kanye West was recently at Oxford University, where he gave a speech to 350 students. “I can literally hear a whisper, and it’ll throw off my stream of consciousness, and when I get my stream of consciousness going that’s when I give the best, illest quotes,” Kanye began his
speech. He also addressed his ego, “One of my biggest Achilles heels has been my ego. And if I, Kanye West, the very person, can remove my ego, I think there’s hope for everyone.” “I’ll take one question. I wanted to vibe off an idea, and then I can riff off of that…they said I’ve got 20 minutes or so, I might go longer.
“OK, everyone please be completely quiet,because I can literally hear a whisper, and it’ll throw off my stream of consciousness, and
when I get my stream of consciousness going that’s when I give the best, illest quotes.
Literally, a whisper can throw it off.
“Today was the first time I realised, If I could have done it again I would have gone to the Art Institute over the American Academy of Art, I
would have researched where I could have got the best and the strongest education.
“And I’m sure this will end up online, so I don’t
want to diss anyone at the American Academy,I’m sure it’s equal to the Art Institute of Chicago by now, but at the time I was going I would look around at the work of the class and
not feel inspired by the teachers, and I kinda, the idea of being a fine artist, that’s a really difficult profession to get into, to be respected in, to make money at. Maybe the goal for some of the people was just to work at an advertising agency or at a record label.
“My goal, if I was going to do art, fine art, would have been to become Picasso or greater.
“That always sounds so funny to people,comparing yourself to someone in the past that has done so much, and in your life you’re not
even allowed to think that you can do as much. That’s a mentality that suppresses humanity.
“Some of you here probably remember the night when the Donda tweets came through me
and I started talking about professions that you guys are going into, that seemed they had nothing to do with a rapper. I was talking
about a band of thinkers that could remove religion, race, gender, and somehow come together to find solutions for a broken planet.
“We have the resources as a civilisation to find a utopia, but we’re led by the most greedy and
the least noble.
“What I notice about creatives is that, and one of the reasons why I get into trouble, is, not only do I want to design video games, or make
music, or ride bikes, I think one of the most important things to my ability to create so much in the past 30 years is my desire to play sports. I approach creativity like a sport, where if I have a drawing I react just like a jock: LOOK AT THE FUCKING DRAWING RIGHT THERE YEAH!
“We’re all creatives here, we’re all born artists. Some people are artists of business, some people are artists of composition.
“We were taught to hide our black fingernail polish and put our head down in the back of the class and not notice out of fear that someone might laugh at one of our ideas – that our idea could become a mockery or a failure in some way.
“There’s a Bible saying, ‘No weapon formed against me shall prosper’. Recently I’ve been doing interviews and I’ve had to go back to this verse because I don’t think there’s a living
celebrity with more weapons formed against them, but I also don’t think there’s one more
prosperous. So what weapons have prospered? The smoke and mirrors of other opinions.
“I was sitting with Steve McQueen, he shot the visuals for All Day 2 days ago, it’s completely different to the Brit awards.
“So it doesn’t get taken out of context, I’m going to use the word ‘like’. I’m not saying it is, I’m using it as a comparison. So people that
want to say ‘Kanye goes to Oxford and tells everyone blah blah blah’. And I’m not telling you this. I’m telling you what I told Steve McQueen in private.
“What I said was The Matrix is like the Bible of the post-information age.
“I compared it like, when the hundred guys come at Neo, those are opinions, that’s perception,that’s tradition. Attacking people
from every which angle possible. If you have a focus wide and master senseis like Laurence Fishburne and you have a squad behind you, you literally can put the world in slow motion.
“It’s still February, right? (security guard shakes his head, everyone laughs).
“By the way, I don’t know the days of the week. I just go to exactly when my appointment is.
“We’d just look at each other and say, it’s still February. For the sheer mount of work that we were able to put into the world. Some of the stuff had been worked on for years coming, months coming. But nonetheless they came back to back to back to back. Answering every
crazy interview question, blocking every shot, catching every rebound. Aside from the right I don’t have to give my opinion publicly about
artists, I probably would have been batting 2000. I know that’s incorrect also.
“This humanity that I talk about, this civilisation that I talk about, this future utopia I talk about…it can only happen through collaboration.
“I love Steve Jobs, he’s my favourite person, but there’s one thing that disappoints me.When Steve passed he didn’t give the ideas up.
That’s kinda selfish. You know that Elon’s like ‘yeah, take these ideas’. Maybe there are companies outside of Apple that could work on them and push humanity forward. Maybe the stock brokers won’t like that, the stock holders wouldn’t like that idea, but ideas are free and you can’t be selfish with them.
“I think that progression of mind with the advent of a human being named Drake (laughs, smirks, crowd laughs) you know, this idea of
holding onto a number 1 spot. And then you get this guy that comes and blows out the water every number 1 of any band ever. Be it
me, or Paul McCartney [laughs].
“I understand that I’m a servant. And with my voice, with my ability to build relationships with amazing people, speak to amazing people. Call Elon Musk out of the blue, or call Obama out of the blue…he calls the home phone, by the way.
“With that, I have a responsibility to serve. Why do I say the Matrix is like the Bible? What is my definition of the Matrix? [he never answered this]. Read the entire speech Kanye West gave to 350 lucky Oxford students on http://www.justjared.com/2015/03/03/kanye-west-tells-oxford-students-if-i-can-remove-my-ego-theres-hope-for-everyone/
No comments:
Post a Comment