Hey Carina,

"[I hate YouTube because] the player is so ugly, and it’s presented in such a terrible manner. I want everything I do to be presented in an art context, as this is a form of sonic art. I was an artist originally, I have been in art school since I was 5 years old. I got scholarships to three art schools, Art Institute of Chicago, Saint Xavier, and the American Academy of Art, where I ended up going—and I dropped out because I had an assignment where I was supposed to do an ink painting or something, and I would take two weeks to do it, and when I looked at my work, I just felt that I would never be one of the great visual artists of the world. I just felt like I would end up like—and this is no knock to anybody that does this—but I felt like I would end up working at an ad agency or something like that. I wanted to make something of impact. I found that when I would drop samples, my friends would react to it more. I felt that I had a real talent in chopping and appropriating music. What I want people to understand about sampling and producing is that it’s really similar to—and I know this is obvious what I’m going to say, because I’m a black guy so I’m gonna name the ‘most obvious artist in the world’—Warhol, but it’s very similar to the way Warhol would appropriate a Campbell’s Soup can is the way I would sonically appropriate a Ray Charles sample or a Michael Jackson sample. Right now it’s a fight against the separation and constant dumbing down of culture, and I’m standing in the middle of it. So if you know what people say are my lowest moments, those moments where I sat and saw them try to dumb down culture, and I would not allow it to happen on my clock. So when I used to go to fashion shows with my boys and we’d be eight deep, it was almost like a civil rights, like a sit-in. They wouldn’t even let us in. They had no idea what rap would mean to this world, what rap would mean to the art world. Before the Kendrick Lamars and the A$AP Rockys, it was Kanye West in a hotel room at the Le Maurice getting a ‘no, no, no, no’ to every single fashion show. But I thought it was so important to get close to the artists who worked so hard on making a usable form of art—like this furniture right here, like everything that is in all these rooms that inspire us so much—and I fight in my position of being a very commercial celebrity boyfriend, I fight to push culture forward every chance I get. And I only frown because paparazzi ask me dumbass shit all the time, and I think about changing the world, and I think about what I can do to make things better. And, without further ado, I want to play you guys my new album. It’s called Yeezus."

Kanye West (via andross)

My new fucking hero.

(via thesineaters)

So… I never really liked Kanye… until now…

(via yeahwriters)

"In a way, Kanye’s entire discography is leading to this (probable) point—his first two records were about reaching the top, Graduation was about loving life there, 808’s and Heartbreak was how the top can fuck up your personal life, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was about growing restless at the top, and Watch the Throne found him and Jay-Z negotiating the idea of why there weren’t more black men at the top. And now, it seems, Kanye’s taking stock of the world as he sees it from upon high, and deciding that he doesn’t like what’s flashing in front of his Fendi frames. The fact that the biggest black entertainer in the country even made those two records and debuted them on the beyond-white bread Saturday Night Live is huge. This isn’t Das Racist razzing a few privileged white kids at Music Hall of Williamsburg. This is Kanye West going into a million white people’s living rooms and saying, “Look at the terrible things your people have done to my people and are still doing to my people. We are not going to take it. I’m so pissed right now I wouldn’t even be here if I didn’t have something incredibly urgent to say. Fuck you.” That’s a powerful act, something that you can put up there with things that Bob Marley or Tupac did. I know that’s outlandish, but one day we’ll be holding Kanye West up next to those guys, so we might as well start now."

Drew Millard, The Revolutionary Politics of Kanye West (via soy)

(via candidkanima)