Lex Fridman: The following is a conversation with Ye, the legendary artist, producer, and designer, formerly known as Kanye West, on this, the Lex Fridman podcast.
Kanye West now known as Ye: Based off of our connection and just you being a friend, I need to show you my two tech companies and get your perspective on it. Because now I have friends that can give a perspective. Like when I would work on albums, I had other friends that worked on albums and they would give me their perspectives on it.
Lex Fridman: You want to do this?
Ye: We are doing it.
Lex Fridman: This is part of it?
Ye: Absolutely.
Lex Fridman: All right.
Ye: Beautiful. Oh, well, I wanted to finish. The thing is, okay, you're going to ask me different questions, but I'm about growing and building and bringing the idea to life. So when I see you, I say, oh, this guy understands how to hire engineers. Where I'm coming from, coming from Hollywood, coming from press, coming from media, all of the guys, you know, that so many of the guys that have been like voices and faces and talking heads, whatever. Have not understood how to engineer product. And that's the reason why I was able to jump past everyone in the entertainment field and become, you know, whatever the net worth is, 11 billion. I'm going to stop putting the whole black thing on my worth. Like, let's just see where I am on the scale of life, because that's a cop out for me to say, richest black guy of all time. Because that's feeding into the same, you know, trauma economy that Black Lives Matter feeds into. That's why I love and respect engineers. That's the only thing that we really need to teach in school is engineering. We don't need to teach history. We don't need to teach anything that is subjective. It needs to only be engineering taught in school. And everything else needs to be recessed. Nothing at all. Any force, subjective information is just to weaken and indoctrinate our species. And that's what schools do now.
Lex Fridman: As an engineer, I love hearing you say that. But to push back, history is not, the interpretation of history might be subjective, but history has some facts. And they're useful to give a grounding to the way you do engineering.
Ye: I don't 100% believe in anything, any concept of the future or any concept of history, because history was just written by the victors.
Lex Fridman: Yeah.
Ye: So if I see stuff happen on the day that later that day is reported wrong, so how wrong is something reported a thousand years ago? And why would we argue about something that's not in the now? Because that's the only thing that everyone can agree upon, is that it is now, right now.
Lex Fridman: Yeah, well, you try not to make the mistakes of the past. That's the usefulness of history, the limited usefulness of history.
Ye: The biggest mistake from the past that we keep making is looking at the past.
Lex Fridman: Too much.
Ye: Giving too much value to the past.
Lex Fridman: Too much value to the past.
Ye: Because we are now, we are now, we are here, we are one species, we are one race, we're here, and it's time. And the leadership is changing, because you have Elon as a leader, Ye as a leader, and we are the top leaders. We're more influential than the presidents.
Lex Fridman: So you're a human being with engineering challenges before you, with a STEM player, with parlor. What's the hardest thing in front of you on the engineering front?
Ye: That's the first sentence that any of our species needs to hear when they're born. You are a human being with engineering challenges, and I consider challenges to be opportunities, in front of you. Literally, like, let me see a piece of paper. I need to write that down. That's the beginning of our new species constitution. I'm going to do the paper like this wide. I'll put it in widescreen. I mean, this for Ridley, you are, no, let me like, you are a being with engineering.
Lex Fridman: Opportunities or challenges?
Ye: Opportunities. I'm sorry, I don't spell as good as John Legend. Opportunities. And before you. I like the before, because it can mean, actually can mean forward or before you. This right here, I've always said I'm the top five writer in human existence, but this, like, this right here is pushing me to, like, number four or number three.
Lex Fridman: It's a good line.
Ye: Because who would you say is the top, and it's top writer in human existence, and we know who it is.
Lex Fridman: That's subjective.
Ye: Who's that?
Lex Fridman: It's factual, though.
Ye: Who's that?
Lex Fridman: It's like, okay, who's the top person in tech history? It's not subjective.
Ye: Wow.
Lex Fridman: There's a non-subjective answer to both of those.
Ye: Both of those people have influenced 30% of our existence.
Lex Fridman: So the influence is the main metric of greatness.
Ye: Okay. One person, 30% of our language was, the English language was written by them. The other person, 30% of the products we use was led by them. So it's obvious.
Lex Fridman: 30% of our language is written by them.
Ye: Oh, Shakespeare. And then the product, product, product, product. Look, look.
Lex Fridman: Steve Jobs.
Ye: Yeah.
Lex Fridman: You put Steve above, like, elons of the world?
Ye: Because Steve is a designer. He's a designer and engineer, but he's a designer. He's a visionary in the design space.
Lex Fridman: Well, I would lean to him because I'm not an engineer, right? So I'm more like Steve.
Ye: Then you're an engineer. If Steve is an engineer, you're an engineer, essentially. He's a cultural engineer. Like, the people who run the emotions of the world and run the world off of people's emotions right now are social engineers. And social engineering is so important, like city design. There's a fancier word for that. But I was in Oxnard last night to see Anthony Jeselnik. And I got to find out what his opening joke was because I'm doing interviews and I'm thinking I'm funny. And I like that he said, he just kept on saying 20 year in a verse, I've been doing this for 20 years. And his opening joke was so high level, I realized that I wasn't funny. I realized that this dude is a professional at what he does. And so many things are subjective.
Lex Fridman: I always talk about this. It's just like, you know, people are arguing, like, is Emily Ratajkowski the hottest, you know, person? And I'm like, that's such a subjective thing. But like, if you go and shoot three pointers with Steph Curry, it's not subjective, right? Or if you go and compare bank accounts with Elon, it's not subjective.
Ye: And another thing that's not subjective, porn.
Lex Fridman: What about it?
Ye: Dick size. It's not subjective. You can measure.
Lex Fridman: But porn is more about more than just dick size and greatness is more than the size of the bank account, right? So there's a subjective.
Ye: Greatness is subjective, though.
Lex Fridman: Right. So do you care about the stuff that's objective or subjective more? Because greatness, to me, is what matters. The bank account comes and goes. The impact on our society, like you said, social engineering, the impact on the collective intelligence of our species, that permeates throughout the rest of time.
Ye: I like what you said. The impact. I'm taking notes. How did you say? On the collective intelligence of our species. The impact on the. Collective. And. Tell me.
Lex Fridman: When Ye is writing down the words that came out of my dumb mouth, I have made it in life.
Ye: There's a lot of people that have kind of like sit through, sat through. I wanted to wear a different color hoodie because I was just tired of seeing this hoodie in all the interviews. And there's a lot of kids that are with me. They see what I'm saying.
Lex Fridman: Yeah.
Ye: And they had to sit through all of the muck of all the previous interviews to get to this. Every interview has been just an emotional, it's just like been an argument up to this point. Anyway, this is the first of, this is the next frontier of where our species is going to head. It starts here. It starts with you, Lex.
Lex Fridman: So this is the first time I heard you say the word engineering, at least so many times, which I love hearing. So this is where you're at. You're like that newborn. You're a being with engineering opportunities.
Ye: Yeah. And we're all a newborn. Cause in Christianity, we say born again, we're all newborns and everyone can, uh, everyone shell, I don't like the word can, uh, shell. The only thing about shell, it's like, dick, it kind of dictates and can kind of, kind of lets people off the hook. So I haven't found the perfect post Shakespeare and post Steve jobs and post Elon and post yay and post Drake way to communicate this. Um, but we update and we do. And what the current media structure, no, it's not actually nothing that's holding us. There's nothing actually holding us back because I'm still alive. I'm still alive. Like they could have killed me at, you know, George wish don't care about black people. They could have killed me at Beyonce had the best video, but we're here now. So we just keep on leaning and leaning and leaning.
And there's these things where I just think about, you know, there'll be times when I'm at war and every now and then when the, when the bomb stopped going off and all the headlines and the smearing and all that stopped going off. I think about my family and I'll think about Kim and I'll think about how, you know, King Koopa has her in the castle right now. And just on, uh, Mario brothers, you know how it is. Just go for the princess and you get to this level and it's like, I'm like, I sung the song wrong. Right. And then they take the princess again.
Lex Fridman: Which one are you Mario?
Ye: Yeah.
Lex Fridman: What's your, uh, favorite thing? The thing you love the most about Kim from a Mario perspective and the princess looking back, was there a moment?
Ye: She's definitely my favorite of all time.
Lex Fridman: Yeah. Was there a moment that, you know, like that catches you off guard and you say, I love this human being.
Ye: Yeah. I mean, it's just the, the DNA is like, she's a mix of Rob and Chris.
Lex Fridman: Can you explain?
Ye: I mean, that's like a really high pool right there. Those are like two geniuses.
Lex Fridman: So, okay. So like the entire of history of, uh, evolution of the human species created this DNA that created this being. There's a life there. There's a set of memories in the history that brought you together. And then you're like, damn, I like this DNA.
Ye: Yeah. And so certain people have just like high DNA. DNA, Ivanka Trump has high DNA, you know, it's like.
Lex Fridman: How's your DNA?
Ye: Pretty good. Uh, I, I think we've seen that. It's been proven. I mean, but look at my, look at my mom and look at my dad. You know, me and my dad have a water purification center in the DR, uh, right now. And my, my dad is the original Steve Jobs. And he was blocked by people around him and people were using him and taking advantage and, you know, not believing in his vision. He's, my dad's the educated version of yay.
Lex Fridman: What'd you learn about life from your dad?
Ye: And my dad got girls too. But those are the small details.
Lex Fridman: That's a big detail.
Ye: Being that I found my dad's, you know, playboy when I was five years old, it, it, it, it greatly affected my motivation.
Lex Fridman: Yeah.
Ye: All right.
Lex Fridman: So that's part of the engine that drives yay.
Ye: Absolutely. I remember when Pharrell was first in all the videos and my girl was like, uh, girls like Pharrell. Pharrell. And I was like, I want girls to like me too.
Lex Fridman: Funny that that's behind all the ambition, all the drive.
Ye: It's how we make people. It's how people are made. It's the desire to be loved.
Lex Fridman: Is that at the individual level, just being noticed and also at the societal level of scale?
Ye: Well, now I've, I've gone past, I'm like at that place where Nikolai Tesla was, uh, later into his career where it wasn't about being loved. It wasn't about sitting at the dinner parties next to Anna Wintour and stuff. It was about getting the idea across. So I have these cells that are very, and I just keep on saying Ridley Scott, but Ridley Scott has a special anointing. It isn't just sci-fi what he's doing. There's, there's something in there, just like George Lucas. There's, there's something different that's there. So.
Lex Fridman: What are you drawing?
Ye: I'm drawing these new living cells that we will exist in. And this is over, okay, let's do like, I don't like talking about money because like man-made money up anyway, it's like four quadrillion respected dollars. And then you have other forms of currency. Of course, social currency is super important right now, but this is a drawing and it's at a pretty good place now, this will be 40,000 square feet. I want to start just talking in meters. I just think we should go to anything to restore the tower of Basel. Like they said, when the, uh, I'm just draw a person here for scale.
Lex Fridman: Uh, yeah, that would help.
Ye: Okay. What do you think of that? Look at my person, see the scale in this room.
Lex Fridman: All right. So.
Lex Fridman: Wait, the dot is the person?
Ye: Yeah. I'm saying it's 40,000 square feet, but that would be like.
Lex Fridman: What are the other parts of the cell?
Ye: Okay. So what it's a screen, it doesn't go all the, all the way to the top and it's one hole for light, but the water and the light and air all come in from the top. So that's like, like the mouth. And then this is the belly button where God's iPhone, where his greatest creation.
Lex Fridman: So this is all connected.
Ye: These are all connected.
Lex Fridman: Yeah. So I'm drawing how these other cells go next to each other.
Lex Fridman: What's the vision here?
Ye: Happiness.
Lex Fridman: Did we talk about like, what's the motivation?
Ye: I'm like, yeah, there's a motivation somewhere in the back of my mind of my family. And if it's like where Moses smithed the rock and God didn't allow him to get to the promised land because the promised land is family. That is the promised land. That is earth. I mean, that is heaven on earth is family. Family is heaven. That's the promised land. And for your family to be together.
So say I smite the rock and God doesn't let me have my family back. My mission in life is still to promote families at all costs and make family's existence easier. So you take this thing, you put localized, a localized farm, say if it's in community that we do localized growing and then we partner with Big Pharma and say, hey, you're actually going to make more money by making better food. Because at the end of the day, you want money right now. It's like everyone knows that between the pesticides and between the medical industry and especially America that we're keeping people sick. And we know that McDonald's makes food that kills people and Coca-Cola is selling sugar water and all this. Just in case I haven't pissed off enough people in power.
Lex Fridman: You're going to piss off the sugar, anybody that's powered on sugar.
Ye: Well, sugar, what's the health was actually a documentary on sugar. It wasn't about how bad meat was. It was like a reverse documentary on sugar. I don't know if you call it a reverse, like a sub, but if you watch it again, when they show sugar in it, it's just the sugar looks super clean.
As I state these things, I know I have protection. I have God's protection. That's why I'm here to this date. It's for me to have this platform and express exactly what I feel because it's kids out there that it's kids that are going to save the world through engineering and through facts. And I've got to get download as much of the information and as much of the don't be afraid to state your facts is the biggest thing because the world is being ran by fear. And that is no, actually God runs the world. But there's just like little cloud, this patina of our ego that deals with the money and the car and the girl we're dating and all this in the clothes you wear and spending too much on clothes and a lot of stuff that I've been involved with promoting.
So now what I'm promoting is you have the idea, you say it out loud. Like if you had Tourette's, say your truth out loud. If you hate, yay. You hate me. Say that out loud. Say whatever you feel out loud. Like you say it non-violently, you know, non-violent. Non-violence, I have to say that like as, you know, you know, as a shout out to Alex Jones, you know, and Trump where they try to say that when they say their truths out loud, that it's inciting violence. So let's be like really clear. I'm saying that they have criminalized free thought.
The, you know, they, I hate when people use they, like they gets the blame for everything, right? It's always they.
Lex Fridman: Who the fuck is they?
Ye: Exactly. The problem is they's us.
Lex Fridman: Yeah. Well, I love that. What we need to do is turn I to we. So we take the responsibility and turn they to us. So we take accountability to us. They, I to we and they to us.
Ye: And that relates, it's a language at the same time. You're seeing the language of our surroundings. You're seeing the language of, I mean, one of the things, okay, let's go back to the sale explanation because I'm also doing a, what's that thing when Elon just put all the information in the open and people could figure out if they could figure it out and open source?
Lex Fridman: Yeah, open source.
Ye: So I'll come open sourcing this idea right now so that, you know, engineers and anointed people, beings, anointed beings can collectively contribute to this to push our species forward. So where I've got to with my research is that there will be a hole at the top that allows natural light, natural air, and there's a constant water system. So it becomes like a water city where it's a constant flow that's not, it's, it's regenerative. It's not wasting the water and it's just a constant flow. So I put the toilet really close to where this, this, I don't want to call it a wave pool, but in the pool, the water is not still.
Lex Fridman: So that exists in, in water.
Ye: Yeah.
Lex Fridman: Surrounded by water.
Ye: Well, the living room is the, you have two rooms. You have the dry room, which people would have called a living room before. And then you have the wet room.
Lex Fridman: How is that a source of happiness? What is, what is broken about our world today that that gives you in terms of the pursuit of happiness, which is one of the things in the previous declaration of independence?
Ye: All of our buildings are based on just the industry and the economy. And then people lean into what people are used to seeing, like what we think is attractive. Cause then you go back to the, you know, women who give life. So everyone wants to be attractive to the attractive. And that's the reason why the media goes and gets, you know, Bella Hadid, Kim Kardashian, Emily Ratajkowski. Those are the only ones I'm going to. There's more. There's more, there's more, but I'm, I'm thinking of the ones that I think are attractive.
Lex Fridman: It is subjective.
Ye: Yeah. Cause it's subjective. So to my subjective, which I think, I think the only guys that could argue with me on, on my opinion on girls would be Brad and Leo, because we're the only ones with the track record, you know, everything else.
Lex Fridman: So are you, are you, are you happy?
Ye: Absolutely. I'm just here. It's actually, it's difficult to make me unhappy. Now I could deal with frustrations, but when those frustrations are, it's like when you've allowed people to be in your life that shouldn't be there and then they do the thing you knew they were going to do and you're screaming at them, but you really need to scream at yourself.
Lex Fridman: Yeah. So you realize anything that's like anger or frustration, that's something that's wrong with you that needs to be dealt with.
Ye: Yes. Like right now, okay. Say I got this pattern cutter that I wanted to remove because I felt like she was copying our patterns into the computer. And I didn't know why she wanted to do that. And I just wanted to do the patterns by hand. And then, you know.
Lex Fridman: You mean like automating the patterns? Is that what you mean?
Ye: And my head of a, because they just, that's the whole thing. It's like, it's a war of, it's a war of human beings and robots.
Lex Fridman: Yeah. But that makes it more efficient, right? You don't like the efficiency. You like the creativity of the singular nature of the pattern.
Ye: I believe that the human beings, and I'm saying this to you as a person who makes robots and a person who's friends with Elon. I'm deeply offended right now.
Lex Fridman: Yeah. But I'll, you know, I'll let it go. Okay. It's good. So, yeah, I believe that the-
Ye: Yeah, he hates robots.
Lex Fridman: I'm not going to put that out there. It's a joke. Robots have feelings too.
Ye: Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
Lex Fridman: That was also a joke. We need to clarify that for future robots. But the pattern cutter, the pattern cutter, you don't like that. That had to be that, that's, you can't have that part of your life.
Ye: That's not what I'm, I'm, my, everything that I'm doing is for the sake of the human race. There's things in capitalism. There's things in technology. Well, technology and original human species can exist in a peaceful way, as long as the people that know how to make robots aren't using their robots to control the humans. Lex? Lex?
Lex Fridman: It definitely is something you have to be concerned about as we become more technologically savvy. That, my friend, is why engineering isn't everything, that you have to desperately study the lessons of history. In Nazi Germany, science was used to create atrocities. Engineering, the same. Engineering could be a tool of war.
Ye: We are still in the Holocaust. A friend, a Jewish friend of mine said, oh, come, go visit the Holocaust Museum. And my response was, let's visit our Holocaust Museum, Planned Parenthood.
Lex Fridman: With all due respect, I grew up in the Soviet Union. I'm Jewish. Parts of my family perished in the Holocaust of Nazi Germany. I have to push back that there is a difference of the atrocities at that scale, at that time, on an entire people.
Ye: I was going to say the number, that's the difference.
Lex Fridman: It's not the number. Because six million will also, African Americans are actually Jew also, the lost tribe of Israel.
Lex Fridman: Push back on that, too.
Ye: Okay, so, well, everyone came from Africa. I am African. I'm basically African American. We're brothers. And we're both Jew. And we're brothers. We're human. Six million people died in the Holocaust. Over 20 million have died by the hands of abortion. And the media promotes the My Body, My Choice, which is actually still a promotion for Planned Parenthood. 50% of Black deaths a year is actually abortion. It's not the cop with the knee. It's not Black-on-Black violence and gang violence. It's not heart attacks. It's actually abortion. The most dangerous place for a Black person in America is in their mother's stomach.
Lex Fridman: Look, there's 900 to a million abortions in the United States a year. I hear you. But there's something about the rape, the torture, the murder of children, women, men, the complete humiliation, and just the suffering that was endured during World War II.
Ye: So that's what we deal with on our TVs right now with Black people. Soros would use Black trauma economy to win an election. What I love is having a healthy conversation. And as opposed to, there's certain things, you know, boom, this drops, people are going to have pussy hats on. Boom, this drops, it's going to be, you know, Black people and white people with signs. Boom, this drops. So, hey, China, hey, left agenda, hey, what we're going to do is say that our species can have a healthy conversation.
Lex Fridman: Can I just linger on this? Because when you say Jewish media, there's an echo of a pain that people feel that reminds an entire—
Ye: You're saying it's redundant, right?
Lex Fridman: No, I'm not saying it's redundant.
Ye: I'm saying it's redundant.
Lex Fridman: You're saying it's redundant.
Ye: It's a redundant statement.
Lex Fridman: I'm saying that it's something that Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Nazi Germany, said. I'm saying it's been said so many times in order to murder and torture Jewish people that it just rings wrong. And that's the thing— Just like the N-word when spoken by people that have the same skin color as me. It reminds people of a very dark time.
Ye: I know. If Jewish people would accept that I'm Jew, then they would see what I'm saying in a different way. They would hear it in a different way.
Lex Fridman: But see, the people—you saying you're Jewish, that—
Ye: No, I'm Jew, not Jew-ish. Jew-ish means like that of a Jew. I'm saying I'm Jew.
Lex Fridman: You're a Jew.
Ye: Blood of Christ. Orthodox Christian.
Lex Fridman: Right. But that—are you a follower of the philosophy of the black Hebrew Israelites? Because that's where the idea comes from. Not all of those folks are extremists, but some are extremists.
Ye: I'm a follower of the idea. I have a vague idea that all people came from Africa. But what I wanted to do—
Lex Fridman: Okay.
Ye: Now, I could Andy Kaufman this about seven more minutes and then tell you what it is.
Lex Fridman: Should I count? Let's count. Seven minutes.
Ye: No.
Lex Fridman: Do less.
Ye: I did this to do a spoiler alert.
Lex Fridman: Sure. Spoiler.
Ye: What's the first thing I said at the beginning?
Lex Fridman: We're talking about engineering and humans. We're all human.
Ye: And then what did I say we shouldn't focus on?
Lex Fridman: Race.
Ye: Not just that. I said they shouldn't teach this in school.
Lex Fridman: History.
Ye: The history because what they do, what schools are doing is exactly what the CIA does with Pixar films and Disney films. They make Bambi's mom die in the beginning, right? And off that pain comes a purchase of ice cream. Off that pain comes I need some more toys. Off that pain comes I need a bigger house. Off that pain comes I need more girls than my wife. Off that pain comes—so they put that pain in to make us—now we're the orphans of capitalism. To make us be consumers and we need to be a community, not just consumers.
So I could have went another seven minutes by being a person who presents himself in a way that says, well, I don't have to feel your pain because I also have pain, too, that's not being recognized. And in every interview, when I say, well, why did I get to the point of putting up the tweet? No one wants to understand why I got to that point, right?
Lex Fridman: You had pain.
Ye: You had pain.
Lex Fridman: Yeah.
Ye: You had pain in your heart. But let's say this. Undoubtedly, Jewish people have a lot of movies about that pain. And Black people have a lot of movies about the pain of slavery, right? It's almost impossible to find a movie about Mansa Munsa. When you go to the African History Museum in Washington, D.C., it doesn't start with the idea of Africans being kings. It starts with the idea of Africans being slaves.
But here's another interesting point about this. This was said to me one time, and it stuck with me as a family member of mine. With Africans, how many times have you heard a rapper talk about, we were kings? That's incorrect if we're Jew. If we're Jew, and since we are, we weren't the kings. We were the slaves that Moses freed. Africans have always said, we've heard, you've listened to rap music and hear Black people say, we kings, we blood of the pharaohs. And if we are Jew, then we weren't. We were the people that Moses freed. And when we talk about, have you heard Black people talk about 400 years of slavery?
Lex Fridman: All right. That is, and we're having this history lesson, right? History doesn't matter.
Ye: You're exploring ancient history and drawing deep wisdom from it. And at the same time saying, we need to forget all of it.
Lex Fridman: We need to put that behind us.
Ye: Absolutely. We need to forget it, and we need to move forward.
Lex Fridman: There is so much wisdom to draw from history, even the 20th century. Look at this. Communism. Without the lessons of history of the 20th century, communism sounds like a great idea. Except that some of the worst atrocities conducted by Stalin and Mao that killed 50, 100 plus million people. Not just killed, tortured, starvation. Where people, cannibalism, they ate each other. They ate their children. There's just dark. People should read some books on this, on the Hall and Amore in the 1930s. With that lesson, we would, and now it's becoming more popular. Marxism and communism.
Ye: I'm not disagreeing that that happened. I'm disagreeing that we need to harp on the things that happened. Because the truth is, I'm giving a fact. 50% today of, let's say, you don't call black people Jew, right? Black people's deaths today is abortion. Today, right now. Like that, it's not racism. That's too wide of a term. It's genocide and population control that black people are in today in America that is promoted by the music and the media that black people make that Jewish record labels get paid off of. Or media companies, record labels are a media company also, so let's give it a wider, you know.
Lex Fridman: I agree with Martin Luther King. I have a dream.
Ye: I have a dream too. Martin Luther King.
Lex Fridman: That one day, you would not be judged by the color of your skin or your race, black or Jew, but by the content of your character. All the assholes that fucked you over in the music industry, fuck artists over in the music industry, are individuals. They're not Jews.
Ye: They're not Jews.
Lex Fridman: Can you say it?
Ye: They are Jewish.
Lex Fridman: They're human with opportunities, and they took those opportunities. I don't care if they're Jewish.
Ye: Do you feel like I should release that pain and separate it?
Lex Fridman: Yes.
Ye: Okay.
Lex Fridman: Okay.
Ye: So if you're saying I should release that pain and separate it, then I'm telling you, you should release your pain and separate it, and we could get to this. What is this, the list of how you are being with engineering opportunities?
Lex Fridman: That's 100%. I see what you're doing. That's exactly what you're doing. The pain, I'm gonna let it go. Engineering challenges. I get it. One of the problems you highlight is people get fucked over in the music industry and get fucked over in the media, get fucked over all over the place.
Ye: They created, there was a Jewish trainer that brought me to the hospital and put in press that I went to the hospital. I know friends that off of exhaustion, a Jewish doctor, they diagnosed me.
Lex Fridman: Why do you keep saying Jewish?
Ye: Because they were, right, diagnosed me with bipolar disorder and shot me with medication and put me on medication, then put it in the press. And every time, even if I wore the wrong color hat that a nigger is not supposed to wear, right, then they immediately say he's off of his shit, he's off his meds, he's off his rocker. And it's literally used as a scarlet letter control mechanism for the people understand the kids, the colleges, the high schools.
What do you think they put me right now? They put me as the prophet, not the leader. It doesn't have to be the leader, right? Because we need a more intelligent person to be the leader. But at least, right, they put me as the prophet. They put me as the only person that would say this. And I'm just saying that was four Jewish members that controlled my voice because for the fact that 90% of black people in entertainment from sports to music to acting are in some way tied into Jewish business people. Meaning that in some way, just like if, if Rahm is sitting next to Obama or Jared sitting next to Trump, there's a Jewish person right there controlling the, the, the country, the Jewish people controlling that who gets the best video or not controlling what the media says about me.
Lex Fridman: It's a person, not Jewish. Let me just say one thing.
Ye: But they are though.
Lex Fridman: That's the only thing. It just so happens that they are. It just happens that they are.
Ye: You saying.
Lex Fridman: That doesn't mean that I hate them.
Ye: Yes, yes, yes.
Lex Fridman: That just means that they are. But it's a, it's a dog whistle to, let me, let me just say, as I would love to add more love to the world. I would love you to do that as a person with a big voice, with a big powerful voice that a lot of people look up to. And when you say Jewish media, it's funny how this world works that way. When you say Jewish media or Jews are controlling the voice of black artists, black people, black artists. And when you say that.
Ye: I'm not allowed to say it out loud.
Lex Fridman: You can say it. There's a large number of people that are hurting and have anger and even have hate in their heart. When they hear, when they hear Jewish media, they start, that hate starts being directed towards the Jewish people. Do you acknowledge that? That's, do you understand? Can you feel the hate in the world? That's when, that, that comes to the surface when you say stuff like that?
Ye: Okay. I, I feel that when we go into therapy, my dad was a therapist and obviously I've got some therapy skills myself. A lot of people, my music is healing. These type of spa, like existences are healing. The color palettes I use are healing and we can use healing words, right? What I really feel there, I feel that there's no accountability and no responsibility on Jewish people in media to at least start with owning up with the facts of what's dealt with.
And tell me if I say the facts out loud to, to the point of Ari Emanuel writing a letter in the Financial Times, trying to take food out of my children's mouth, telling people that they're not allowed to work with me. Even Chris Como or Pierce Morgan getting me to apologize and separate Jewish business people to, from the families of the Jewish business people, which I did update. I did that. That already happened. And the way I-
Lex Fridman: That was a shitty apology.
Ye: That wasn't really an apology, but shout out for that conversation. I need to get on my knees and kiss the dick of Howard Stern and-
Lex Fridman: You don't need to kiss anyone's dick.
Ye: I don't-
Lex Fridman: But that's what you guys are acting like.
Ye: You guys, look at that. Because you're talking about it's a shitty opinion, apology, but where's our fucking apology?
Lex Fridman: Watch this. Sorry.
Ye: We don't get-
Lex Fridman: Thank you.
Ye: Not done.
Lex Fridman: Let's move on.
Ye: Sorry.
Lex Fridman: Oh, do I need to get on my knees or no?
Ye: And kiss my dick.
Lex Fridman: Oh shit.
Ye: So-
Lex Fridman: This escalated quickly.
Ye: That's escalated quickly. Nice. So the-
Lex Fridman: So what-
Ye: No, I'm saying, where's our apology? But we're right, we can't get to apology, because you're telling me there's no right way for me to word it. So tell me, for me, a person who's been fucked on my deals, and a person that has friends that never figured out how to make shoes with a German company that couldn't tell me to wear a BLM shirt and take off my red hat. Like, what would have happened if I was at Nike, right? Tell me exactly how to engineer the situation I'm in.
Lex Fridman: I'll tell you exactly how. You got a big voice, have the balls as a man to call out the individuals. Don't call them Jews, call them by their name, and start a war against those individuals. They're not Jewish.
Ye: But if that's the case, will you help me with that?
Lex Fridman: Sure.
Ye: Okay.
Lex Fridman: 100%. Like, assholes are assholes.
Ye: Well, let me, like, flip that too. I don't understand the industry well. I see that people are fucking people over, for sure. But how do you solve that?
Lex Fridman: If you run, if you right now run the world's, you're doing a million things, but say you ran also a record label.
Ye: I have ran a record label. Well, I've been ran by a record label where I was the face of a record label and had Big Sean and different people complaining to me. And I knew fuck about running a record label. I was simply just a talented producer and an influencer that then started good music, but I wasn't the one running good music.
Lex Fridman: How would you do it differently?
Ye: This is something I propose. I would look at the top 10 execs in three fields in sports, film, and music. And I would look at the top 10 clients, participants, talent. I would look at the top talent in each of those fields, the top 10 of them. And some of them are going to be Tom Brady. Some of them are going to be Taylor Swift. Some of them, they're not all going to be black, right? Some of them. Some of them would be Adele, right? And we'll look at all their contracts transparently and we'll compare the notes and re-engineer like it's a new constitution.
Because when I told my dad when I was 19 that I was going to get into the music industry, he begged me not to. He said, I heard it's treacherous. Now I'm in a position where I've been through it. I saw it. I went out, made some money somewhere else. I saw my name get smeared. I saw my family get destroyed. I saw my reputation get destroyed. And I'm back here to have this kind of, I'm back here as a being with engineering opportunities.
So if you say it's a shitty apology, what is the version of the apology short of kissing Howard Stern's dick?
Lex Fridman: I don't think anyone wants to kiss Howard Stern's dick.
Ye: That's the whole point, Howard Stern. Nobody wants to kiss your dick. So shut the fuck up. I said, by the way, I'm antagonizing you, Howard Stern. I used to be a fan of you.
Lex Fridman: Yeah, me too.
Ye: Yeah.
Lex Fridman: I'm still a fan sometimes.
Ye: Now you're just doing clickbait like everybody else. Now you're just a sad old man, Howard. All right. Now Howard Stern, this is the first time anyone's said your name in years. Your own family doesn't say your name unless they're calling to get their bills paid.
Lex Fridman: You're going hard.
Ye: See, that's beautiful right there.
Lex Fridman: That's much better than calling Jewish media.
Ye: Go after individuals.
Lex Fridman: Okay.
Ye: Go after individuals.
Lex Fridman: If you don't talk shit about me, talk shit about me.
Ye: This is great.
Lex Fridman: And you know what that is?
Ye: Yeah.
Lex Fridman: What's that?
Ye: Engineering.
Lex Fridman: That's an engineer's approach.
Ye: Yeah.
Lex Fridman: Engineers.
Ye: Yeah.
Lex Fridman: You should learn some of that.
Ye: We all can use our pain against each other.
Lex Fridman: Yeah.
Ye: Or we can say we're being with engineering opportunities and we can know about history. So let me change something. We can have a, just to be judgmental. People say thou should not judge. I've been talking to Camille Vasquez. She says, I'm very judgmental. That's what we're doing. We, I, I, I believe now you could go to Bible and one thing's going to say one thing. Another thing may be contradicted in a way. And then the pastor has to unpack it.
I believe that we are to judge. If you look at some food and it's got a fly coming out of it. You can then judge at that point. You're supposed to use your better judgment, but whenever someone doesn't want to change something they're doing, they'll say, don't judge me. Right. But as a species, you called for me, you got the breakthrough.
And by the way, it's only an engineer that I would respect to tell me of how, of how to update how I'm communicating. Because this started off, right? I've been through all these, um, interviews. Let me go to this. You said this was a, uh, sorry, apology. I was very specific. I said the Jewish, because by the way, it's a barrage, right? It's a thing where I don't even remember the names at a certain point. Right. It's like, if a, if a girl was getting raped by men, if that person is not 18, right? And she was getting raped since 14. Right. And she still got this face, this super like Irena shake level face. Right. Uh, she might say, I hate men.
That woman may say, I hate men. She might get to that point because she was raped. All my contracts, and no one can say this is ramped up. No one, Howard Stern can't say this is ramped up. Ari Emanuel can't say this is ramped up. George Soros knows damn well that I'm not ramped up. George Soros knows like, wow, this guy's like a younger guy that's looking at what I did. And looking at how I control the world silently. And he's calling it out. And he's not using any of the fear tactics. I can't send his homeboys around him. I can't send his wife to him. This guy, that's what George Soros sees. Right. When he's dealing with me. Right.
What you guys are actually asking me to do, I'm comparing myself to that 18 year old beautiful woman that had been mistreated by men for four years of her life. Right. And you're saying, you know, as a man, you can't blame all men. And I'm saying as a responsible forward philosopher leader. Okay. I'll drop the pain. And I will specify because I'm up here. I lost my fucking family. I lost my kids. I lost my best friend and fashion. I lost, I lost the black community. I lost, you know, people said I lost my mind. All of these things. Lost my reputation. And I'm up here just like, I just want my family.
But I don't want my family to have to say what the left wants us to say. To have to say what China wants us to say. I want to be an American and protect my kids and protect my wife and raise my kids as Christians. And have my wife be a Christian and innovate and American made rock and roll. I want to innovate as a creative person and be a successful American. But all of that had been taken away from me. So I'm coming back and I'm removing the PSTD right now. Right. I'm standing up and saying the only way that we're going to be able to get past this and the way God is going to use me right now. It's for me to stop talking about the pain. Stop talking about what happened and do something about it. And that's where I'm at right now in this moment.
Like, yeah, people agree. At least there was something where you could say he has a reason of why he got to that tweet. And what you're doing for me today is saying, you know, that was a sorry apology and let's specify. I'm not asking for anyone out here to empathize or sympathize for a, you know, a dude worth $11 billion that can make money disappear. I mean, appear at a thin air in five different industries. You know, I'm not asking for the, I'm not asking anybody to sympathize with someone who's married to Kim Garnaschi and dated Irina Shayk. Like, I feel like I'm just not going to get the sympathy vote in this situation. Right. So.
Lex Fridman: I feel your pain.
Ye: I feel your pain.
Lex Fridman: Yeah.
Ye: I feel like no one's going to feel my pain. Only Brad and Leo can feel my pain. Right. So. But still. But here today, when you said there's a sorry apology, what's the, what's the apology that you're looking for as a, as a Jewish engineer? And I say as Lex, let's not talk about you being Jewish as Lex. What's the apology that you want me to say to, am I allowed to say Jewish? Tell me, is it antisemitic for Ye to say Jewish out loud?
Lex Fridman: No, there's a, I don't like the allowed that presumes censorship. I think you choose.
Ye: Do we choose?
Lex Fridman: You have a powerful voice.
Ye: Did I prove? Did I, did I prove that there was censorship over the past two weeks? I proved it.
Lex Fridman: Who censored you?
Ye: Oh, drink champs.
Lex Fridman: Who?
Ye: Oh my. Lord. Oh, like Twitter and so on.
Lex Fridman: Twitter. That has less to do.
Ye: Drink champs.
Lex Fridman: That hurt you.
Ye: That Nora took it down.
Lex Fridman: Took down your conversation.
Ye: No.
Lex Fridman: It didn't hurt you.
Ye: I feel kinda free.
Lex Fridman: Man, you gotta be honest about the pain.
Ye: I feel kinda free. We're still the kids we used to be. I put my hand on the stove to see if I still bleed. And nothing hurts anymore. I feel kinda free. No. Do you think, you know, I went to Japan for two to three months, right? The day I had Sunday service, my kids are supposed to be there and my kids were nowhere to be found. And I text Kim and said, where are my kids? We get into an argument. And then I get a text from a number I don't know. And it's Pete Davidson bragging about being in bed with my wife. Then...
Lex Fridman: Just fucking with you?
Ye: Well, at that point, it's like, they're trying to put me in jail or put a friend of mine in jail. Because then I'm gonna go surround the hotel and do all, you know, do something which would have me not be able to be here. And instead, I walked away from that situation. I went to Japan, like the samurai that I am, and went to the top of the mountain. And because I knew that, I mean, I knew there was no way she could love this dude. Not just because he's ugly, he's not black, she likes black guys. Every guy that she, you know, is with looks exactly the same. Ray J, Reggie Bush, at that time Kanye West, she has a type. Just like how I have a type. Like a lot of my girls look kind of similar to her because in a video game character, people have their type, right? So I knew that this was like...
Lex Fridman: The princess has a type and she likes Mario.
Ye: Right, there you go. As somebody who cares for you and hopefully can be a friend, yay. I gotta say these words and the words about Jews is not the words of a samurai, of a great man. I would say, you know, you said something that inspired, that resonated with a lot of people when you said George Bush doesn't care about black people. I have to say, as somebody who cares for you, that yay, the artist formerly known as Kanye West doesn't care about Jewish people. In the same way you spoke about George Bush being a politician and not giving a fuck about the poor people that suffered after Katrina, you're not giving a fuck about the suffering of the Jewish people across the world.
Ye: Why am I not?
Lex Fridman: Because you're feeding, you're giving strength, motivation to hate groups.
Ye: But we already updated, I gave an apology, you said it wasn't good enough.
Lex Fridman: Yeah, that's right.
Ye: And now you're telling me...
Lex Fridman: No, I'm not gonna...
Ye: No, no, you don't need to kiss anyone's dick.
Lex Fridman: What you have to do...
Ye: You're asking me to kiss...
Lex Fridman: It's wrong to say. There's no Jewish media. There's no Jewish...
Ye: There isn't?
Lex Fridman: There's no control of the media by Jewish people.
Ye: You're an engineer, brother. If you're an engineer and you're not holding to the truth, that's not engineering.
Lex Fridman: Engineering is not...
Ye: That's not...
Lex Fridman: That doesn't...
Ye: That's hate.
Lex Fridman: That's not engineering.
Ye: Engineering says, I'm gonna build a better record label.
Lex Fridman: It's called stereotypes.
Ye: And I'm going to respect our...
Lex Fridman: Stereotypes exist for a reason.
Ye: Engineers don't do stereotypes.
Lex Fridman: I do.
Ye: They're dumb.
Lex Fridman: They allow you to channel hate towards the other.
Ye: You know what the biggest thing is?
Lex Fridman: Yeah.
Ye: With something, a veteran that was sitting next to me at Cheesecake Factory last night, he said, you know, the general justice, he serves for whoever is the president, right? And he said, what's happening in politics is we're forgetting we're on the same side. We're forgetting we're on this. This is someone is practically... Now he's a nurse. So he's still, you know, fighting for humanity in a way. He went from holding, you know, guns in battle to being a nurse and when people are battling for their lives. And he said, we're forgetting we're on the same side. This is a person that no matter who becomes president, he can still be told to go to war. And the chaos that's created by the media has split the country in half.
And what we, what us as beings with an engineer opportunity need to do right now is find the blue water. Where do we, where are places that we agree on? And I want you to finish everything. Hey, I'm gonna let you finish everything that you want to express to me. Get off all, I'm your, I'm your scarecrow today. I'm your, I'm your punching bag today for everything I did. And I want you to stand up for all of the hate that I'm your Al Gore when he lost the election. Remember, he almost became a punching bag for the lady that had voted on him. And she just said all this stuff. And he's like, I know I agree with you. Right. But there's nothing, you know, that he could do about it.
With this, it's like things that you're saying, I agree with you. You know, it's like if you sit some kids in the, in the principal's office and I punch somebody. Right. I took, I took my hand. Right. As what it really means. Even Ari Emanuel had to say, this is a pop icon. Right. And I went and just punched an entire people at one time or said that I was about to, I went like this. Right. And I get blacked out, black mirrored, done. Right. And it's like, what were you even going to do? And why did you go like this? I went like this because I can't even do, I would, I would look insane to physically show you. A metaphor, a physical representation of my last 20 years of what I've been through as a musician, as a father, and as a black person with a political opinion.
Ye: A great man still through the pain does the right thing.
Lex Fridman: And I think the right thing is to not say that there's Jewish control of the media.
Ye: And that's incorrect though. That's a fucking lie. There is. And they did come and bully me. It proved the point.
Lex Fridman: No, the reason you don't say it.
Ye: Why?
Lex Fridman: Is because the world is much bigger than the, forgive me, the narrow little world you exist in. Your impact stretches way past those little boardroom meetings over contracts.
Ye: So what should I have done? What should I have done?
Lex Fridman: Not say that you should be a strong man that doesn't mention, that doesn't mention religion or people and then fight. Fight. Do you want to win this fight?
Ye: How do I win? How do we win?
Lex Fridman: Call out individual people built. That's one way because they have a big voice. The other voice that I prefer is to build another label.
Ye: I feel, I feel like you're controlling my creative narrative and my, because just like how you're telling me I shouldn't have said that. Do you think there are people telling me I shouldn't have wore a red hat?
Lex Fridman: No, you, cause you asked me, what should I have done? You're supposed to be a scarecrow. So I thought I'm going to beat the shit out of the scarecrow with my words, right? You let me. Yeah. It was consensual.
Ye: The punching bag is a bad cause scarecrow actually has a different.
Lex Fridman: Yeah. That's right.
Ye: I'm like, that's right. I shouldn't say a scarecrow.
Lex Fridman: Yeah.
Ye: But every single person that I've sat with from the point when I wore the red hat to now has done the same thing. Sit in the principal's office and don't do what you're doing.
Lex Fridman: We're in the general's closet right now together.
Ye: Yeah.
Lex Fridman: And I'm not, the red hat is very different. The red hat is, you have a set of beliefs. You represent half the country that has a hope, a vision for the future of America. That's very different than without any purpose whatsoever saying Jewish media, Jewish control of the media.
Ye: You said that there's no purpose. So you're taking away my history and my reason of what my purpose was.
Lex Fridman: I'm saying it was dumb. Also, also, also.
Ye: I'm speaking my voice, vocalizing it. Also. Yeah. It's God's plan. There's a lot of things that open up. Let me tell you something that open up. There's a guy, like I told you, that was running STEM player who I've had issues with. We hadn't got paid on time. Certain things, right? And he took his IQ, his know-how, his engineering know-how to, he basically was trying to Adidas me with, even though I was the bigger money in the situation. That was fun and we funded together. And he hired these engineers and he said, well, because of your comments, we're not going to be able to hire anybody else. And I was like, well, how many Jewish people do we have in our company? He said, I don't know. He didn't say exactly, right? I said, do we have black people? He said, yes. He said, how many? He said, two. So we have like 60 full-time employees, like 40 half-time and part-time. And I took as a responsibility, let's take a step back from us being one species and say, hey, you're Jewish. I'm black.
Lex Fridman: Why step back?
Ye: For this example, for the sake of this example.
Lex Fridman: Cool.
Ye: And I said, wow, I'm sure I can hire more than two black engineers. And what happens is, because there are so many businessmen that just so happen to be Jewish, that it's good business, right? Just to monopolize. That's what people are looking. Everybody wants to be Elon, right? So the-
Lex Fridman: I disagree with that.
Ye: Okay, but let me finish this point.
Lex Fridman: I'm going to let you finish. I'm going to let you finish.
Ye: A lot of businessmen want to be as successful as Elon and as popular as Elon. A lot. I could just word it like that, which I hate the term a lot, actually. I want to be more specific, but I haven't done the math on it. Let's say some. Factually, for sure, there are some businesspeople of all different walks and backgrounds that would like to be as rich and as popular as Elon Musk. So let me just take a step back from the we're one species into the we're separated by race, gender, socioeconomic class conversation and say, as a black owner of two tech platforms, hardware and software, I need to take action. Let's not call it affirmative. Let's just say I need to take action. And I need to take accountability and ensuring that black engineers are hired and guess what? Hired together. Because when the black people that are brilliant are separated from our culture, we forget who we are. And we'll get to a point where, you know, OJ is saying I'm not black, I'm OJ. Because just to be on the golf course, we put on the golf shirt, but the golf shirt might not be something that our culture would have done. And now our culture and poor communities is, oh, everybody's got Draco on them. Everybody's got a gun on them. Oh, if you run up on me on a gas station, I'm a key. Hey, you ain't got to talk to me like a man if I haven't killed at least five people. But you know what happens is we can kill five people. We could kill 10 people and still be in the media as long as we play by the rules, right? Because what will happen is any of these guys that have talked about killing people and different things, unless Trump had pardoned them, right? But let's say even if Trump had pardoned them, they could still go to someone like a Lil Boozy or Meek Mills or Puff Daddy, anybody, and say, hey, we need you to talk shit about Ye right now. And also, you're not allowed, if you do want to vote for Trump or vote outside of what this arrangement is, then we're going to put you in jail. We're not going to bring you down. We have this on you. You get what I'm saying? If I had ever killed someone, if I wasn't the bitch with the pink polo on, I wouldn't be able to be the vocal man that I am today. You understand what I'm saying? You understand what I'm saying? This is the reason why I'm happy that my gangster disciple brothers kept me from the initiations, which made me feel like a pussy my whole life, right? But now I am someone who legally can say this. Other people in my position, they legally cannot speak. They legally cannot speak. Or they will go to prison. I am in a bit of a glass prison because I don't have say-so of where my children go to school, but I'm in a freedom place where I can have this conversation with you right now. And that is, I don't like the word breakthrough, you know, that's God's hand on this situation. But you get what I'm saying about if I hadn't said the tweet, I wouldn't have had to take the accountability myself to hire black engineers into my two tech platforms.
Lex Fridman: Yeah, and do you get what I'm saying?
Ye: That's a beautiful personal journey you're on.
Lex Fridman: But do you get what I'm saying?
Ye: It's not personal, it's for my people as a whole.
Lex Fridman: As a tribal person-
Ye: It's a small company. It's a small company. As a tribal person, I believe that I am my people.
Lex Fridman: Yeah.
Ye: And the thing that businessmen have done to my people have pulled the brightest out of our tribes and siloed them and made us lose our culture and lose who they were. All the only thing I wanted to say at Virgil's funeral, which I wasn't allowed to, right? It was a white pastor that talked the majority of the funeral. Half the funeral was pissed, pissed, right? And this pastor actually married me and Kim, right? He looks like Justin Timberlake a little bit. And he talked half the funeral. He knew Virgil was passing, did a collaboration with him before he passed, by the way, right? A clothing collaboration. I didn't know Virgil was passing, but the thing I wanted to say, I saw ASAP Rocky and I saw some other members of his gang, you know, in the audience at the funeral. And all I wanted to tell him is, don't let them split the gang up. Don't let them split the gang up. When I did the first Yeezy, because I did Kanye West two fashion shows before as a high-end luxury, all leather kind of designer. Not all leather, but you know, high-end materials, mink, this kind of thing. And then I came back with Yeezy with Adidas. And this fashion show was so popular that Justin Bieber had to sit in the second row, right? This thing had every name you could think of. It had Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Kendall Jenner. It was Kylie's first fashion show she'd been in. And in the second fashion show, I put Kylie and Bella Hadid next to each other in the fashion show. You had Puff Daddy. At that time, Puff Daddy had beef with Drake. Drake still came to the show and Jay-Z had to break up the fight backstage. The designers, you had Jerry Lorenzo, that's head of Fear of God. You had Kim Schraub, head of Skims. You had Virgil Abloh, head of Louis Vuitton. You had Demna, head of Balenciaga, all working for Yee, for the leader, for the philosopher, right? For the person that put, who put this together? Me, that's who, right? You had these people working for the king of New York, basically the boss, Yee, right? You had Jay-Z in the audience, Rihanna in the audience, Beyonce in the audience, sitting next to Anna Wintour in this audience. And guess who heard wind of this? One of the richest men in the world, Bernard Arnault, caught wind of this. What's going on? They're building up something and we need to stop it. So then he met with me and politely offered me backing for my clothing line. It would be Kanye West. They would get 49%, 51%, I would get 49%. They'd have control and they were going to give me all of the support from Louis Vuitton. So I had to go to Adidas and I told Adidas, hey, let's indemnify the apparel. So Adidas, you're not going to do the apparel anymore. Hey, we had a good time, but we're going to run off with Giselle now, right? So that's like you told your girl that and she's like, oh, no, we're supposed to, we had the proudest moment of our career and stuff. So then he offers me to deal with Alexander Arnault, who's went to gone on and rape and pillage from all of the talent that I had afterwards. And he said, I say, before I tell Adidas to indemnify the apparel, can I get a written contract from your dad, Bernard Arnault? And he says, my dad will never go back on his word. So you already know where this thing is going, right? You can, spoiler alert, right? He went back on his word. Three months into the deal, I get Anna Winter. I say, who should I use for my lawyer? She picks my lawyer for me, right? I just found out even a couple of days that the lawyer demanded an airplane during negotiations. Had nothing to do with me, right? They said that Bernard Arnault got freaked out. And then Alexander Arnault calls me and says, the deal got dropped at the board. I went back and told my high maintenance wife, I was supposed to become this designer at Louis Vuitton or the Louis Vuitton group was going to back the Kanye West line because that's how good I've done in fashion, babe. And now the deal is dropped. Now the deal is dropped. So then I did a second collection and we didn't have any support to be able to build the collection. Then I went and found a third collection. We did it. We took over MSG. Fourth collection went and the show started an hour late. Then a week later, Kim got robbed. Then I told Scooter Braun, my manager at that time. I say, I, I'm looking, you know, I need to go to Japan. I'm tired. I'm tired. He says, no, you need to make more money. I do four more shows on a second leg of the tour. And I suffer from exhaustion and go to the hospital and then get diagnosed with a disorder. This is the first time I ever suffered from exhaustion. By the way, I haven't been to the hospital since. I haven't been to the hospital since and haven't taken, you know, medication in two years. And I'm sure there'll be people in the media. We won't say we're from will say, well, that's obvious. Right. So. So right now I'm talking to you. Right. I'm not on medication. I just go to sleep. Right. I have sleep.
Lex Fridman: Have you been able to sleep?
Ye: This, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's too low hanging fruit for you. You're, you're more, you're, I, I, I.
Lex Fridman: I agree. I agree. I agree that was dumb. I regret it.
Ye: That's like, that's like, that's like Pierce Morgan trying to grab ratings. They were like, you got a whole life ahead of you. You got a whole life ahead of you.
Lex Fridman: Yeah.
Ye: These guys are at the end of their life.
Lex Fridman: Oh, good. Good. So, so this story.
Ye: Call me out on my shit. Love it.
Ye: And then amidst that, the same guy that dropped my deal, Bernard Arnault, goes and hires my best friend, goes and hires my main engineer, right? It would have been like them hiring, you know, Elon from Peter before they figured out Paul, before they figured out PayPal. But it, you know, Paul sounds like, you know, Paul sounds like Paul. I just say it because I'm a Christian. I thought it was cool. But it would have been like, what if someone could have went in and took Elon away from Peter before they paid Paul? Before they, I just, because they paid Paul.
Lex Fridman: Yeah, before they paid Paul.
Ye: It's just too close.
Lex Fridman: Yeah, too close.
Ye: It just sounds so fresh, the fact that it's so close, right? And that's what happened, right? They broke the gang up. And I'm telling you right now, that hadn't happened. Virgil's alive. I'm still married. You know what I'm saying? And the power structure was broken then, right? Because we were building some, Kylie wasn't a billionaire. You know what I mean? We were building something together that a French colonizer came in and caught it early and tried to destroy it. But the only thing is, God is alive. And I'm anointed. And even with those drawbacks, losing my wife, losing my friend, exhaustion, all of these late night tweets that piss off an entire group. You know, like this, the frustration still, there, we work, I work for God and God runs the world. And we'll see what happens.
Lex Fridman: But in those words, don't you feel that being split up, don't you feel you're doing the thing that you stand against, which is playing victim? Aren't you playing victim to the forces in the world?
Ye: I didn't play victim. I didn't even get a chance to play. I just said I was about to. I said like this.
Lex Fridman: No, you played pretty damn well. What do you mean? What do you mean about to?
Ye: You're like one of the greatest designers in history, fashion designers. You were playing. You are playing. What does that even mean?
Lex Fridman: I thought you were referring to the tweet.
Ye: All of them. I'm a victim there.
Lex Fridman: Well, there's a full set of things that you're under attack for. The tweet and everything beyond that. But like you're blaming, not blaming, but you're saying that the Jewish media, the Jewish record label, the Jewish people, forget Jewish or not, it doesn't matter. It's playing victim, right?
Ye: Ultimately, I am fighting a battle in the spiritual form. And anyone that believes in God and is looking at this interview would agree with that. And I just so happen to be a bright part of God's army. I'm fighting for us to live. The greatest gift is life itself. I am pro-life. I am pro-God. I believe that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior and died for our sins.
Lex Fridman: What do you feel about another attack, another painful thing, I imagine super painful, is Balenciaga pulling, you had a really close relationship and friendship with their creative director. How do you feel about all of it?
Ye: I told you I sang the song. I'll sing another song from one of my mentors, Future. I never feel pain. I done felt too much pain. Like, there was a day where I was headed to Nashville to meet with George Farmer, who is the CEO of Parla, the day when we made the announcement. At that same day, Balenciaga was taking my imagery off of their site. And the drink champs was being taken down. And I said, this is the happiest day of my life. I love cutting the grass low. People wasn't really with you. They was part-time. People switch up when it's wartime. I'd rather have people who are really with me and not people who are just trying to use me.
Lex Fridman: Listen, as a friend, as somebody cares for you, you have to be really careful by the people, by all people, always. The people that are going to try to be close to you now, you don't know if you can trust them any more. Even more.
Ye: With the Balenciaga, I have more to say about it, though.
Lex Fridman: Yeah. Let's do this.
Ye: Demna will still work for Ye someday. And this is just speeding the process up.
Lex Fridman: Have you talked? Can you share if you've talked?
Ye: Yes. I talked to Demna. This is like, we're Kendrick Spirits. None of this can keep us away from each other. I brought Demna to Gap to be able to bring the best product in the world. At that time, I wanted to go under $100. Now I'm like, okay, we're going to go $20 a product. I brought Demna in to Engineer. That's why I said Engineer by Balenciaga. Easy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga to engineer the best product for the people. The people that they say are at the bottom of the Maslow hierarchy of need chart. They're at the bottom of the pyramid, right? So Gap didn't want that. Balenciaga didn't want that. Our agendas were not aligned. I was brought in to the Gap for political reasons and influence, like a Virgil, like a George Floyd. When popular celebrities are brought into Fortune 500 companies, it's not to raise the stock. It's to strengthen the position and influence. And it's definitely not to be out here letting a nigga think he's Steve Jobs.
Lex Fridman: Yeah, there's people like that. But you as a great man, a visionary, your job is to understand that game and be one step ahead.
Ye: Well, that's who I'm telling them. That relationship, you know, some relationships only last for a summer. You know, some last for a year. The relationship ran its course. You know, in that relationship, I invested a lot of my social capital and actual capital. I spent somewhere between $5 to $10 million personally on Balenciaga. How much money do you think Balenciaga had paid me in the past two years? Just take a really wild guess. A really wild guess. Less than that? Just take a super wild one. Just go to the furthest extent of your imagination.
Lex Fridman: $1.2 million.
Ye: Lower.
Lex Fridman: $500,000.
Ye: Lower.
Lex Fridman: Zero.
Ye: Zero. All right. And actually, two weeks ago, I paid at a Saints account $862,000, not in clothes for me from Balenciaga, from the store, in royalties to Balenciaga, where the deal had been engineered, where I was coming out of my pocket. So I paid, last year I paid Demna $3 million to design the collection. Right? And we got it out of the Gap Marketing Fund, and he was going to deliver 160 SKUs or 120 SKUs. 100 SKUs are separate items of clothing, so styles of clothing. So he ended up delivering about 60. I feel like we're on the people's court because we actually are, right? We're in the court of public opinion. So he delivered about 60. There were all kinds of people that were working. Part of the reason why I had to get Demna, like, I didn't want to have to get, I wanted to compete with him. I didn't want to have to, like, get him.
Ye: You know, when I made Stronger, I did it to compete with Timberland and Justin Timberlake because my fiancé at that time liked Justin Timberlake just a little bit too much. So I made it to compete. And then we had the song out. It's number one on Apple. It's blowing up. I play it in a club, and it sounds muddy. It doesn't sound the way Sexy Back sounded in the club. So I go to Pharrell Williams to do the drums, and it doesn't, it sounds like a different record. And so it can't be a different record because I'm like, I'm going to swap it out on radio, right? Then I go to Swiss Beats. It sounds like a different record. I go to Timberland, the person who did Sexy Back. And he did it in five minutes and then spent the rest of the hour talking about how nobody could have done it except for him running around the studio. I'm the best. Nobody could have done it. That's why he had to go to me. He had to go to the king.
Lex Fridman: Well, he had a point, right?
Ye: He had a point, right? So what makes us so muddy? Is it the beat?
Lex Fridman: It was in the drums.
Ye: It was something that Timberland had in those drums. Like now watch this. I said, I'm going Def Con 3, right? And the actual, I spelled it wrong. I have a tendency to do that. I'm not quite John Legend, tight sweater level, spelling B level. So I feel a parallel to me going to Timberland to when I said, hey, you as an engineer, I need to work with you as an engineer that is Jewish to look at these contracts and what my people, not just black people, let's say artists are dealing with in our contracts. These contracts need to be fixed. Everyone could be so mad at the messenger, right? Yay. You said it the wrong way. You're offensive. You're like Hitler now because you said it. You said this out loud, but it does not. You weren't getting enough sleep. All this shit does not negate the fact that we do have Houston. We have a problem.
Lex Fridman: Yeah, but we, it's just the music industry. Like there's a lot of hate that was created by just saying that, you know?
Ye: But you're saying what is just is everything to me, right?
Lex Fridman: Yeah, yeah. One person can mean everything to me, right? And for George Bush, winning an election was everything. And then when you said George Bush doesn't care about black people, that you woke him up. You woke the people up to the fact that he was narrowly being selfish. You are, there's a sense to which you're being corrupted by your own greatness. You're focusing too much on the industry that you've made great, that you've rose to the very top. One of the richest artists in history. One of the greatest designers.
Ye: I'm not, I am the richest artist in history.
Lex Fridman: Probably the richest artist in history.
Ye: Yeah. They say, the funny thing is they're like, oh, rich is black person. It's like, oh, also rich is actor. Rich is musician. Rich is fashion designer. Like, it's a bunch of riches in that one. You know what I'm saying? It's like richer than Ralph Lauren. Like richer than Imani. Like richest, like of that. But still low. Because where do you put that? You know, like on the totem. Because I don't even want to.
Lex Fridman: Man's bank account isn't everything. I would say you and I are equal. In a certain deep sense. No matter what the bank account says.
Ye: Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom. So, I wanted to give you some theme music for your moments. It sounded a little muddy. Let me give you the Timberland version. Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom.
Lex Fridman: Thank you. But okay. Say that at the club.
Ye: So, the other thing about, like, say, like, Balenciaga is Demna will work with Ye someday. And for Cedric and for Francois Pinot. And Salma is a beautiful human being. Five years from now, you'll hear and know the name Ye and know things that we did. And Balenciaga is not going to make it onto your questions.
Lex Fridman: Would you, as a gambling man, would you bet on that?
Ye: I would bet on that.
Lex Fridman: I can see it in your eyes.
Ye: So, it was actually a sad day for me. Not for me, but more for Balenciaga. I just, when I heard that, I was just like, oh, shame.
Lex Fridman: Let me ask you a silly question just about Demna. I read something that you two talked about, like, buttons for a few hours.
Ye: They're my gumdrop buttons? Just an added accent. Me and Demna only speak in Shrek.
Lex Fridman: What's your philosophy with which you approach design? You are one of the great fashion designers of our time. How do you think about it? Do you have a philosophy?
Ye: You know what I like about the zipper is the zipper hoodie replaces the dress shirt. Because you could get on your douchebag shit and, like, unzip it and give it a little bit of, you know, that type of look. Which is the douchebag. You know, like, when the douchebags that go to Vegas and unbutton their dress shirt.
Lex Fridman: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ye: And the problem with the pullover hoodie is you can't do the douchebag thing where you unbutton it, but then still get the, like, the stomach. Because the thing is, the ultimate look would be, like, you know, military tank pullover hoodie. And if you get a little hot, you take off the hoodie, but you're, like, crazy in shape. So it gives you that flexibility.
Lex Fridman: Yeah, it's giving, the zipper's giving some flexibility.
Ye: And it's, like, maybe you want to keep your jacket on. Like, let's consider, like, a hoodie to be, like, a jacket. If you want to keep your jacket on, then you might want to do this as opposed to pulling it all the way off.
Lex Fridman: Yeah.
Ye: You know, so, and it's just comfort. But then you get, okay, can I do a jogging pant on this with elasticity? Now, people argue about climate, where we are with the climate. I take a responsibility as being the most influential designer of all time to say we're going to use biodegradable clothing. Now, the issue there is the elastic is not biodegradable. So that means it's actually better to use jeans and a belt than to have an elastic waistband because elastic waistband is not biodegradable. So I use the planet as a big, the future of the planet is a big piece of the way I engineer and the way we talk about where designs are going.
Lex Fridman: The constraints on your design and engineering is given by the planet, by the future of the planet.
Ye: Yes. That could almost make Jewish people like me again.
Lex Fridman: Every time you say Jewish people, I think, I may be reading a little too much about World War II, but, man, I'd recommend you listen to some audio books or read some books on the Holocaust. Because, like, it's heavy. It's heavy. It will put into context the impact of your words.
Ye: Would you read books on the current Holocaust that black people are in?
Lex Fridman: I mean, I read.
Ye: What have you read about abortion?
Lex Fridman: I've read a lot of short-form writing and I've listened to a lot of debates because it's really humbling that the question of when does life begin is a really difficult question. For me as an engineer and scientist, it's a philosophical question.
Ye: I mean, we could just go on population control, not like if abortion is right or wrong. We could say factually the clinics were made by eugenics for population control and it is controlling the population, as is the never being given a 40 acres and a mule. So you don't have the opportunity. And when the people that do have the opportunity are separated from our people, our tribe, and placed in suburban communities next to, as Chris Rocker put it, the dentist, and whitewashed and made to shut the fuck up and vote left or whatever niggers are supposed to do when we make it. As opposed to saying, okay, we're building schools, we're building up choirs, we're building up our own leagues, basketball teams, our own factories. We started the first sportswear factory in America since World War II was actually this factory I put in Cody. So, you know, I'm 45 years old, we're on this journey right now. It's the other thing about this, it's like people, just in general, they love me so much. I'm like actually a hard guy to really hate for a long period of time just because of like my huge cock.
Lex Fridman: That's what I noticed. I didn't understand why you showed it to me when we first met, but now I understand.
Ye: Yeah.
Lex Fridman: It's very nice. Congratulations. Congratulations. I know you don't talk about it, but your hat does say 24.
Ye: Yeah.
Lex Fridman: If you run for president, what kind of ideas would you represent?
Ye: That we're beings with engineering opportunities. Just as you served a platform here. There's something that happened on my last run that I thought, I feel, I know was brilliant. It was noisy, but it was brilliant. I had one rally and in the rally, I just let people come up and I gave them a platform. It's our responsibility to listen to the pain and hear the pain and understand, even when we're the ones that cause the pain. Like with my tweet, it's my responsibility to hear you and understand why you feel like that. But it's our responsibility as a people to understand each other. To give people a voice. People need the voice.
And even right now, what I'm doing or how God is using me, I'm showing where our voices are being muted. There is professors that are actually intelligent, actually have multiple degrees that have been canceled from their schools and they don't have a music industry or a fan base or a shoe design or a smoking hot ex-wife to complain about. They've just got the truth of what they've just got the truth of what they saw and what they dedicated to this country and to education that has been muted by schools that have been taken over with an agenda. And so you want the brightest minds to be these professors and then you mute them and they have nowhere to go. And you might get a guy now that went from being someone's favorite professor to he's working at Starbucks like he was back at school or like he was back in high school.
Lex Fridman: So even if that voice is about anger and hate, it still deserves to be heard.
Ye: Yeah, it deserves to be heard. And we deserve to ask why. You know, like you have to ask why.
Lex Fridman: I just feel like that's what's, I feel like that is sympathizing with Mr. Hugecock.
Ye: I'm just saying that it just needs to be.
Lex Fridman: You should change that to your name on Twitter while you're still allowed on there.
Ye: Yeah.
Lex Fridman: Do you think that would get censored?
Ye: I feel like they, you know, they definitely cut it down some inches. The, I'm, I'm pointing out this, I'm pointing out this truth.
Lex Fridman: No, I'm serious. This is not a Christian thing.
Ye: Right. And, you know, I wonder right there when I say these jokes, is it something that I, cause I do feel like laughter is the key. Engineering and laughter, right? Is the key to peace. Like when I go get my teeth clean and I have the nitrous, there's, there's something that I want to go and hug Chris Jenner. I want to go and hug Corey Gamble. I want to go and hug, you know, Howard Stern. I'm not, no one wants to hug Howard Stern. I mean, you know, but you know, just if one.
Lex Fridman: No, no, no, no, no. Let's, I think, I would love to see you two hug it out and make up, even though all the shit talking back and forth.
Ye: What about talking it out or is he going to be screaming at me?
Lex Fridman: Yeah. Judgmental and that kind of stuff.
Ye: No, I hope, I hope there's love there. You know, the thing is, I think Howard's just jealous, you know, not, not just, not just jealous of my cock. He's also, he's jealous that I started my campaign earlier than him. You got to let go of that jealousy. You got to let go of that jealousy, Howard. Howard and everybody else. Jealousy is a natural human thing, man.
I wonder just as a Christian, right? When I joke and say this stuff, I, it's like, hmm, am I being disobedient to God? Because as a boss, right, I'll talk to an employee and I'll be like, why didn't you just listen? Because I've got the bigger plan, right? So it's like me talking to God. Were there things that I did in this interview that were disobedient to God? And for those things, I pray and I repent for anything that I've said that was disobedient to God. But humor is not one of them. Joking is, I feel like humor is the way we avoid so much suffering in the world. It's the way to, it's like a catalyst for love. Like it's a way to, people that have gone through some of the darkest trauma that I've ever met through war. I just came back from Ukraine. They're laughing. They're, they're making jokes. That's the best way to deal with dark times.
Lex Fridman: I don't know what it is about like humans. I feel like humor, that's the best way to social engineer a good future. I think it's humor. Not taking shit too seriously. That's the problem with censorship. One of the things that really suffer is humor. Jokes. Maybe going too far in the jokes. You mentioned Anthony Jeselnik. That guy goes hard. That guy goes really hard and it's great. He crosses all, he crosses all the lines and he's, that's why he's a genius. And that's what people feel is refreshing when he does it. I don't know what it is. But then it's like hurtful when I do it.
But I'll tell you something that was interesting. I'm pretty sure Anthony doesn't like, sorry for the assumption, but just most comedians I know didn't vote for Trump. That's interesting. Not saying there aren't comedians that did, but just the ones I know, because I live in California, right? But they have an appreciation for Trump because of the sense of humor.
Ye: Yeah.
Lex Fridman: I got to ask you about parlor and engineering, because I'm interested about that.
Ye: Doom, doom, doom, doom. Hey man, I'm actually trying to hold it together. You're pretty offensive towards a lot.
Lex Fridman: I'm not looking to be offensive. I really want to bring people together and get these sales done.
Ye: I know, but 100%, I see your vision. How do we do that?
Lex Fridman: But somebody who cares, well, don't say Jewish media and Jewish controlled media.
Ye: JM.
Lex Fridman: You sound like, man, you sound like, it sounds too much like 1930s Nazi Germany that was leading up to the atrocities.
Ye: Oh, he would say JM?
Lex Fridman: Yeah, he was a brand of JM. That's right. No, it's just the implied, like this meme-ified prejudice towards a group in a way that's going to lead to hate. And I know you don't mean that. I know you have love in your heart.
Ye: You know what's the prejudice towards a group that led to hate? BLM. BLM took a black person, showed his death on camera, because, okay, there are examples of us being killed and being killed on camera. But if it was spread on camera, it was done on purpose by the media. Because 14, 20 kids get killed in Chicago every week. And it's not spread that much. They, like you said, singled out a person, directed everything on that person, right, as the martyr, and raised the people that hadn't had any. We didn't have our 40 acres and a mule. We didn't have, you know, like a lot of things, right, like that black people have not ever been given. And so once we're given just a little bit, like, your life matters, right, then we literally like, oh, okay, now we're being heard, right? But actually the death toll is up. The city where this happened has completely been turned to a war zone. They actually, it's actually something like Candace Owens can actually specify this better. But it's like its own city or something. Like they, they made it not be a part of the actual state or something. It's like, like DC and stuff. It's like, it's like Washington, DC now and stuff. Like, and that has to be from a government. And, you know, that's got higher level agenda written all over it.
Lex Fridman: Yeah, they're using the death of an individual.
Ye: Yeah, sure.
Lex Fridman: The media are. Not the Jewish media, the media. And that's, the media is fucked up. That machine does, takes whatever tragedy and pushes it towards whatever narrative that gets more clicks and views and so on.
Ye: Sure, and then politicians do the same. They use the media, they influence the media to tell a story. And I, this is a simple thing I'll put. But I believe that the idea of anti-Semitism and the closeness of the Holocaust is used by certain individuals in media to not take accountability for the bad things that are happening. And what's happening is there's a new frontier, right? Meaning, like, it used to be okay for somebody to be a billionaire. We thought about a billionaire, right? A lot of times you think I'm actually kind of being out of shape. And, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, like Onassis or something. Like, you thought about it a different way. Now you think about a billionaire. You think about Elon. You think Kim. You think Ye. Hey, you think it's a new kind of billionaire. You know, it's not just Soros is a billionaire. It's a new form of billionaire.
Well, right now what I'm calling for the industry is I'm calling the industry out and saying, like, hey, it just so happens that there's been times where I had my lawyer was Jewish. My regular was Jewish, but like eight people that basically would collude and talk without me were in groups saying, okay, this is what the tour is going to be. This is this next house. And they were making all these decisions. And they're making all this money. And at the end, I was like, I ended my tour and I don't have the money. And it just so happens that that's the case, what they were. But what I'm saying is if everyone can say, hey, you can't point out this fact or we're going to say you're anti-Semitic and we're going to call you Hitler, I feel that there has to be at least 1% of safeguarding the ability to screw the artist based on saying it's anti-Semitic. By pointing out that they just so happen to all be Jewish. And I don't think that's anti-Semitism. I just think that's, hey, this is another thing. Like, okay, the Kardashians, when you hear that, do you think male or do you think female? You think female. You get what I'm saying? You think this is the realities. This is why rap works, right? They're going to make an anti-women thing in a second, right? And it's going to say, well, if you point out that these five women, six women are having a meeting on where the Christmas party is and none of the ballplayers or rappers that they have babies with have any say-so. So that Christmas happened at Kourtney's house all eight years when I was there and it never happened at anyone else's black family house, right? Like, if I'm the one that pointed it out, they just don't have, they don't have their, oh, you're anti-Semitic, word to say, shut the fuck up.
Lex Fridman: Yeah. Because this is the way it runs and this is the way we want to do it. If you say that though, that women are silencing the black voice, yes, you're going to get the same response, but especially if it historically resonates.
Ye: But what about the fact that it's true?
Lex Fridman: When you talk in groups, that breeds hate. When you talk about individuals, it solves problems. You're in engineering.
Ye: Okay, but this is something I pointed out on Pierce. I said, if a black person gets pulled over with a car and it's three other people in the car, they're also going to jail. They're not going to single them out. They're going to say, you guys are all in collusion. I just described collusion five times in this interview. And you keep on going back to this is like 1930. This is like this. This is like that. What I'm saying is, look, I want to work with you as an engineer to free my people. Can we start as a being with engineer opportunities right here? I am sorry to the people who had to be hurt and affected by that. Now we are here and I'm looking to solve it. But what happens is every time if I talk to any of these business people one by one, because mind you, I didn't get to the tweet by not having a conversation. I had the conversations beforehand before I got to the tweet. Now we're going to take it to the stage. Now we're on the world stage. And you saw Ari Emanuel do exactly the kind of thing that I was saying had been done behind closed doors. Now he's doing it in open doors. They told Candace Owens, I couldn't be on the Daily Wire. Like you can't even explain yourself. And we don't care of how you got to that point either. And that's fucked up.
Lex Fridman: They told Candace you can't be on Daily Wire. Is that even about?
Ye: Yes, she did. That's what they said. And you know what? And you can have my voice raised or lower. I'm going to do it lower, right? Because what's happening to me by, I put it in your words, the media is saying, not only can you not explain yourself, we don't care how you got to that point. You need to apologize and you can't explain. And that's the end of the story. So just apologize so we can have Mel Gibson do some more films is exactly what Ari Emanuel was saying. No one is looking to change the problem that led so many people to that same level of frustration. And I just so happen to be the one that's not going to back up on it until this changes. Because you know what? I'm sorry I had a sleepy text. I'm sorry I was. I'm sorry for everything. I'm sorry that I put that I was 5'12 or 5'11 on Tinder. Okay? My cock is not 14 inches. I lied, okay? It's only 13. So I'm sorry, right? So the...
Lex Fridman: Wow, he's dropping so many facts today.
Ye: So what I'm saying is, but where do we get to this? Because even you, as engineering, as intelligent as you are, you, just like everyone else that I was saying was colluding, won't let us get to the point of fixing it.
Lex Fridman: Yeah, but I'm not. I think you're more powerful than the media. I'm not saying you need to apologize because the media. I'm saying everything we've been talking about, just because I care for you and I want you to be the best possible man you can be. To me, a definition of a great man, I'm with Martin Luther King on this. You don't talk about Jews or black people. You talk about engineering, you talk about humanity, you solve problems. You identify the problems in the world, and you don't come from a place of resentment. This group did this, this. Fuck all that. That is in the past. You just build solutions. I'm going to create a new record label. I'm going to create a new design firm. I'm going to create a new social network. I'm going to do it better. I'm going to do it right. I'm going to do it right by the people that I know don't have a voice. I'm going to give him a voice and talk about that.
Ye: Is it okay to call out collusion? Do people collude in your business under you? Like the engineers, they come together and like say, they collude against the bosses, right? You know why Bernard Arnault offered the deal and took it away from me? Collusion. Because I was too powerful with the collective that I had right there. He had to stop that at all costs. They said, for whatever reason, this kid, yay, it has the ability to have all of the Kardashians, Jay-Z and Beyonce, Justin Bieber, Demna, Virgil, all these people in the same room working towards the same goal. I've been that person since preschool. That's called a leader, right? And right now, what I'm saying is, hey, for the people in business, whatever their background is, whether they turn their cell phones off on Friday or not, there's been some bad business done. There's some bad business practices. And we have to change that because this game is like boxing. More people end up retarded than rich. And I'm saying like beat to a pulp, driven crazy, beat by the media to a pulp. Right now, the media has done everything they could to make me apologize and to make me look crazy. And that one person has done anything to find out why I was frustrated enough to do that tweet. And that's facts. And that's fucked up.
Lex Fridman: Well, I was hoping to. I am finding out. We found out.
Ye: I mean, but like I want solutions. Like, see, there's something about human nature where if you focus too much on resentment.
Lex Fridman: We're not focusing on it anymore. Fuck the resentment. We're moving forward.
Ye: Right. So there's two things I think that are required for, I mean, this is how I've lived my life for great engineering. You surround yourself in your personal life by people you trust. And then in your professional life, from the engineering perspective, with a team, with an incredible team. And everything else doesn't matter. That allows you not to focus on other groups, how they're fucking you over, how they're like trying to manipulate or collude and all that kind of stuff. You focus on solutions and you find a way around all the difficult shit. That's it. If you have people in your life you can trust, that's like lifelong. You said like some people you're with for the summer, for a year, find people you can be with for your whole life. Do you have people in your life that you trust, like really trust?
Ye: No, I trust God. At any point, a human being can, like I could like, if I like go and like really, you know, treat this guy like a piece of shit or do this, am I supposed to, you know, trust him to be loyal and stay in the situation? No, I trust people to be people and people are flawed and people can have the right intentions, but it only makes sense for us to work together when our agendas align. When Kim was pulled really far to the left, our agendas no longer, you know, aligned. So that made the marriage impossible. It aligned where it's like, oh, I could wear a red hat that can help her to get Alice Johnson out of jail because Trump's willing to do that for my wife because I was the only person in my position that stood up and said, wait a second, I like you. You know, because.
Lex Fridman: But isn't there a deeper agenda, the human agenda of just being in love? Like, that's just, what you're talking about, red hat is just politics, right?
Ye: I mean, the world is becoming more and more transactional every day. And actually, marriages are actually, actually originally based on transactions, you know, and that's why they're less needed. The more autonomous as we come or the world makes it less needed. I feel like we do need each other. I feel like we do need someone we can always, you know, count on. It's like, I'm yay, pulled away by King Cooper, which is the media, the politics, the promise. Oh, we're going to keep you safe. So the thing, the reason why I get, you know, really frustrated with Kris Jenner is she says losing Rob Kardashian was the greatest mistake of her life. But she never gave Kim's hand over in marriage because this is the bottom line. When me and Kim met, we were millionaires or whatever, right? You're telling me you just hand her hand over in marriage that your daughter's not successful, handing your hand over in marriage too. But no, she had to still be the husband to all of her daughters. And we see what the results are consistently. So that's where I get, you know, frustrated. It's like, let that go. Let this person do what you made mistakes on. Don't make this person relive those same mistakes and then put that agenda into my daughters too.
Lex Fridman: Is there somebody in your life close to you that you trust enough to call you out on your bullshit? We're all full of shit sometimes.
Ye: What's my bullshit?
Lex Fridman: Well, some of it I pointed out today, but I don't know you deeply enough.
Ye: What was the bullshit?
Lex Fridman: Jewish media, Jewish.
Ye: That's not bullshit. The bullshit is that the Jewish media won't admit...
Lex Fridman: Your dad was right. Your dad was right. The words you used. You weren't. And I said it.
Ye: You're not going to make me say it 800 more times.
Lex Fridman: I don't know if it resonated because you keep saying like the words.
Ye: Did it resonate to y'all that y'all ain't do nothing about it? And that all y'all want to do is have somebody apologize and sweep under the rug your bullshit that you've been doing the whole time. You own the same bullshit as the other people. So you're doing the same thing that the other, let's say media, because I'm not allowed to say, has done. So until somebody stands up.
Lex Fridman: Which is what, man? Which is what? I'm trying to call you out on your bullshit because I hope I'm somebody you can trust.
Ye: I don't fucking trust you.
Lex Fridman: Well, you should find people in your life you can trust.
Ye: Don't tell me what I should do. I'm not one of your BLM marchers.
Lex Fridman: Listen, I'm with you on the BLM. A lot of organizations use tragedy. And I watched the Candace Owens documentary.
Ye: And what was your take on it?
Lex Fridman: I think it's important to question the mainstream narratives, but I don't agree with it. I still believe that George Floyd died from the knee of the cop, not from fentanyl.
Ye: And even if that was the case, there's still 50% of black deaths is actually abortion. So let's get into engineering. Let's just go.
Lex Fridman: How do you fix that?
Ye: Population control is social engineering. And it's most literal form. The blacks are under population control. That's something that, I mean, that's just what it is.
Lex Fridman: African-Americans are not choosing to get the abortion. I mean, it's a choice. It's an individual choice.
Ye: But we're being influenced to.
Lex Fridman: Well, then specifically. Speak to the community and help. I mean, I don't know what the engineering solutions there are. It could be you're doing that in part by speaking to the value and the power of family.
Ye: Well, watch this. I was building shelters. I bought land in Calabasas. I bought two ranches in Wyoming. 300 acres in Calabasas. 12,000 acres in total in Wyoming. And I started building ideas for shelters. And God set it on my heart to make monasteries, which would be modern day facilities that don't turn people down. That have farms, that have shelter, clothing, but first of all, water, first of all, knowledge. Because knowledge is the most important resource to our species above water. Knowledge, it's itself. Because then you can go get water. I mean, you can argue, like, if you're a baby, how do you get water? But the baby doesn't have it. You know, so someone with the knowledge then feeds the baby the water. But it's important that those with the knowledge teach the baby how to find the water themselves.
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Kanye West (Ye) and Lex Fridman 2022 Interview
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