this, we call it the foam runner and we built a factory for it in Cody. And you can make these, uh, in 25 minutes.
And what I'm saying about design, I was talking to one of the just awesome designers that we just, uh, uh, uh, got over at Yeezy. We got like this amazing crew. We got guys that Nike sued us for. And one of these guys, I was trying to hire him for two years. He had to, he had to non-compete, he had to go surf for a year and now he's in.
And when he like, you know, does his, um, his, uh, CAD drawings, it's almost like one shot, one kill. You know, sometimes you design stuff, you got to do it like five, eight times. Like his first one is so close to being ready to go to market because he sketches in a certain kind of way.
And for the longest we said, you know, let's, um, uh, I've been saying, I want to get rid of laces and we still have shoes. We sell with laces because it's a popular shoe and people love this shoe. And it, it hurts me. I feel like Steve Jobs trying to like remove buttons off the side of the next Apple.
And one of the things that's interesting about this, if you look at most sneakers, if you look at you guys' sneakers right now, you have a tongue, you know, and it, it goes this direction. This is one of the innovations about, this is one reason why this is one of the most important sneaker designs is this goes this way because it's ergonomic.
And I remember putting it on and being uncomfortable with wearing it because I'm so used to like the way like a Jordan or something fits with my jeans. And I remember talking to Kobe and him talking about having to make sneakers that fit with jeans. And that was a big thing because, you know, that's what we grow up.
We grow up wearing, you know, caulk and I jeans and Jordans or something like that. So, um, this also, I feel that just the process, when I design, I become like a three-year-old. I have to go to my gut. I have to forget everything I know and really focus in to what I feel like some straight Jedi Yoda or like, you know, if I could grab that water bottle, like, like, wouldn't it have been cool if I just did it right now?
I should have had a magnet on there that you'd be like, you'd be like, yo, this dude's a wizard. But, um, so, so, so for me, you know, I, I'm going to make this shoe be $20 and, you know, money isn't real. So that means the world should be eventually free.
So I'm going to manifest the world being free. My dad, uh, he lives in a DR and he says, you know, anything that you put in the ground grows. So why do people still go hungry? And I like that in theory, but I was like, man, farming is really hard though, man.
I think, you know, I might go hungry if I have someone to farm this food. It's like, but, you know, back in the days we, we, we had that skillset. Now we're losing these skillsets that actually we can sustain off of.
Uh, so with this, uh, and I, I love giving you guys my riffs. I'm like a human version of Instagram. When you look at Instagram, you look at, you know, you're looking like a hundred images a day. Uh, well, I've got millions of images in my mind and the majority of them haven't been realized yet.
You know, there's some images that are from my memory, but I got this whole, the future that's in my mind that has to be brought. So this is, you know, we talk about hype culture and shoes being sold on the, you know, the resale market and Yeezy lives in that place.
But, uh, you know, I don't like the idea. I don't love the idea that some of the reason why people buy it is just, uh, for hype culture or you ain't got this, or I got this colorway and you don't have it, that type of mentality. I'm an, I'm an essentialist. I'm a, I'm a minimalist.
And like, I, I, I have to, I will bring the, the fully A to Z, our existence version to existence. Like Victor Gruen designed the shopping centers, but he designed full utopian communities and people were like, oh, we're just cool with the shopping center. That's all we want.
And these ideas that he had never got brought into fruition, a little bit like Disney kind of based Epcot Center on like, on Victor Gruen. But these, this, this next frontier of these communities and villages of happiness are way closer to a Kenyan village than it is to like a, a gated community, uh, village.
Joe Rogan: Um, but one of the things about your, this aversion to hype culture, one of the good things about the hype culture is if people get into your products, they're going to get into you and they're going to get into your ideas. And all these ideas that you have will become a part of their thought process.
They'll start thinking about it and they go, Hey, he's got some great points. If people really get into your shit, they're also really going to get into your ideas. I think it's one of the things that make people uncomfortable about you because you have the courage to have all these bold ideas and to implement them and to do all these different things that bothers people.
And there's a lot of people that don't have that kind of courage and they are straddled down by anxiety and they see a guy like you and they like try to find flaws. They try to find things that are wrong with it. Instead of looking at the positive aspects of it, they only concentrate on the negative aspects of it.
Kanye West: I don't think, I don't see it that way. I've never saw it that way. I look at you, look at that guy. He can fucking do anything. There's people who like Tesla and there's people who, there's a person who killed animals with Tesla cords to make people not like Tesla.
Joe Rogan: Yeah.
Kanye West: Thomas Edison.
Joe Rogan: Yeah.
Kanye West: A person who made the electric chair be made with a Tesla cord so people wouldn't like Tesla. Tesla still has inventions that haven't been brought to our society that would have brought more simplicity and happiness to our society.
Joe Rogan: Like the Westinghouse ability to transmit electricity through the air, which is fascinating. I don't know if that would have worked in today's world with cell phones and all the different electronics and even, you know, modern air travel. I don't know. I don't know what it would have worked, but things would have been different.
Kanye West: People are over designing into industries where they see they can make some money as opposed to stepping back and saying, how do we look at the entire earth as an opportunity to free everyone and create happiness for everyone?
So, like, there's only a billion people on the internet. You never think about that. There's seven to eight billion people on earth, but then there's only a billion people that are influenced and that are on the internet. We feel like the internet is everything. It's only like 15%, you know, 18% of human beings.
But in order to make, for our civilization, for us to survive, we have to make more human beings. We have to have family. We have to have food. We have to have shelter. That we don't have to have the internet. We don't have to have music. We don't have to have, you know, that's a conversation.
Joe Rogan: I mean. I mean.
Kanye West: It enhances life.
Joe Rogan: Yeah, it enhances.
Kanye West: The quality of life is better. But look at the music. Look at the information we're putting in it. Like, I feel bad when I hear rap songs. I feel bad. Even the stuff that, you know, I just recently put out. I was like, you know, how you listen to lames? They the imitation, man.
Like, why is, that's just, I don't like that message because we're all the imitation of our parents. An imitation of this, imitation of this, imitation of Adam and Eve. You know, we're all the next versions. There should be the V2, V3, V4. Like, you know, Michelangelo and Da Vinci have the same teacher.
You know, there's times where, you know, my, like, people who work with me or, say, like, my mentees or whatever will go out and they'll do something that I wanted to do. And then I'm torn because as a man, you know, I'm jealous and I'm proud at the same time. And it's like a father-son relationship.
Because sometimes when the son goes out and is more successful at things, the father wants to say, that's a good job. But every time the son does something that's a good job, it reminds the father of his failures.
Joe Rogan: Yes.
Kanye West: So it's just, I mean, it's a strong dynamic that that's where I have to lean on God to not be like, you know, this, like, prick that's jealous of, you know, people who are innovating or taking, you know, the goal line.
Because we got to realize we're in a relay race of humanity. At a certain point, whoever, you know, what the inventors in the past did is now handed over to the inventors today, then handed over to the next inventors.
The good thing about the walls and the perception and all that is this, like, smaller barrier to entry allows there to be, you know, a Walt Disney and a Steve Jobs and a Henry Ford. So what I'm doing right now, there's a, there's a, there's a real barrier to entry to doing, to constructing homes and communities and farms.
Like, you can't, you can't just do it like how you can just, you know, it's hard for someone to go from, I'm not saying it can't happen. I'm just saying that it's difficult for someone to go from, you know, programming and putting their music out on the internet today to what it was that Michael Jackson had to do. That barrier entry was so hard for him.
I mean, he was, since he, this guy was the leader of the Jackson 5 when he was five. Like, his entire life led up and this is what he focused on. And it made, and it was all focused on that. So it made the great Michael Jackson. Now, I want to do this comparison of Disney, Steve and Henry Ford and what Yeezy is.
It's really hard to make houses. It's a, it's like a corrupt industry. Also, you got a contract. How many times have you started on a house and contractors like start overcharging for stuff and the budget ends up being twice the amount and it's twice as long.
Joe Rogan: So, look, if you had a relationship, this is why relationships are a better currency than, than, than money. If you had a relationship with the contractors, if you were part of their family, your house would be done quick. I feel like it's a practical joke on rich people how long houses take to build.
I was in the airport and there was a first class line that was super slow and there was a coach area with like eight openings and there was no one in it. And then I hopped out and this other gentleman hopped out with me and went through that line and we went through.
But the rich people with the Hermes belts didn't want to lose their position so bad that they would rather wait in the first class line than to have the time back and go through that. Now, this gentleman is a surgeon that works on people's hearts through their feet.
So it's like that kind of engineer, surgeon, doctor mentality is like, yeah, I got money because this, this is what I'm doing. But I'm here to serve and I have a mentality that I'm not better than the person that's in coach, which is the reason why we were the only two that went through that. How do you segue off of this when I just go into this? Like how do you even find a question?
Joe Rogan: What are you thinking over there right now?
Joe Rogan: There's no reason to worry about it.
Joe Rogan: You have this thought, do you have a rigid process that you organize your day with? Like how do you—you seem to have so many different thoughts and so many different things going on simultaneously. How do you organize your day? Do you have like ritual? Do you have things?
Kanye West: I drive my children to school. I drive my kids to school and I stay at school with them all day. And, you know, I'm in the kitchen, like working with the top chefs on the planet to create this, you know, these healthy menus. And I'm working with the farmers. So the school that I'm at is also, it's like this new—I don't want to, no disrespect to NASA. I was going to say new NASA, but of humanity that we're anchoring it around our children. So that's what my day consists of.
But then I also, in the past couple months have been going to Atlanta for two days a week or three days a week, because I'm building this, 120,000—oh, I'm not supposed to say that I'm building, we're building a soundstage. But, it was funny because I go back and forth on content. Should I work in content? Should I work in tech? I have all these like website ideas and tech ideas. And I, sometimes I was like, I'll say, I'm cursed by tech. Like I'm not, um, you know, I don't have any curses. Um, or God has, lets me break the curses and break the chains.
I'd rather say, I don't know if content is my calling, like messaging, like, let me show you what a school of the future looks like. Let me show you what monasteries of the future. Let me show you what farms of the future look like, but we're 20 years past the future. Like it's in 2020, like we're supposed to be in a future by 2000. So it's my job to pull the future into now.
And that's something I struggle with when I talk about the different things that I'm doing, getting into the idea of doing like content for Netflix or content for Hulu and like what that content, because I believe we're in the movie. I believe we're in the game. We're in like Grand Theft Auto. It's just too many things that align. And we're not, we can terraform.
What we can do is be like, if your Grand Theft Auto character just started redesigning the world. Hisself, like painting his own, his own world. We have this opportunity to make life as fun as these second lives. But if you look at how politics, just general unhappiness, misery, control, the speed that contractors go, the farmers that wouldn't finish the farm, the way we are with each other. It's why people feel like, look, everyone's going to go into like this Ready Player One second life. And I believe that our first life can be just as imaginative. And it will be.
So that's my, and I have a bunch of friends that work in the gaming industry. And I have friends that work in the content industry. And I'm saying, I'm anchoring on real life to make real life as awesome as games, to make real life as awesome as movies. So did I answer the question of my schedule every day?
Joe Rogan: Yeah, but I mean, so you just basically go on what you feel like working on. You basically just start your day, you do your stuff with your kids, and then whatever these ideas you have, you just nourish them. You just encourage them. You just feed whatever thoughts are in your head.
Kanye West: Well, yeah, but what I was expressing on that last symphony I gave you was that I do have this challenge. That's where I'm designing. I'm actually designing what I'm doing with my time, saying, should I be even taking a meeting? Like when I take a meeting, I know if it's a good or bad meeting, if someone's talking to me and I just get sleepy, I know that that's not what I should do. But if someone's talking, I'm, you know, energized.
I like saying the word energized over the word excited, because this is what they do to all of us. They get us excited and anxiety kind of go together. Like someone can say, hey, I got you a new car, and it's across the street. And you get so excited, you run across the street, get hit by a car, trying to run to your new. But if you're energized about having the car, perhaps you look both ways.
See, I play this dictionary game with the, like this, this small Webster pocket dictionary. And we'll go to a page and say, go to a page with the word help on it. And we say, highlight all the words you think are positive. And then we talk about afterwards. Why do you think that's positive? So the word help is like, it's like a, it's like a bad leg on a table. You think you could stand on it, but if you stand right there, that table could flip over. The fourth definition in the word help is to ignore. And it actually makes sense.
You know, like if you have a meeting, right, here's the answer. When you know the meeting didn't do good, it didn't go well. The person says it then, oh, how can I help? That means they don't want to do nothing. They'll just give you a phone number. You know, the word is to ensure. And then there's a lot of words to end with URE that are very powerful. Future, sure, pure, endure.
And that goes into like the rhyme, because I'm literally trying to figure out the video game at all times to see where these things parallel. I know this can get into like a riff where people are like, okay, yeah, we're losing what you're saying right now. But look at that. Look at the dictionary. Look at these words. I have friends that English is their second or third or eighth language. And they say that English is the hardest language to learn because there's so many words that mean the same thing.
Like it tears me to my core that my daughter has to learn T-W-O, the difference between T-W-O, T-O-O, and T-O. I want to just be like, just draw the number two. Like just make it like sometimes I don't know when, you know, the difference. And I'm like a terrible speller. And I believe that there's like curriculums that are European curriculums that don't even apply to our genes of, you know, who we are as a people like African descent people. We don't even talk like that. Like this is a skill set, but I'm still talking white, basically. Like you'll see like a black pastor, you know, give this amazing like sermon or like marry someone. I was at a wedding and this guy, they said, wow, he speaks so well. Well, what do you mean well? He speaks super white.
Like, yeah, that's what the definition of well is.
Joe Rogan: Right, right, right. It just sounds that you use in the communicate ideas, right?
Kanye West: Well, it's funny. I bumped into a friend of mine. Actually, Matt Williams, I said, Givenchy, I wasn't expecting to see. I wasn't expecting to see him. I wasn't expecting to see him. And we're at the Mercer lobby and he caught me off guard. And I was like, I didn't use words when I saw him. I like almost communicated in a different language, like a language like joy or happiness. Only 30% of our communication is verbal. That's why the mask just really throw me off because I can't tell what someone is thinking and feeling. Because a lot of times, half the time, people don't say what they're thinking and feeling. And I have to decode. With the mask, I can only, you know, hear what they're saying.
Joe Rogan: That's the problem with social media too, right?
Kanye West: Yes.
Joe Rogan: Things in black and white and things being taken out of context. I mean, that's the reason why people, like, you know, love this show. That they're like, oh, we got the yay Joe Rogan. We can hear him going to all of these riffs.
Kanye West: Yeah.
Joe Rogan: And we can feel him.
Kanye West: You can see, you know, how I'm looking. You can see my energy and the way I'm saying it too.
Joe Rogan: Yes.
Kanye West: And you see people sitting down having an actual conversation, a real conversation.
Joe Rogan: Yeah.
Kanye West: And a conversation where anybody that comes on this show, you don't have like this. Like, sometimes with reporters, they have like, or people that are media, they have like a complex. You don't have a complex. You're like, yo, let's first off, to get this straight, like, I could whip your ass. I'm Joe Rogan. I'm a professional fighter. Now let's start the conversation.
Which I think is another reason, like, with Nick Cannon, he's like, man, I married Mariah Carey. I did all these, and both of these interviews have been very positive because people aren't carrying something already, like some form of chip on their shoulder, where they got to like, every sentence, sometimes I talk to reporters, it's like they're saying the thing they wanted to say to this guy in high school, that they never got to complete the conversation, and they're taking it out on me.
Joe Rogan: I think there's a lot of people that have conversations with people, and they want to create a viral moment, too. It's not just a conversation. They have an agenda. It's almost like you were talking about the Disney Star Wars movies, that it's not a work of art. It's a formula, like two plus two is four. Let's put those together. We'll make some money. Instead of the original Star Wars, which was the hero's journey, which was like a Joseph Campbell book, it's like there was a beauty and a purity to it. It's an expression. Like someone comes up with an idea, and they bring it to fruition. And then you get to watch, and you're like, wow, it moves you. The new movies don't move you.
Kanye West: And it was a crew of leaders, of thought leaders that like, it's a Brian De Palma that told George to put the words at the beginning. Because it's like you really, all I've been feeling like is like when I talk up to this point, I've just been making THX, you know. And then the toys from Star Wars have now come out first, which would be like, you know, like the Yeezys or something like that. And now it's making the whole Star Wars in real life like backwards, like the product came first, kind of like Disney. Like Disney, he was Mickey Mouse became super popular before he was able to get all of his Imagineers in. And I want to point out, you know, when people talk about being, you know, self-absorbed or the center of your own universe, what's the main character in Star Wars name?
Joe Rogan: Luke Skywalker.
Kanye West: Who created Star Wars?
Joe Rogan: George Lucas.
Kanye West: Oh.
Joe Rogan: But did he write it?
Kanye West: But listen to that last name.
Joe Rogan: Yeah.
Kanye West: That's.
Joe Rogan: Yeah.
Kanye West: George Luke.
Joe Rogan: Yeah. He's the main character in Star Wars.
Kanye West: He kissed his sister.
Joe Rogan: And it was awesome.
Kanye West: Yeah.
Joe Rogan: There's something about things that are pure, right? Versus things that are attempting to recreate something that people are going to like. There's a difference. And it's in music as well, right? Like your music resonates with people because it's obviously coming from your mind. Whereas some people are creating songs that they think are going to be hits. They're creating top 40.
Kanye West: It's coming from my heart and my gut. But when it's the most pure, it's coming from God and I'm being used as a channel. It's like when Tanya Harden hit the triple flip. But, you know, she had all that skill. And then at some point, it's not called a triple. I'm about to say triple Lindy like it's Rodney Dangerfield or something. But it's like there's these moments where we do things that seem like superhero level.
And I think that's what M. Night Shyamalan was laying out for us with Unbreakable, Glass. And what was the other one with the guy with the multiple personalities? It's like he's got three of these films that are like showing us, hey, you're superheroes. You can believe it. The greatest disabler of our abilities. Our greatest kryptonite is doubt.
Joe Rogan: Right.
Kanye West: Doubt and fear.
Joe Rogan: Yeah, doubt.
Kanye West: Like, why did I, you know, like going to, why did I register so late to run for president?
Joe Rogan: COVID.
Kanye West: Like, I remember, like I had the virus and I was sitting, you know, quarantined in my house. And my cousin texts me about being prepared to run for president. And I just completely pulled, like put it off to the side because I was like shivering and, you know, having a shake and taking a hot shower and eating soup and, you know, just sleeping.
Joe Rogan: How bad did you have it?
Kanye West: I don't think it was that bad. I think it was a mild case. And it just threw off. I mean, it threw everyone off. It threw everybody's plans off. And then, you know, it was just this calling on my heart. And I remember talking to like really like elitist, you know, writers. You know, I was trying to avoid saying white supremacists, but like elite, like the liberal elites are like, you know, so boy, who are you going to vote on? You know, like who are you to run for office? And why would you sign up for office? You know, if you if you can't even get on ballots, that's people are saying that to me and I could get on the ballots.
It's like there's black mothers that go into a hospital and the doctor will tell them that there's something wrong with their child or get them to this is happening to this date. And then when people say, you know, are you a are you a pawn like for the Republicans? The reason why I think that people are asking me that is because the because the Democrats do create black pawns. They do have celebrities that they'll sit down and meet with and say you're going to be an advocate for the Democratic Party. And, you know, everyone's like, you know, and I'm not trying to take any sides of like Republicans or Democrats.
I'm just saying, why were why were people so much thinking that I was like a form of a pawn? And then the idea that, you know, liberals would say like the funny thing is liberals, I think. And I'm I don't know if I could classify myself as liberal, but I'm definitely kind of liberal elite. I wrote my beautiful dark twisted fantasy like I've had some of the best writing. So that would put me in that class, so to say. But I'm also just a purist. Like I see a Kenyan home and be like, that's beautiful right there.
I'm not like I got to have the. So the one of the most racist things that liberals who pride themselves on that being racist have said to me is like, you're going to split the black vote. And that makes it seem like black people can't make decisions for ourselves and that don't know why people know me like I'm only like only liberal. They literally make it seem like only black people will vote for me. Right. Think about that statement, the the nuance of institutionalized racism.
And this would be like somebody from the art world, you know, I mean, they just have a place where no one has really been able to embrace the idea of blacks not being in a block and staying in one place. Or blacks have to vote Democrat. Yeah. Or blacks have an opinion like us not being on boards or us being like handlers for other black people, meaning like if we work at a label or we work at a big corporation, it's our job to go talk to the other black people, you know, to calm other black people down. But we're working for, you know, Universal or Vivendi or whatever the organizations were.
You know, I was thinking about buying my master's and I realized that that was too small of a thought. I'm going to buy Universal. They're only a thirty three billion dollar organization. I'm one of the greatest product producers that ever existed. I'm and I'm a child. I'm 43 years old. I was fifty three million dollars in debt, you know, four years ago. And now it's proven that I'm the new Michael Jordan of products.
I went to Adidas and we were a fifteen billion dollar organization losing two billion before COVID hit. Our market cap was sixty eight billion. I went to The Gap and I partnered with The Gap and our stock jumped 45 percent in two hours. The organization made two billion dollars in two hours in two hours. And now we've doubled. I mean, the gap was market cap was lower than Yeezy. It was like three billion dollars when when when I first got there. Now it's like seven, eight billion dollars and we haven't even released the product yet.
But what I loved, you know, I sat there and I did the deal without getting on the board and I looked at my cousin and I and I I didn't want to sign the deal without being on the board. And I looked at him and said, I'm doing this for you, meaning like this is part of a relay race. It would just be a given that if someone of color was to your position, my position of influence will be on the board. But Michael Jordan had to break down walls and Michael Jackson had to break down walls for us to break down the next walls.
And the next walls are the boardroom, because you know what the boardroom is? It's an opinion. See, people are fine for us to play basketball and, you know, rap and make clothes. But. The society is a set up is not really used to or fine with us actually having an opinion. And I can understand why, because what is our opinion based on if we grew up thinking we were slaves? If our opinion isn't based on, hey, my dad taught me how to run this company, you know, my dad is smarter than me and everything he wanted to do.
Black people thought he was crazy and he had to do it with white people who thought he was incompetent because he was black. And the way these companies and the way the music industry, the way managers and the way society generally looks at black people is the way like a misogynistic man looks at a hot lady. What can you give me? What can you do for me? No one, the misogynistic man that can look at a hot lady and say, can you run my company?
So, you know, this idea of me, you know, and I got like, you know, I'm building my factories. I've simplified the design. And I was working with a guy that, you know, that's helping me to, you know, build some of the factories. It was an older white gentleman. And he just matter of factly says we're sitting at his house in Malibu. It's a nice day. He just matter of factly says Adidas will never put you on the board. And I'm like, this, this wall has to come down. Like, how could you not have the guy that has the best ideas?
So one of the great things with Universal, one of the approaches that we have is, you know, Universal, when Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre sold Beats by Dre, Universal had a chance to buy in or do different things. They sold it for $3 billion. That was half of the value of Universal at that time was $6 billion. Due to the Internet, which the music industry was afraid of in 2000, Universal now, I think, is worth $35 billion.
And now they have another Steve Jobs, you know, Howard Hughes, Henry Ford, Disney, Elon kind of character within their midst. But they're so concerned about the control of the idea of artists because they're using me as like this artist that has attracted other artists. Also, I use them. I got famous, made some money. I got to tour. You know, I became this superstar. So we use each other. Now, there's just an adjustment that needs to be made in the relationship. And I can make and I will make products that will make more money than Universal is worth.
But it's not about the money, as I said earlier. It's about the fact that even though my net worth is $5 billion and I'm one of the most famous, most influential, God-fearing Christians on the planet. I still have to go to this man or this organization and ask him for something. A
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Kanye West appears on Joe Rogan Experience October 2020
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Kanye West is a rapper, record producer, fashion designer, and current independent candidate for office in the 2020 United States Presidential Election. @kan...