Kanye West: Everybody in high school would be like, yo, you acting like a fag. You acting like, dawg, you gay? And I used to deal with that when I was in high school. And what happened is it made me kind of homophobic, because I would go back and question myself. Like, damn, why does everybody else walk like this? And I walk like this. So why is it? And you start just looking. Because you don't realize until you're in high school, people are like, yo, fam, look at you. Look at how you act. If you see something and you don't want to be that because it's such a negative connotation towards it, you try to separate yourself from it so much that it made me homophobic by the time I was through high school. Like, anybody that was gay, I was like, yo, get away from me. And really, like Tupac said, started hanging with the thugs. And you look up. And all my friends were, like, really thugged out. And it's kind of like I was racing to try to find that constant masculine role model right there, to the point where it's like I would really discriminate. Like, I use the word fag, fag, fag, fag, like always condescending towards gays and look down upon gays. And I remember my cousin told me that another one of my cousins was gay. And at that point is kind of when the turning point where I was like, yo, yo, this is my cousin. I love him. Like, I've been discriminating against gays. It's like, do I discriminate against my cousin? And everything starts to click, you know, he brings his partner with him to, like, Thanksgiving and all that. And you just had to sit back and think. Like, damn, you know, hip hop really is about, um, it seems like it's about, like, fighting for your rights in the beginning. About speaking your mind and about breaking down barriers or whatever. But everybody in hip hop discriminates against gay people. To me, like, that's one of the standards of hip hop is to be like, yo, you fag, you gay. Matter of fact, the exact opposite word of hip hop, I think, is gay. Like, yo, you play a record and it's like whack, that's gay, dog. You know, if it's good, that's that hip hop right there. You see what I'm saying? It's like the exact opposite. So it's like me speaking for my entire culture, me looking at my rappers out there, hip hoppers discriminate against gay people. They feel like they can't act. Hold on one second. Everybody, don't throw me off. I really want to say this. I want to say this to America. I want to.
Sway: Speak your mind.
Kanye West: No, he was just throwing me off just slightly. Um, I want to just, to just come on TV and just tell my rappers, just tell my friends, like, yo, stop it, fam.
Sway: Mm-hmm.
Kanye West: Like, like, seriously, that's, that's really discrimination. To me, that's exactly what they used to do to black people. I'm just trying to tell people just stop all that.
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