Before anybody wanted K West beats, me & my girl split the buffet at KFC

July 22, 2014 7:08 PM

"Saying "Hey, I like Kim" isn't as inspiring to people as us getting married. And anyone that's in a relationship knows that in order to get to the point to get married and then to be married and to then carry on, it needs that work put into it. Right now, people look at it and it's like, "Wow, that's inspiring." Meaning that love is infectious. You know, God is infectious—God flowing through us and us being little-baby creators and shit. But His energy and His love and what He wants us to have as people and the way He wants us to love each other, that is infectious. Like they said in Step Brothers: Never lose your dinosaur. This is the ultimate example of a person never losing his dinosaur. Meaning that even as I grew in cultural awareness and respect and was put higher in the class system in some way for being this musician, I never lost my dinosaur." GQ interviews Kanye West.

Time: 5 Things We Learned from Kanye West’s GQ Interview

Early K.West footage has recently surfaced - Kanye at Fat Beats August 1996

posted by porn in the woods (29 comments total)

Yeah, so Obama was right in the jackass comment. But Kanye is such a huge talent musically. The greatest thing in hip hop since Chuck D. I hope he continues to find satisfaction in domestic life with KK.
posted by persona au gratin at 7:34 PM on July 22, 2014

i put in "my beautiful dark twisted fantasy" the other day and drove around town. it's still so good and "i'm the abomination of obama's nation" is still one of the best lines. he's a fantastic talent and i'm pretty excited to learn that an album is coming this year.
posted by nadawi at 8:09 PM on July 22, 2014 [10 favorites]

There isn't a thing dude says publicly that isn't planned and part of the public persona. And he makes it sound genuinely unhinged.

He's got some skills.
posted by clvrmnky at 8:19 PM on July 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

Genius level troll.

(And by that I mean actual modern-day trickster demigod. Neil Gaiman couldn't dream up better on his best day.)

Of course, I say that and I also absolutely believe the man is entirely in earnest. Not that the two are mutually exclusive. Ugh, Kanye, you're brilliant, never stop.
posted by dogheart at 8:39 PM on July 22, 2014 [12 favorites]

Mod note: A few comments deleted. Please try not to make the thread go to hell immediately. Thanks.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:53 PM on July 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm glad someone is fighting for the rights of celebrities!
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:06 PM on July 22, 2014 [7 favorites]

I consider him a genius, albeit not in all the different fields he claims to dominate. College Dropout came out my first year in college and blew my mind wide open. 808s and Heartbreak is up there with Blood on the Tracks in the break-up/heartbreak albums category. I don't understand the Kim thing, but it's not my life, so who cares? You do you, Kanye.
posted by sallybrown at 9:07 PM on July 22, 2014 [6 favorites]

Open the door, get on the floor,
Never go and lose your dinosaur.
posted by Naberius at 9:17 PM on July 22, 2014 [16 favorites]

I love Kanye. I wish he didn't make it so hard.
posted by 256 at 10:26 PM on July 22, 2014 [6 favorites]

The ending is my favorite bit:

Because I don't like walking around with people thinking I'm doing uncool shit, because there's nothing I'm doing that's uncool. It's all innovative. You just might not understand it yet. But it's cool. Family is super cool. Going home to one girl every night is super cool. Just going home and getting on the floor and playing with your child is super cool. Not wearing a red leather jacket, and just looking like a dad and shit, is like super cool. Having someone that I can call Mom again. That shit is super cool.

posted by wemayfreeze at 10:32 PM on July 22, 2014 [40 favorites]

I'm slightly worried that I just read an interview with Kanye and what he said made sense to me. He has always had a strong unabashed love of family and the whole marriage to Kim thing, its kind of sad that he has to defend it and her. He loves her, he's always been a relationship kind of guy, they share values surrounding marriage and family and they're happy. "And the point of life is getting shit done and being happy." Leave those crazy kids alone!

Artistically her's always been fearless and I think if he just put his stuff out there and didn't try to explain or defend it or get mad when he's criticized... well he wouldn't be Kanye I guess. But I think maybe more people talk about his rants than listen to his music and I don't know if any artist wants that.

But I'm also going to throw this in here. For contrast. Because life is all about contrast.
posted by fshgrl at 10:53 PM on July 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

That's what I like about Jay. He has longevity. He's still at the top of relevancy from the way he moves, the way he interacts with people, his ability to brush things off of his shoulder and just win at life. He's the poster child of winning. And I think I was the poster child of, like, fighting and winning. But you always saw the fight. And with Jay, you always saw the win.

That's the key graph I think, that explains so much about Kanye, that he never quite had the innate charm of Jay Z, that he was too much the nerd and had to force himself to get noticed.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:02 PM on July 22, 2014 [19 favorites]

I just think this is a great interview because the writer can take himself out of it and really give us a sense for the subject.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 11:25 PM on July 22, 2014

That's the key graph I think, that explains so much about Kanye, that he never quite had the innate charm of Jay Z, that he was too much the nerd and had to force himself to get noticed.

The Jay-Z of 1989-1996 would certainly qualify as super nerd trying to get in the game. Dude wasn't even weed carrier status in those Jaz videos. Kufis and Hawaiian shirts and triple time flow. He was grinding for years in all sorts of rap styles practically begging to get noticed. Hell, post 2002 he's also been an insecure mess on record. The whole Jay z with the endless string of Ws is a manufactured persona, no different than Dre the super gangsta.
posted by milarepa at 3:44 AM on July 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Zaphod's just this guy, you know?
posted by jenkinsEar at 3:45 AM on July 23, 2014 [8 favorites]

I found this story by Dave Chappelle to be revealing. Starts at about 4.00.
posted by devious truculent and unreliable at 4:43 AM on July 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

It must really be a huge pain in the ass to be Kanye West sometimes.
posted by oceanjesse at 4:45 AM on July 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Kanye West invented Andy Warhol and then killed him.
posted by shakespeherian at 5:58 AM on July 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

I love Kanye. I wish he didn't make it so hard.

I... no, no, I... mmf mmmf... I... no, no... THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID! Damn it! Damn it all!
posted by Naberius at 7:41 AM on July 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

IME, what's remarkable about the KFC buffet is that the flies are all you can eat. Who'll write a song about that, I ask?
posted by octobersurprise at 7:54 AM on July 23, 2014

Kanye is a GIFT. Every interview is a GIFT. Everyone laughs at him and criticizes, but they don't realize how good we have it right now. We have the greatest outsized troll persona in all of rap - all of pop culture - and we get to bear witness to it regularly. Never lose your dinosaur, Ye.
posted by naju at 8:44 AM on July 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

KFC has a buffet?
posted by biffa at 9:18 AM on July 23, 2014

I just don't get it. Dude always comes across (to me) as a delusional, self-aggrandizing dope.
posted by stenseng at 10:05 AM on July 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Never understood why people have to call him stupid all the time.

Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with race.
posted by shakespeherian at 10:08 AM on July 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Yeah, it's clearly because I'm a racist and he's black. Not because he fairly consistently says dumb shit.
posted by stenseng at 11:18 AM on July 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Comments removed; peppering the thread with six comments for six one-liners instead of putting it in one comment is just kind of sucking up extra space for no good reason.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:31 AM on July 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I have no opinion on the race angle, but a lot of musicians have weird or non-mainstream opinions, or self-aggrandizing tendencies (especially in rap) and yet I never see someone as consistently labeled as a douchebag as Kanye. I don't really get it. When I think of douchebag celebrities I think of someone like Justin Bieber or something. Everything I've heard from Kanye is funny, interesting, and out of the ordinary. Not really douchebaggery.

To me it's like being scandalized by Miley Cyrus, I just absolutely don't get it. This is what entertainers do.
posted by malapropist at 12:07 PM on July 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Sure but John Mayer never made George W. Bush cry.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:18 PM on July 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Chappelle on Kanye:

The first time Kanye West was on television was on the Chappelle's Show. It was the week that The Black Album came out. I'll never forget. We were all sitting in the trailer listening to The Black Album, and Jay-Z says on the record, "Kanyeezy, you's a genius. You did it again,"* and Kanye stopped the tape and pressed rewind.

He had that energy. You knew he was gonna be somebody. And then they did the show, him and Common did it. And you remember that song The Food? "You love to hear the story, again and again. About those two brothers from the City of Wind."

The crowd, "EGHHHHHHHEEE." Motherfuckers go nuts. I said, "Hey Kanye, look, we're going back to the studio. We got to edit some sketches, but if you want, you can come with us and check out some of the stuff we're working on." He says, "Oh that'd be great!"

He comes to the studio we're all sitting and there watching all these crazy sketches. Nobody had seen any of this shit before. It was Rick James, all that shit. All on there. It's on footage, we was all cracking up and then in the middle of it all, Kanye's phone rings. This is when I knew he was gonna be famous.

He answers the phone, he goes, "Hello. Huh? What? Uh uh, I can't. I can't. Cause, I'm at Dave Chappelle's show watching sketches that nobody's ever seen before."

And then he says, "Cause my life is dope, and I do dope shit," and then he hung up the phone.

posted by AceRock at 7:07 PM on July 23, 2014 [5 favorites]