Transcript of Kanye West
Kanye West: This crowd... so I heard that America is basically split. So this crowd right here, I want to ask: was y'all Trump or Hillary?So wait a second. Trump won, right? And y'all telling me... is that one Trump person that came to a Kanye West show? Y'all lying.People that voted for either side still come to this show. People like... I'm going to say I think because you know it's music, and music is more liberal, and all the celebrities were with her. So I'm at a Kanye show and people are going crazy, losing their minds right now, showing that they're racist and all this type of stuff. So I don't know. Maybe we seen people go crazy over here, so I don't want to say that.But what I'm saying is I'm not judging y'all either way on what side y'all on. I'm just saying that I know there are people here at my show that love Kanye West that also voted for Trump.There might be Hillary supporters who are louder, but my simple fact is that there are people here that voted for Trump that still like me. I'm not asking y'all to boo at the idea of it. I'm asking y'all: do y'all think that's a fact?How much of the crowd thinks that's a fact that someone that's here maybe helped with this right here? I'm not asking y'all what y'all opinion is on who should win and who shouldn't win. What I'm saying is there's people who vote for either side that still come together and love music.The dumbest thing about politics is this idea of creating a separation. People have things to offer. No one side or the other side is all bad. That's nonsense. It's not just Electoral College. It's not just the popular vote versus what the states say. It's democratic. Yeah, that's true too. It's not just the echoing on the internet that made everyone believe, including Hillary, that she was going to win. It's not just that echoing. It's when you go to your search engines and you look up something someday, and the next day they got an advertisement to what you looked up. That echoing, that same echoing, is what made us think Hillary was going to win. Because if you're among the majority of Kanye fans, who are democratic, you thought because of what the internet was telling you, you were fooled by the information on the internet.Don't be believing everything you read and hear and see and gets translated to you by the internet. The funny thing is when they write it, they're going to write it on the internet. "Don't believe what you heard tonight." When you see it, it might have been tampered with. There might have been a reporter that wanted to use this as an opportunity to say, "Oh, this rapper..." Because when they call me a rapper, they're trying to say that I'm less than a thinker, less than a philosopher. The rappers are the philosophers of our time. The rappers are the influencers of our land. The celebrities are the influencers of our nation.Just look at the President. He wasn't even in politics and he won. That shows you—not if you're mad about him winning or not—that shows you the level of possibility that's out there if you go and find the information and don't believe everything the internet is telling you. There are possibilities. There are possibilities inside of books. There are possibilities when you call your grandmother. People be on the internet way more than they would call their mother or their grandmother to get information that can have you wrong as hell, like everybody was a couple days ago.Do you ever want to be blindsided like that again? Well, stop believing everything. Stop. Ask more questions. Stop believing just because we don't like what this person said. That don't mean that there's not somebody who did like it. I messed that up. But what I'm saying is, don't believe that just because the media doesn't like a headline somebody said, that there aren't people out there—enough people out there—that do believe in it to make someone the president of the quote-unquote free world.For everything that you might not like, there's another human being right next to you that might like that stuff. We got... you might not like what you hearing right now, but I'm just going to ask you to ask more questions.And the intent of this was not to be on either side. The intent was just to open up.2020... I seriously doubt I would have had any experience in politics either by the time 2020 comes. I think I will have experience on creating new schools that approach the way we should receive our education post-internet, not based on a 1930s idea of how to put everyone in the same factory.Schools were designed to put people in certain forms of jobs. The internet has opened up all other forms of jobs. Education is far behind where it needs to be for us as human beings to be informed enough to not be disappointed in the way that so many people were.We have to ask questions. None of us are experts in everything. When they go up and question the candidates, and it's all about what they remember, it's not about what you remember. It's about you have the ability to work with the best of class.People are joking about Donald: "Oh, he didn't even know that he had to get this. He had to get that." But does he have the ability to work with the best of class?What would be a prejudice because of something he would have said earlier, right, when he was running to win? A prejudice against something that he did in order to win. But if he takes the model, the same model I'm going to take in 2020, if he takes the model to work with the best in class and to work from a place of empathy for people, for the family of people, not just America. The world. We are one world. We are one race.There's a lot of people who said things that offended people. Benjamin Carson is a genius. He might have said things that offended people. Maybe Bernie Sanders didn't have the right book or something, you know what I'm saying. He might have said... or maybe people were tired of the status quo of politics and just wanted to see: could possibly something change? This 1930s education system, this class system, this ecosystem. Maybe it was people out there who wanted to see if something could possibly change in this political society that's not doing nothing to help each other out but only to keep themselves in power.Okay. And you know what? People tell me I can't talk to y'all in this way. They say... Let me see. I'm saying about keeping themselves in power. There's a power to the Saint Pablo Tour. Y'all know it's the coldest tour. All that type of stuff, right?So the reason why... the funny thing about the guy throwing up the Views hat is—I see you shook your hand up, right—so the reason why I might not have thrown a Views hat is to assess the power, to show the power of this. I'm the man. I'm great. This my tour, right? But then when that "Pop Style" come on, everybody go crazy. It's from this album. People are always trying to do power plays. That's what politics are.But forget all power play and all that type of stuff. It's the collective. It's the collective idea of if we like Hillary, or if we like Bill Clinton and things that he did, his approach, if we like things about Obama, things that he did. That our current president has to take the best of all candidates' principles and combine them. Right now, that's what I'm hoping. If that doesn't happen, then I'm going to love. And I'm going to say this, and it's going to be more clear: if that does happen, then there'll be—there wouldn't be a reason to—y'all might not totally understand or feel or everything that I'm saying with approach to why I'm saying what I'm saying.And it's only my ego that tells you four years, you'll understand.They try to embarrass me and diminish me and say—they call me a rapper that's ranting. I don't have all of the answers, but I know that if I work with the best of class with the idea of empathy for the human race, not idea of power struggle between who's Republican, who's Democrat, who said this, who said that, but more of what are the principles that can collectively come together. Then we can stop in America and bring together the best of all skill sets: education, housing.There's so many elements that I've been out here learning. When I make my, like, rich guy house and stuff, I be like learning about elements that everyone should have: color, patterns, proportions.I appreciate that you appreciate that, but I feel like you can't hear what I'm saying. So if I'm saying something and you clap, I'm taking that as you trying to tell me you want to experience the same Saint Pablo tour that was experienced, you know, three weeks ago.And one thing that I do have the ability to do is talk as long as I want, right? Here, some people might have a less enjoyable experience than others. Some people might have came to see, you know what I'm saying, turn up. But if you clap and I'm in the middle of an idea, it's just distracting.That type of clap is good. I said... I did this clap. They was like, "That's fine." I'm talking this stuff. It's like, do not try to control the way that I'm using my platform currently. Today, this is my platform.I did have a lot to say. I did have a lot of things that I felt about the paradigm shift that we are under right now. And I was told to not say certain ideas I had because, "Oh, your fans won't understand." The reason why you're echoed to on the internet is because people believe that you won't understand.Now I just want to have, since we had a conversation for a while, do I want to ask a question again. Strictly this question. Not what you believe is right or wrong on who won. Strictly this question. Answer me this: do you believe that there are people here enjoying, or before I started talking, enjoying a Kanye West show that voted for Trump? By a show of screams, do you believe that there are people at a Kanye West show that voted for Trump?Oh, it sound different to me than before. It sounds different. Why? Why did we boo the first time on something that wasn't, "Hey, do you like Trump?" That wasn't what I asked. I asked you to give me your facts because the internet was giving you their facts based on what you wanted to hear, and a lot of you guys got blindsided."I don't know how he's going to bring it back." Like, "bring it back"? How do I make you... How do I make you think, though?The fact that I just asked an undeniable question. That in most music situations, you have the Democrats. Always, since the beginning of time, the Democrats were considered to be more liberal. The Democrats are supposed to be more futuristic. The Democrats are supposed to have more empathy and be more about the people. And that relates directly to music, and it also relates to celebrity and the idea—the idea of what music does for you. Like, Democrat is like music to your ears or something.By your voices, do you believe... what percentage of people here, and by the way, I'm not setting y'all up to be like, "Oh"—I'm not setting y'all up with no type of stuff. What I'm saying is, what percentage of people here do you think voted for Trump? Do you think it was two people here? Do you think maybe it was 100 people? Do you think maybe it was 1,000 people out of the 15,000 people here?I'm asking you, what do you really believe? One person? What? Two people? What do you really believe? What do you really believe? What do you really believe? What do you really believe? What do you really believe? What do you really believe?I haven't talked about anybody's stances on anything, might be years. I haven't talked about quotes that anybody gave from either side. That's not what I'm talking about. That's not what I'm asking you. What I'm asking you is what you really believe.I put something that I would bet on. I bet that it might be 20% or maybe even 30% of this very audience right here that might have voted for Trump. 15%? I bet you 15% of them. 15% of them would never say that at a Kanye West show because of the climate right now. And they don't know, they like might think I'm like, "Oh, they voted for Trump?" It's the opposite of that. People got the right to vote for whoever they want to vote for. That is a right to vote. That is a right.I did not vote. "Oh no, Saint Pablo ticket sales is going down now. Oh no! T-shirts! Oh no! I—you just got out of jail. Why? You haven't dealt with the Taylor Swift stuff for seven years. Now you going to go and say... Man, why just don't say stuff and don't step out, man." That's the reality."Well, how you going to expect people to vote for you if you didn't even vote?" I'm concerned not about the idea of being president or the actual job of it. I'm concerned about putting out a concept of how to do the job in a new way. And if no one will do it in that way, I will take position in 2020 and do it myself."Oh, you ain't going to get it now because of what you just said." But it was proven that it didn't matter what nobody had just said. It doesn't matter.Play the next song.*There may be errors on this page.