(GQ)
Kanye West opens up about his wedding, his thoughts on Jay Z andDrake, his love for Kim Kardashian, and just about everything else in an explosive and entertaining new GQcover interview.
“I am a black American male from Chicago who had my rehearsal dinner at Versailles and then got married in Florence with a view of the entire city,” says the star, describing how far he’s come.
West is asked how he feels about basically having the eyes of the world — including the tabloids and paparazzi — on him in the wake of his marriage to one of the most famous women in the world.
He says, “That wasn’t my goal. My goal is just to be respected as a man when I walk down the street with my family. I don’t care what your job is, you’re not gonna talk down to me, you’re not gonna try to get a rise out of me. I’m a man first. And in establishing that, some interesting things have happened.”
West describes his response to unwanted attention as being a little less dangerous and menacing than people think.
“I’m a blowfish. I’m not a shark, I’m a blowfish… I wasn’t coming out of my house going to a paparazzi’s house to attack them. I’m defending my family in front of my own house,” he says. “I’m defending my name as someone’s screaming something negative at me. That’s a blowfish.”
He continues, “People have me pinned as a shark or a predator in some way, and in no way am I that. I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. I want to defend people. I want to help people.”
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Why did he want to marry Kardashian?
“Kim is this girl who f*cking turns me on. I love her. This is who I want to be next to and be around,” says West. “And then people would try to say, ‘Well, you know, if you’re a musician, you should be with a musician, and if you want to design, you need to be with a girl from the design world.’ I don’t give a f*ck about people’s opinions.”
He explains, “Because when a kid falls in love with an airplane or a bike or a dinosaur — especially if you’re an only child and it’s not because of the book that the sibling was reading — it’s like, f*ck, you mean to tell me that the dinosaurs walked the earth and stuff like that?! That’s amazing! You mean to tell me that these giant multi-ton crafts can fly that fast and that loud, and they can flip, and there’s danger, the possibility of them exploding? That’s f*cking cool!
“You mean to tell me that this girl with this f*cking body and this face is also into style, and she’s a nice person, and she has her own money and is family-oriented?” asks the rapper. “That’s just as cool as a f*cking fighter jet or dinosaur! And just as rarely seen.”
As for his infamous wedding toast, which reportedly lasted 45 minutes, West explains that it was not your standard fare.
“[What] I talked about in it was the idea of celebrity, and celebrities being treated like blacks were in the ’60s, having no rights, and the fact that people can slander your name. I said that in the toast,” he tells the outlet.
West adds, “And I had to say this in a position where I, from the art world, am marrying Kim. And how we’re going to fight to raise the respect level for celebrities so that my daughter can live a more normal life. She didn’t choose to be a celebrity. But she is. So I’m going to fight to make sure she has a better life.”
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He’s irritated by the rumors that Jay Z and Beyoncedidn’t show up to the wedding because of Kardashian’s reputation.
“All that, I wouldn’t even speak on. It doesn’t even matter to me whatsoever, who would show up. Because the most important person to show up there, to me, was Kim. And that’s all that matters to me,” says West. “I had to fight for that for seven years.”
The performer continues, “But the fact that these other people showed up that are from such different worlds but have done such dynamic things — they’re all, in a way, equal to what Kim has done in TV or what I had done in music. I was so moved that I just wanted people to stop and think they weren’t sitting at a table full of fashion people, they weren’t sitting at a table full of celebrities, they weren’t sitting at a table full of movie directors. It really was a representation of the way we receive information today, post-Internet.”
“It’s about the people, and the fact that they’re from different walks of life, and that they’re working together and not discriminating against each other,” explains West. “There was a class system, and now there’s a creative class system, and I think that’s what you were talking about a bit — the class system of creativity.”
As for Jay Z, West has nothing but praise.
“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,” explains West. “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.”
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West acknowledges that he’s no longer the most popular man in rap.
“Currently that spot is taken. Let’s be honest — he got last summer. You know. There’s only one person,” he tells the outlet.
Drake?
“Yeah. He got last summer. And I’d never given it up till last summer,” says West.
Does the Yeezus performer plan to reclaim the throne?
“It’s a real question for me,” replies West. “Do I want to?”
He’s the first to celebrate his own work as a rapper.
West tells GQ that the second verse of “New Slaves” is “the best rap verse of all time. It’s the Coming to America or Anchorman of a verse. You know, it’s got the funny sh*t. It’s got the antagonization. It’s got patterns. It’s got social and political consciousness. It’s got struggle. It’s got bravado. It’s everything that a rap verse is supposed to be.”
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But trying to balance recording and performing and designing and his other artistic endeavors is “crazy,” says West.
“Having to take all of your energy, or a lot more of your energy, to focus on fashion. And while you’re focusing on that, such-and-such just keeps coming for the spot,” he explains.
West goes on to say, “And I might complain about how hard it is in clothing, but also I think it’s great that it’s so hard. Because the barrier to entry is really, really, really, really high. And I’m literally trying to do — back when I did Watch the Throne, and the fashion, I think it was just too much for people. It was just too crazy. It was just too crazy to do Watch the Throne, ‘N*ggas in Paris,’ shoot a surround-vision film in Qatar, show the film in Cannes.”
“It felt like every single industry that I was trying to tap into looked at every other industry and everyone held hands. It was like, ‘F*ck that. No. This is just too crazy,’” he says now.
What lesson did he draw?
“History’s gonna be harder to make than I thought,” West tells the magazine.
In the end, it all comes back to Kardashian.
“One of the reasons why I think that me and Kim are very powerful together isn’t just the concept of celebrity or this mega rap star and this mega-beautiful pop star. It’s something I explain to my girl: She is who she is. I am who I am. We have advisers and friends and everything, but those people are who they are and we are who we are,” says West.
He adds, “And what I had to learn from Kim is how to take more of her advice and less of other people’s advice. There’s a lot of Kim K skills that were added. In order to win at life, you need some Kim K skills, period.”
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Has he found his ultimate happiness?
“Well, you build your happy wife, happy life, happy home, all this stuff, right? Everybody that’s in a relationship that has ever worked on a home knows one of the most frustrating processes is actually working on the home. So when people would see me last year, two years ago, unhappy, I was in the process of building the home,” says West.
He adds, “But what makes me happy is land, and we’re on a boat now. This is Christopher Columbus. This is uncharted waters we’re on. We’d be super happy to be on land, and also a little bit like, ‘Ah, the journey’s over!’ But I feel like, we got the Vogue cover, Steve McQueen won the Oscar, we finally got married… You know? We have a child. We’re a family now.”
West continues, “I am an arbiter of taste, and people think that I have the ability to make things cool — or if I’m doing it, it should be cool. And I feel that this stuff’s starting to be cool. And that feels good to me. Because I don’t like walking around with people thinking I’m doing uncool sh*t, 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,” he says. “Not wearing a red leather jacket, and just looking like a dad and sh*t, is like super cool. Having someone that I can call Mom again. That sh*t is super cool.”
What do you think about everything West has to say?
