Kanye West College Dropout Interview 2004

Interviewer: The first question is like, could you tell us a little bit about the joints that you're doing with Jacob the Jeweler?Kanye West: Okay. Am I looking at this camera?Interviewer: Yeah, you're looking at the camera.Kanye West: You know? Well, I'm working on a line right now. It's in development, you know. It might be a little bit premature for me to talk about it, but I go into the jewelry store and just not see anything I wanted. And, you know, I've been drawing since third grade. The first college I went to, I actually got a scholarship to go to American Academy of Art. And I've been putting jewelry on layer weights since I was, like, 16 years old. So, that combination, I just figured I'd start, like, using colored diamonds to represent how it would look in real life. Or how it would look, like, in a portrait or something. Instead of making stuff like, you know, something in real life is yellow and you use a white diamond to describe my name. Why not use a yellow diamond, you know?Interviewer: So, it's not just limited to religious symbols and stuff, right, as far as it's concerned?Kanye West: No, it's not. It's whatever I can think of that I want to paint using, you know, metal, porcelain, diamonds, precious stones, whatever it takes to represent that. And just make really nice pieces of jewelry. You know, I want, like, the pieces that we wear to be comparable. You know, I know I can get an ego please for this, but, like, to, like, a Fabergé egg or something. Like, the ghetto version, I guess. Yeah.Interviewer: All right. Now, a lot of people are copying your style of dress. Everybody's wearing the button-down shirts and the blazers and stuff like that. In your eyes, what was the most extreme case that you see? Did you ever walk out and see someone look exactly like how you dress?Kanye West: Yeah, man. That's what made me feel the best, that people dress like me. That means that you have an influence more so than just people listening to your music or your records. That means people, like, really like what you're doing and into it. So, I just, I appreciate everybody that picked up on the style. I try to be fashion for myself. So, I'm happy to bring that to the hip-hop community.Interviewer: Okay. I was watching a documentary about you, The Diary. And you talked about, in Diary, you talked about seeing, being able to see sound. Talk a little bit about that, like pictures of what sound would look like. Can you elaborate just a little bit on that?Kanye West: Well, yeah, I haven't even seen The whole Diary yet, but, you know, it's hard to explain, you know, with a short answer. I see colors like, you know, like a bass line might be brown or black. Some piano chords might be blue. A horn might be yellow in my head. And it's like, it's almost like a portrait, like an oil painting in my head. So, I picture everything. Like, when I'm working on videos, I picture that video in my head before the shots I already did. I draw it. I do sound design and visuals in my head before you actually see it.Interviewer: Do you have any idea of what you would pick for the next, you know, single, official single?Kanye West: Oh, the next single is Jesus Box.Interviewer: Why?Kanye West: Because I like the song a lot.Interviewer: Okay. Um, and I wanted to ask you, you know, there are a lot of male producers right now who are doing their thing. And I have a sister who's young, but she loves you, by the way. She thinks you're great. She's 15.Kanye West: You know, we got something in common. I think I'm great too.Interviewer: Of course. I want to know what, what advice would you have for, you know, for her or for a young person who's trying to break in, especially a young girl?Kanye West: Um, tell her, hold on. Oh, who is that? Is that Zafkai?Interviewer: That's Nick.Kanye West: Oh, Nick.Interviewer: I was talking about it.Kanye West: Okay. They're talking about it. Um, just perseverance. Don't stop trying and put a lot of work into it. You know, you always hear the stories about Michael Jordan shooting all those street throws. And that's what it was like for me working on beats. I'm talking about up late nights and still having a job, still taking care of responsibilities, doing what you had to do as a man or, you know, as a woman and still being able to take time out, take all your, all your extra time out and put it towards your craft. You know, you can't just go to the movies and play basketball and do all these different things and still focus on that. If you're trying to break through, you got to focus. Like that's all you do. Like when I was working on through the wide video, other than what I had to do, that's all I was doing. And like now I'm in that same situation with the Jesus Walks video. That's all I'm thinking about is how they make this work.Interviewer: So what do you have slated for direction on Jesus walks video? Is, are you directing the video part of it?Kanye West: Well, we already had, uh, one, uh, video was done. It was by Michael Hausman. And, uh, we're about to do a couple other ideas because I needed to just come across so perfect. You know, my videos, a video could be a good video for somebody else might not be a good video for me because now, you know, you expect so much from me. I expect so much from y'all. I expect more from me than y'all do. It has to be groundbreaking, breathtaking, hit-making, booty-shaking.Interviewer: And, uh, finally, um, I wanted to ask you, uh, about Mother's Day. Mother's Day is coming up and I'm asking all the artists about, you know, their thoughts on Mother's Day. And, uh, you know, just shoot from the hip to the back.Kanye West: You know, Mother's Day, you have to appreciate, you know, Mother's Day, I feel, should be one of the most important days of the year to everybody because we wouldn't be here. I mean, that's obvious. But especially my mother, she's helped me so much and I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her. So I'm gonna make sure that this Mother's Day is the best one ever.Other Voice: After you sold a certain amount of records, you could just get on and you could just do this for her. The feel of it, how is it different from the last album? Um, introduce yourselves also from my engineer, uh, Slate. And let me know who's speaking with.Other Voice 2: Yo, what up, dawg? It's the Detroit.*There may be errors on this page.