Kanye West continued his ‘Best Week In Quotables’ reign this week as he took his album promo to Switzerland.
During a very last minute listening session at the Art Basel Fair, he shmoozed with the rich and famous, while unleashing a few great quotes on everything from his disdain for YouTube [That players too ugly!], to the reason he decided to drop out of art school and his struggles with being a ‘celebrity boyfriend.’ In case you’ve been wondering why he doesn’t look too happy when pictured with his girlfriend, or ever actually, he addressed that too.
Peep the highlights below:
On Art & How He Fell Into Music
“[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.
On Sampling 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.
On Being Rejected By the Fashion & Art World for Being a Rapper
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.
On Being a “Celebrity Boyfriend” & Why He Frowns in Pics With Kim
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 dumba– s–t all the time, and I think about changing the world, and I think about what I can do to make things better.These Kanye chat sessions are kind of enjoyable. It gives you a lot of insight into his character. He seems to mean well.
Via The Daily Beast
No comments:
Post a Comment