Transcription
- The following is a conversation with Ye,
the legendary artist, producer
and designer, formerly
known as Kanye West on this,
the Lex Fridman podcast.
- Based off of our connection
and just you being a friend,
I need to show you my two tech companies
and get your perspective on it
'cause now I have friends
that can give a perspective.
Like when I would work on albums,
I had other friends that worked on albums
and they would give me
their perspectives on it.
- You wanna do this?
- [Ye] We are doing it.
This is part of it.
- This is part of it?
- Absolutely.
- [Lex] All right, beautiful.
- Oh, well, I wanted to finish.
The thing is, okay, you're gonna
ask me different questions,
but I'm about growing and building
and bringing the idea to life.
So when I see you, I say,
"Oh, this guy understands
how to hire engineers."
Where I'm coming from,
coming from Hollywood,
coming from press, coming
from media, all of the guys,
you know, that so many of the guys
that have been like voices
and faces and talking heads, whatever,
have not understood how
to engineer product.
And that's the reason why I was able
to jump past everyone in
the entertainment field
and become, you know, whatever
the net worth is, 11 billion.
I'ma stop putting the whole
Black thing on my worth.
Like let's just see where
I am on the scale of life.
Because that's a cop out for me
to say, "Richest Black guy of all time."
Because that's feeding
into the same, you know,
trauma economy that Black
Lives Matter feeds into.
That's why I love and respect engineers.
That's the only thing that we really need
to teach in school is engineering.
We don't need to teach history.
We don't need to teach
anything that is subjective.
It needs to only be
engineering, taught in school,
and everything else needs to be recessed.
Nothing at all,
any forced subjective
information is just to weaken
and indoctrinate our species.
And that's what schools do now.
- As an engineer, I love
hearing you say that,
but to push back history is not...
The interpretation of
history might be subjective,
but history has some facts,
and they're useful to give a grounding
to the way you do engineering.
- I don't 100% believe in anything,
any concept of the future
or any concept of history
because history was just
written by the victors.
- Yeah, that's right.
- So if I see stuff happen on the day
that later that day is reported wrong.
So how wrong is something
reported a thousand years ago
and why would we argue about something
that's not in the now?
Because that's the only thing
that everyone can agree upon
is that it is now right now.
- Yeah.
Well, you try not to make
the mistakes of the past.
That's the usefulness of history.
The limited usefulness of history.
- The biggest mistake from the past
that we keep making is
looking at the past.
- Too much.
Giving too much value to the past.
- Too much value to the past.
We are now.
We are now, we are here.
We are one species, we
are one race, we're here.
And it's time.
And the leadership is changing
because you have Elon as
a leader, Ye as a leader.
And we are the top leaders.
We're more influential
than the presidents.
- So you're a human being
with engineering challenges
before you, with a Stem
Player, with Parler,
what's the hardest thing in front of you
on the engineering front?
- That's the first sentence
that any of our species needs
to hear when they're born.
You are a human being with
engineering challenges,
and I consider challenges
to be opportunities in front of you.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- Literally, like let me see a piece,
I need to write that down.
That's the beginning-
- [Lex] That's a good line.
- Of our new species constitution.
(Lex and Ye laughing)
I'ma do the paper like this wide.
- [Lex] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Put it in wide screen.
This for Ridley.
You are...
No, let me like,
you are a being
- [Lex] Yeah.
- with engineering.
- [Lex] Opportunities or challenges?
- Opportunities.
I'm sorry, I don't spell
as good as John Legend.
(Lex laughs)
Opportunities, and before you.
I like the before
'cause it actually can
mean forward or before you.
This right here, I've always said,
"I'm the top five writer
in human existence."
But like this right here
is pushing me to like
number four, number three.
- (laughs) It's a good line.
- Because who would you
say is the top writer
in human existence? And we know who it is.
- That's subjective.
Who's that?
- It's factual though.
- [Lex] Who's that?
- It's like, okay, who's the
top person in tech history?
It's not subjective.
- Well-
- There's a non-subjective
answer to both of those.
Both of those people have influence,
30% of our existence.
- So the influence is the
main metric of greatness.
- Okay, one person.
- [Lex] Yeah, yeah.
- 30% of our language was...
The English language was written by them.
The other person, 30%
of the products we used
was led by them, so-
- 30% of our language was written by...
Oh, Shakespeare.
- [Ye] And then it was-
- And then the product,
product, product, product.
- Look, look.
- Steve Jobs.
- [Ye] Yeah.
- You put Steve above
like Elons of the world?
'Cause Steve is a designer.
He's a designer and engineer,
but he's a designer,
he's a visionary in the design space.
- Well, I would lean to him
because I'm not an engineer, right?
So I'm more like-
- Then you're an engineer.
If Steve is an engineer,
you're an engineer, essentially.
- He's a cultural engineer.
Like the people who run
the emotions of the world
and run the world off of
people's emotions right now
are social engineers.
And social engineering is so important,
like city design.
There's a fancier word for that.
But I was in Oxner last night
to see Anthony Jeselnik,
and I gotta find out
what his opening joke was
because I'm doing interviews
and I'm thinking I'm funny.
And I like that he said,
he just kept on saying, "20-year...
I've been doing this for 20 years."
And his opening joke was so high level,
I realized that I wasn't funny.
I realized that this dude is a
professional at what he does,
and so many things are subjective.
I always talk about this.
It's like, you know,
and people are arguing like,
"Is Emily Ratajkowski the
hottest, you know, person?"
And I'm like, "That's
such a subjective thing."
But like, if you go
and shoot three-pointers with Steph Curry,
it's not subjective, right?
Or if you go
and compare bank accounts with
Elon, it's not subjective.
And another thing that's
not subjective, porn.
- What about it?
- Dick size.
It's not subjective.
You can measure.
(Lex and Ye laughing)
- But porn is more than just dick size,
and greatness is more
than the size of the bank account, right?
So there's a subjective on-
- Well, greatness is subjective though.
- Right.
So do you care about the stuff
that's objective or subjective more?
'Cause greatness to me is what matters.
The bank account comes and goes.
The impact on our society, like you said,
social engineering,
the impact on the collective intelligence
of our species,
that what permeates throughout
the rest of the time.
- I like what you said, "The impact."
I'm taking notes.
What did you say? The impact on-
- On the collective
intelligence of our species.
- The impact on the collective
intelligence.
- When Ye is writing down the words
that came outta my dumb mouth,
I have made it in life.
(Ye chuckles)
(Lex laughs)
- There's a lot of people that
have kinda like sat through.
I wanted to wear a
different colored hoodie
'cause I was just tired
of seeing this hoodie
on all the interviews,
and there's a lot of
kids that are with me.
They see what I'm saying.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- And they had to sit
through all of the muck
of all the previous
interviews to get to this.
Every interview has been
just an emotional...
It's just like been an
argument up to this point.
This it the first of...
This is the next frontier
of where our species is gonna head.
It starts here, it starts with you, Lex.
- So this is the first time I heard you
say the word engineering
at least so many times,
which I love hearing.
So this is where you're at.
You're like that newborn,
you're a being with
engineering opportunities.
- Yeah.
And we're all a newborn.
'Cause then Christianity
would say, "Born again."
We're all newborns,
and everyone shall, I
don't like the word can,
shall, the only thing
about shall, it's like,
it kinda dictates, and can
kinda lets people off the hook.
So I haven't found the
perfect post-Shakespeare
and post-Steve Jobs and
post-Elon and post-Ye
and post-Drake way to communicate this.
But we update and we do.
And what the current media structure...
No, actually, nothing that's holding us.
There's nothing actually holding us back
because I'm still alive.
♪ I'm still alive ♪
Like they could have
(Lex laughs)
killed me at, you know, George Bush
don't care about Black people.
They could have killed me at
Beyonce had the best video.
But we're here now.
So we just keep on leaning
and leaning and leaning.
And there's these things where
I just think about, you know,
there'll be times when I'm at war,
and every now and then when
the bomb stopped going off
and all the headlines and the smearing,
and all that stuff going off,
I think about my family
and I'll think about Kim,
and I'll think about how, you know,
King Koopa has her in
the castle right now.
And just on Mario Brothers,
you know how it is,
go for the princess and
you get to this level,
and it's like (imitates
upbeat game music).
I'm like,
- [Lex] Yeah.
- I sung the song wrong, right?
And then they take the princess again.
- [Lex] Which one are you? Mario?
- Yeah.
- What's your favorite thing,
the thing you love the most about Kim
from a Mario perspective and the princess?
Looking back, was there a moment?
- She's definitely my
favorite of all time.
- Yeah.
Was there a moment, you know,
like that catches you
off guard and you say,
"I love this human being."
- Yeah.
I mean, it's just the DNA is like,
she's a mix of Rob and Kris.
- [Lex] Can you explain?
- I mean, that's like a
really high pool right there.
(Ye chuckles)
Those are like two geniuses.
(Ye laughs)
- So, okay.
So like the entire of history of evolution
of the human species created this DNA
that created this being,
there's a life there.
There's a set of memories in the history
that brought you together
and you're like, "Damn, I
like this DNA." (laughs)
- Yeah.
And certain people have
just like high DNA.
Ivanka Trump has high DNA.
You know, it's like-
- How's your DNA?
Pretty good?
- I think we've seen that.
It's been proven.
(Lex and Ye laughing)
I mean, but look at my
mom and look at my dad.
You know, me and my dad have
a water purification center
in the DR right now,
and my dad is the original Steve Jobs,
and he was blocked by people around him.
And people were using
him and taking advantage
and, you know, not
believing in his vision.
My dad's the educated version of Ye.
- What'd you learn about
life from your dad?
- And my dad got girls too.
- But those are small details.
- That's a big detail,
being that I found my
dad's, you know, Playboy
when I was five years old.
It greatly affected my motivation.
- Yeah.
Okay, so that's part of
the engine that drives Ye.
- Absolutely.
I remember when Pharrell
was first in all the videos,
and my girl was like,
"Girls like Pharrell."
And I was like, "I want
girls to like me too."
- Funny that that's
behind all the ambition,
all the drive.
- Was how we make people.
That's how people are made.
- It's the desire to be loved.
Is that at the individual
level just being noticed
and also at the societal level of scale?
- Well, now, I've gone past,
I'm like at that place where Nikolai Tesla
was, later into his career,
where it wasn't about being loved.
It wasn't about sitting
at the dinner parties
next to Anna Wintour and stuff.
It was about getting the idea across.
So I have these cells that are very,
and I just keep on saying, "Ridley Scott,"
but Ridley Scott has a special anointing.
It isn't just sci-fi what he's doing.
There's something in there,
just like George Lucas.
There's something different
that's there, so...
- What are you drawing?
- I'm drawing these new living cells
that we will exist in, and this is over...
Okay, let's do like...
I don't like talking about money
because like, man made money up anyways.
It's like four quadrillion
respected dollars,
and then you have other forms of currency.
Of course, social currency
is super important right now,
but this is a drawing,
and it's at a pretty good place.
Now, this be 40,000 square feet.
I wanna start just talking in meters.
I just think we should go to anything
to restore the "Tower of Basel."
Like they said when the...
I'ma just draw a person here for scale.
- [Lex] Yeah, that would help.
- Okay.
What do you think of that?
Look at my person.
See the scale in this room?
(paper rustles)
All right, so...
- [Lex] Wait, the dot is the person?
- Yeah, I'm saying,
it's 40,000 square feet,
but that would be like...
- What are the other parts of the cell?
- Okay, so it's a screen.
It doesn't go all the way to the top,
and it's one hole for light,
but the water and the light
and air all come in from the top.
So that's like the mouth.
And then this is the belly button.
We're God's iPhone, we're
His greatest creation.
- So this is all connected?
These are all connected?
- Yeah, so I'm drawing
how these other cells
go next to each other.
- What's the vision here?
- Happiness.
Then we talk about like,
"What's the motivation?"
Like, yeah, there's a motivation somewhere
in the back of my mind of my family.
And if it's like where
Moses smited the rock,
and God didn't allow him
to get to the promised land
because the promised land is family.
That is the problem.
That is Earth.
I mean, that is heaven on Earth is family.
Family is heaven, that's
the promised land,
and for your family to be together.
So say I smite the rock
and God doesn't let me
have my family back.
My mission in life is still
to promote families at all costs
and make families' existence easier.
So you take this thing,
you put a localized farm.
Say if it's in community
that we do localized growing,
and then we partner with big pharma,
and say, "Hey, you're
actually gonna make more money
by making better food."
'Cause at the end of the day,
you want money right now.
It's like everyone knows
that between the pesticides
and between the medical industry
and especially America, that
we're keeping people sick.
And we know that McDonald's
makes food that kills people.
And you know, Coca-Cola selling, you know,
sugar water and all this.
Like, just in case I haven't
pissed off enough people in power.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- Okay, so... (laughs)
- You're gonna off the sugar,
anybody that's powered on sugar.
- Well, sugar, health was
actually documented on sugar.
It wasn't about how bad meat was.
It was like a reverse documentary
on sugar, a reverse...
I don't know if you call
it a reverse, like a sub,
but if you watch it again,
when they show sugar
and it's just the sugar looks super clean.
- [Lex] Yeah, it just-
- So as I state these things,
I know I have protection.
I have God's protection,
that's why I'm here to this date, right?
So it's for me to have this platform
and express exactly what I feel
because it's kids out there, right?
It's kids that are gonna save the world
through engineering and through facts.
And I've gotta get download
as much of the information
and as much of the don't be afraid
to state your facts is the biggest thing
because the world is being
ran by fear, and that is...
No, actually, God runs the world,
but there's just like little
cloud, this patina of our ego
that deals with the money and the car
and the girl we're dating
and all this in the clothes you wear
and spending too much on clothes,
and a lot of stuff that I've
been involved with promoting.
So now what I'm promoting
is you have the idea,
you say it out loud.
Like if you had Tourette's,
say your truth out loud.
If you hate Ye, you hate
me, say that out loud.
Say whatever you feel out loud.
Like you say it nonviolently, you know?
Nonviolent, nonviolent, have to say that.
Like, you know, as a
shout out to Alex Jones,
you know, and Trump where they try to say
that when they say their truths out loud
that it's inciting violence.
So let's be like really clear.
I'm saying that they have
criminalized free thought.
You know, they...
I hate when people use they,
like, they gets to blame
for everything, right?
It's always they.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- Who the fuck is they exactly?
- The problem is they is us.
- Yeah.
Well, I love that.
What we need to do is turn I to we,
so we take the responsibility
and turn they to us.
So we take accountability to us,
I to we and they to us.
And that relates...
It's a language at the same time.
You're seeing the language
of our surroundings.
You're seeing the language of...
One of the things, okay,
let's go back to the cell explanation,
because I'm also doing a...
What's that thing
when Elon just put all the information
in the open and people could figure out
if they could figure it out?
And open source.
- [Lex] Yeah, open source.
- So I'm open sourcing
this idea right now,
so that, you know, engineers
and anointed beings can
collectively contribute to this
to push our species forward.
So where I've got to with my research
is that there will be a hole at the top
that allows natural light, natural air,
and there's a constant water system.
So it becomes like a water city
where it's a constant flow that's not...
It's regenerative.
It's not wasting the water.
And it's just a constant flow.
So I put the toilet really
close to where this,
I don't wanna call it a wave pool,
but in the pool, the water is not still.
- So that exists in water.
- [Ye] Yeah.
- Surrounded by water.
- Well, the living room is the...
You have two rooms.
You have the dry room,
which people would call
the living room before,
and then you have the wet room.
- How is that a source of happiness?
What is broken about our world
today that that gives you
in terms of the pursuit of happiness,
which is one of the things-
- [Ye] Well, all of our buildings-
- In the previous
Declaration of Independence?
- Yeah, all of our buildings
are based on just the
industry and the economy.
And then people lean into what
people are used to seeing,
like what we think is attractive.
'Cause then you go back to the, you know,
women who give life.
So everyone wants to be attractive
to the attractive.
And that's the reason why the media goes
and gets, you know, Bella
Hadid, Kim Kardashian,
Emily Ratajkowski,
those are the only ones I'm gonna...
- [Lex] There's more.
- There's more.
But I'm thinking of the ones
that I think are attractive.
- Yeah, it is subjective.
- Yeah, 'cause it's subjective.
So to my subjective, which
I think the only guys
that could argue with me
on my opinion on girls
would be Brad and Leo.
Because we're the only ones
with the track record, you know?
Everything else...
So for everybody else, it's subjective.
We've got history, (laughs) so...
- Are you happy?
- Absolutely.
I'm just here.
It's actually...
It's difficult to make me unhappy.
Now I can deal with frustrations.
But when those frustrations are it's like
when you've allowed
people to be in your life
that shouldn't be there,
and then they do the thing
you knew they were gonna do
and you're screaming at them,
but you really need to scream at yourself.
- Yeah.
So you realize anything that's
like anger or frustration,
that's something that's wrong with you
that needs to be dealt with.
- Yes.
Like right now.
Okay, say I got this
pattern cutter that I wanted
to remove because I felt like she was
copying our patterns into the computer,
and I didn't know why
she wanted to do that.
And I just wanted to do
the patterns by hand.
And then, you know...
- You mean like automating the patterns?
Is that what you mean?
- Yeah.
And my head of a...
Because that's the whole thing.
It's like, it's a war of
human beings and robots.
It's like-
- Yeah.
But that makes it more efficient, right?
You don't like the efficiency,
you like the creativity
of the singular nature of the pattern.
- I believe that the human beings,
and I'm saying this to you
as a person who makes robots
and a person who's friends with Elon.
- I'm deeply offended right now.
- [Ye] Yeah. (chuckles)
- But, you know, I'll let it go.
- [Ye] Okay.
- It's good.
- So yeah, I believe that the-
- Ye hates robots.
I'm not gonna put that out there.
It's a joke.
- Robots have feelings too.
- [Lex] Yeah, yeah, that's right.
- That was also a joke.
- Was it?
We need to clarify that for future robots.
(Ye laughs)
But the pattern cutter.
The pattern cutter, you don't like that?
That had to be that that's...
You can't have that part of your life.
- That's not what I'm...
My everything that I'm doing is
for the sake of the human race.
There's things in capitalism,
there's things in technology.
Well, technology
and original human species
can exist in a peaceful way,
as long as the people that
know how to make robots
aren't using their robots
to control the humans, Lex.
- Definitely is something you
have to be concerned about
as we become more technologically savvy.
That, my friend, is why
engineering isn't everything
that you have to desperately
study the lessons of history.
In Nazi Germany,
science was used to create atrocities.
Engineering, the same.
Engineering could be a tool of war.
- We are still in the Holocaust.
A Jewish friend of mine said,
"Oh, go visit the Holocaust Museum."
And my response was, "Let's
visit our Holocaust museum,
Planned Parenthood."
- With all due respect,
I grew up in the Soviet Union.
I'm Jewish.
Parts of my family
perished in the Holocaust
of Nazi Germany.
I have to push back that
there is a difference
of the atrocities at that scale,
at that time on an entire people.
- I was gonna say the number,
that's the difference.
- [Lex] It's not the number.
- Because six million will also...
African Americans are actually Jew also,
the lost tribe of Israel.
- I can push back on that too.
- Okay, so, well,
(Lex laughs)
everyone came from Africa.
- I'm African, I'm
basically African American.
We're brothers.
- And we're both Jew
and we're brothers, so-
(Lex laughs)
- We're human.
- Six million people
died in the Holocaust.
Over 20 million have died
by the hands of abortion.
And the media promotes
the my body, my choice,
which is actually still a
promotion for Planned Parenthood.
50% of Black deaths a
year is actually abortion.
It's not the cop with the knee.
It's not Black on Black violence
and gang violence, it's not heart attacks.
It's actually abortion.
The most dangerous place
for a Black person in America
is in their mother's stomach.
- 900 to a million abortions
in the United States a year.
I hear you.
But there's something about the rape,
the torture, the murder
of children, women, men,
the complete humiliation,
and just the suffering that was endured
during World War II.
- That's what we deal
with on our TVs right now
with Black people.
Soros would use Black trauma economy
to win an election.
What I love is having
a healthy conversation,
and as opposed to there's
certain things, you know, boom,
this drops, people gonna
have pussy hats on.
Boom, this drops, it's gonna
be, you know, Black people
and white people with signs.
Boom, this drops.
So, hey, China.
Hey, left agenda.
Hey, what we're gonna do is say
that our species can have
a healthy conversation.
- Can I just linger on this?
Because when you say Jewish media,
there's a echo of a pain
that people feel that reminds an entire-
- You're saying it's redundant, right?
- Huh? No, I'm not saying it's redundant.
I'm saying-
- I'm saying it's redundant.
- [Lex] You're saying it's redundant.
- It's a redundant statement.
- I'm saying that it's
something that Joseph Goebbels,
the propaganda minister
of Nazi Germany, said.
I'm saying it's been said so many times
in order to murder and
torture Jewish people that-
- [Ye] I would-
- It just rings wrong.
- [Ye] And that's the thing.
- Just like the N word
when spoken by people
that have the same skin color as me.
It reminds people of a very dark time.
- I know.
If Jewish people would
accept that I'm Jew,
then they would see what I'm
saying in a different way.
They would hear it in a different way.
- But see, the people, you
saying you're Jewish, that-
- No, I'm Jew, not Jewish.
Jewish means like that of a Jew.
I'm saying I'm Jew.
- [Lex] You're Jew.
- Blood of Christ,
Orthodox Christian.
- That comes from...
Right.
But are you a follower
of the philosophy of the
Black Hebrew Israelites?
'Cause that's where the idea comes from.
Not all of those folks are extremists,
but some are extremists.
- I'm a follower of the idea.
I have a vague idea that
all people came from Africa.
But what I wanted to do...
- [Lex] Yeah.
- Now, okay, now I could Andy Kaufman this
about seven more minutes.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- And then tell you what it is,
what the count is.
- Should I count?
Let's count, seven minutes.
- No, I'll-
- [Lex] Do less.
- I did this to do a spoiler alert.
- [Lex] Sure, spoiler.
- What's the first thing
I said at the beginning?
- We're talking about
engineering and humans.
We're all human.
- And I said, and then what did I
say we shouldn't focus on?
- [Lex] Race.
- Not just that.
I said they shouldn't
teach this in school.
- History.
- The history.
Because what they do,
what schools are doing is
exactly what the CIA does
with Pixar films and Disney films.
They make Bambi's mom die
in the beginning, right?
And off that pain comes
a purchase of ice cream.
Off that pain comes,
I need some more toys.
Off that pain comes,
I need a bigger house.
Off that pain comes,
I need more girls than my wife.
Off that pain comes...
So they put that pain in to make us...
Now we're the orphans of capitalism.
To make us be consumers.
And we need to be a
community, not just consumers.
So I could have went
another seven minutes.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- By being a person who presents
himself in a way that says,
"Well, I don't have to feel your pain
because I also have pain too
that's not being recognized."
And in every interview when I say,
"Well, why did I get
to the point of putting up the tweet?"
No one wants to understand why
I got to that point, right?
- You had pain.
You had pain.
- Yeah, but no one-
- You had pain in your heart.
- But let's say this,
undoubtedly, Jewish people
have a lot of movies about that pain,
and Black people have a lot of movies
about the pain of slavery, right?
It's almost impossible to
find a movie about Mansa Musa.
When you go to the African history museum
in Washington, DC, it
doesn't start with the idea
of Africans being kings.
It starts with the idea
of Africans being slaves.
But here's another
interesting point about this.
This was said to me one time,
and it stuck with me as
a family member of mine.
With Africans, how many
times have you heard
like a rapper, you know,
talk about, "We were kings."
That's incorrect, if we're Jew.
If we're Jew and since we
are, we weren't the kings,
we were the slaves that Moses freed.
Africans have always said...
You've listened to rap music
and hear Black people say, "We kings.
We blood of the pharaohs."
And if we are Jew, then we weren't.
We were the people that Moses freed.
And when we talk about,
have you heard Black people
talk about 400 years of slavery?
All right, that is,
and we're having this
history lesson, right?
- I thought history doesn't matter.
You're exploring ancient history
and drawing deep wisdom from it.
And at the same time saying,
"We need to forget all of it."
We need to put that behind us.
- Absolutely.
We need to forget it and
we need to move forward.
- There's so much wisdom
to draw from history,
even the 20th century.
Look at this, communism.
Without the lessons of
history of the 20th century,
communism sounds like a great idea,
except that some of the worst atrocities
conducted by Stalin and Mao
that killed 5,000+ million people,
not just killed, tortured, starvation,
where people, the cannibalism,
they ate each other,
they ate their children.
There's just dark...
People should read some books on this,
on the Holodomor in the 1930s.
- But I disagree.
- With that lesson, we would...
And now it's becoming more
popular, Marxism and communism.
- I'm not disagreeing that that happened.
I'm disagreeing that we need
to harp on the things that happened.
Because the truth is, I'm given a fact,
50% today of, let's say,
you don't call Black people Jew, right?
Black people's deaths today is abortion.
Today, right now.
Like it's not racism.
That's too wide of a term.
It's genocide and population control
that Black people are in today in America
that is promoted by the music
and the media that Black people make
that Jewish record labels get paid off of,
or media companies, record
label's a media company also.
So let's give it a wider, you know?
- I agree with Martin Luther King.
I have a dream too.
- [Ye] Martin Luther King was-
- That one day,
you would not be judged
by the color of your skin
or your race, Black or Jew,
but by the content of your character.
All the assholes that fucked
you over in the music industry,
fucked artists over in the
music industry are individuals.
They're not Jews.
Can you-
- They are Jewish.
- They're human with opportunities,
and they took those opportunities.
I don't care if they're Jewish, Jew.
- Do you feel like I should release
that pain and separate it?
- Yes.
- Okay.
Okay, so if you're saying I should release
that pain and separate
it, then I'm telling you,
you should release your
pain and separate it.
And we could get to this, the list
of how you are a being with
engineering opportunities.
- That's a hundred percent.
I see what you're doing.
That's exactly what you're doing.
The pain, I'm gonna let it
go, engineering challenges.
I get it.
One of the problems you highlight
is people get fucked over
in the music industry and
get fucked over in the media.
Get fucked over all over the place.
- They created, there was a Jewish trainer
that brought me to the hospital
and put in press that
I went to the hospital.
I know friends that off of exhaustion,
a Jewish doctor.
They diagnosed-
- Why do you keep
saying Jewish?
- Because they were, right?
Diagnosed me with bipolar disorder
and shot me with medication
and put me on medication,
then put it in the press.
And every time, even if I
wore the wrong color hat
that a nigger is not
supposed to wear, right?
Then they immediately
say he's off of his shit,
he's off his meds, he's off his rocker,
and it's literally used
as a scarlet letter control
mechanism for the...
People understand.
The kids, the colleges, the high schools,
what do you think they put me right now?
They put me as the
prophet, not the leader.
It doesn't have to be the leader, right?
'Cause we need a more intelligent person
to be the leader.
But at least, right?
They put me as the prophet.
They put me as the only
person that would say this.
And I'm just saying, that
was four Jewish members
that controlled my voice
because for the fact that 90%
of Black people in entertainment
from sports to music
to acting are, in some way,
tied into Jewish business people.
Meaning that in some way,
just like if Rom is sitting next to Obama
or Jared sitting next to Trump,
there's a Jewish person right
there controlling the country,
the Jewish people controlling
who gets the best video or not,
controlling what the media says about me.
- That's a person, not Jewish.
Let me just say one thing.
- But they are though,
that's the only thing.
It just so happens that they are.
It just happens that they are.
- [Lex] You saying it-
- That doesn't mean that I hate them.
- [Lex] Yes, yes.
- That just means that they are.
- But it's a dog whistle too.
Let me just say.
As I would love to add more love
to the world, I would love
you to do that as a person
with a big voice, with
a big powerful voice
that a lot of people look up to.
And when you say Jewish media,
it's funny how this world works that way.
When you say Jewish media
or Jews are controlling
the voice of Black artists,
Black people, Black
artists, when you say that-
- [Ye] Am I not allowed
to say it out loud?
- You can say it.
There's a large number of people
that are hurting and have anger
and even have hate in their heart.
When they hear Jewish media,
that hate starts being directed
towards the Jewish people.
Do you acknowledge that?
Do you understand?
Can you feel the hate in the world
that comes to the surface
when you say stuff like that?
- Okay.
I feel that when we go into therapy,
my dad was a therapist,
and obviously, I've got
some therapy skills myself.
A lot of people, my music is healing.
These type of spa-like
existences are healing.
The color palettes I use are healing,
and we can use healing words, right?
What I really feel,
I feel that there's no accountability
and no responsibility on
Jewish people in media
to at least start with owning up
with the facts of what's dealt with.
And tell me if I say the facts out loud
to the point of Ari Emanuel
writing a letter in the Financial Times,
trying to take food outta
my children's mouth,
telling people that they're
not allowed to work with me.
Even Chris Cuomo
or Piers Morgan getting me to apologize
and separate Jewish business people
from the families of the
Jewish business people,
which I did.
Update, I did that.
That already happened.
And the way I-
- That was a shitty apology.
That wasn't really an apology,
but shout out for that conversation.
Great conversation.
- I didn't get on my knees
and kissed the dick of Howard Stern, and-
- You don't need to kiss
anyone's dick, I don't think.
- But that's what you
guys are acting like.
- You guys, look at that.
- Because you're talking about it
as a shitty opinion, apology.
But where's our fucking apology?
Watch this.
- [Lex] Sorry.
- We don't get...
Thank you.
Now let's move on.
- Sorry.
(Lex and Ye laughing)
Oh, do I need to get on my knees or no?
- And kiss my dick!
- Oh shit.
(Ye laughs)
Just escalated quickly.
- So that's sexcalated quickly.
- [Lex] So what-
- No, I'm saying,
where's our apology?
Right?
We can't get to apology
because you're telling
me there's no right way
for me to word it.
So tell me, for me,
a person who's been fucked on my deals
and a person that has friends
that never figured out how
to make shoes with a German company
that couldn't tell me to wear a BLM shirt
and take off my red hat.
Like what would've happened
if I was at Nike? Right?
Tell me exactly how
to engineer the situation I'm at.
- I'll tell you exactly
how, you got a big voice.
Have the balls as a man to
call out the individuals.
Don't call 'em Jews,
call 'em by their name,
and start a war against those individuals.
They're not Jewish.
- But if that's the case,
will you help me with that?
- Sure, 100%.
- [Ye] Okay.
- Assholes are...
Well, let me like flip that too.
I don't understand the industry well.
I see that people are
fucking people over for sure.
But how do you solve that?
If you, right now, run the world's...
You're doing a million things,
but say you ran also a record label.
- I have ran a record label.
Well, I've been ran by a record
label where I was the face
of a record label and had Big Sean
and different people complaining to me.
And I knew fuck about
running a record label.
I was simply just a talented producer
and an influencer
- [Lex] Yes.
- that then started good music,
but I wasn't the one running good music.
- How would you do it differently?
- This is something I propose.
I would look at the top
10 execs in three fields
in sports, film, and music.
And I would look at the top 10 talent.
I would look at the top talent
in each of those fields,
the top 10 of them.
And some of 'em are gonna be Tom Brady.
Some of 'em are gonna be Taylor Swift.
Some of 'em, they're not
all gonna be Black, right?
Some of 'em.
So some of 'em would be Adele, right?
And we'll look at all their
contracts transparently,
and we'll compare the notes
and re-engineer like
it's a new constitution.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- Because when I told my dad when I was 19
that I was gonna get
into the music industry,
he begged me not to.
He said, "I heard it's treacherous."
Now I'm in a position
where I've been through it,
I saw it, I went out, made
some money somewhere else.
I saw my name get smeared.
I saw my family get destroyed.
I saw my reputation get destroyed.
And now I'm back here
to have this kinda...
I'm back here as a being with
engineering opportunities.
- [Lex] So...
- If you say it's a shitty apology,
what is the version of the apology
short of kissing Howard Stern's dick?
- I don't think anyone wants
to kiss Howard Stern's dick.
- That's the whole point.
Howard Stern, nobody
wants to kiss your dick,
so shut the fuck up.
I said, and by the way, I'ma
antagonize you, Howard Stern.
I used to be a fan of you.
- Yeah, me too.
- Yeah.
- Still a fan sometimes.
- Now you're just doing
clickbait like everybody else.
Now you're just a sad old man, Howard.
- All right.
- Now, Howard Stern,
this is the first time anyone's
said your name in years,
your own family doesn't say your name,
unless they're calling to get
their bills paid. (laughs)
- You're going hard. (laughs)
I'm just kidding.
See, that's beautiful right there.
That's much better than
calling Jewish media.
Go after individuals.
- [Ye] Okay, so-
- Go after individuals.
If you wanna talk about shit me,
talk shit about me.
This is great.
- And you know what that is?
- [Lex] Yeah, what's that?
- Engineering.
That's the engineer's approach.
- Yeah, engineers.
Yeah, yeah.
You should learn some of that.
- We all can use our
pain against each other,
- [Lex] Yeah.
- or we can say we're a being
with engineering opportunities,
and we can know about history.
So let me change something.
We can have a...
Just to be judgemental,
people say, "Thou shall not judge."
I've was talking to Camille Vasquez,
she says, "I'm very judgemental."
That's what we're doing.
I believe, now you could go to Bible,
and one thing's gonna say one thing,
another thing may be
contradicted in a way.
And then the pastor has to unpack it.
I believe that we are to judge,
if you look at some food
and it's got a fly coming out of it,
you can then judge at that point.
You're supposed to use
your better judgment.
But whenever someone doesn't wanna
change something they're doing,
they'll say, "Don't judge me," right?
But as a species, you call for me,
you got the breakthrough.
And by the way, it's only an
engineer that I would respect.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- To tell me of how to
update how I'm communicating.
Because this started off, right?
I've been through all these interviews.
Let me go to this.
You said this was a sorry apology.
I was very specific.
I said the Jewish...
Because by the way, it's a barrage, right?
It's a thing where I don't
even remember the names
at a certain point, right?
It's like if a girl was
getting raped by men,
if that person's not 18, right?
And she was getting raped since 14, right?
And she still got this face,
this super like Irina
Shayk level face, right?
She might say, "I hate men."
That woman may say, "I hate men."
She might get to that point
because she was raped.
On my contracts,
and no one can say this is ramped up.
Howard Stern can't say this is ramped up.
Ari Emanuel can't say this is ramped up.
George Soros knows well
that I'm not ramped up.
George Soros knows like,
"Wow, this guy's like a younger guy
that's looking at what I did
and looking at how I
control the world silently.
And he's calling it out,
and he's not using any
of the fear tactics.
I can't send his homeboys around him.
I can't send his wife to him.
This guy..."
That's what George Soros sees, right?
When he's dealing with me, right?
So what you guys are
actually asking me to do,
I'm comparing myself to that
18-year-old beautiful woman
that had been mistreated by men
for four years of her life, right?
And you're saying, you know, as a man,
you can't blame all men.
And I'm saying, as a responsible
forward philosopher leader,
okay, I'll drop the pain
and I will specify because I'm a peer.
I lost my fucking family, I lost my kids.
I lost my best friend in fashion.
I lost the Black community.
You know, people said I lost my mind.
All of these things.
Lost my reputation.
And I'm up here just like,
I just want my family,
but I don't want my family to have
to say what the left wants us to say,
to have to say what China wants us to say.
I wanna be an American and protect my kids
and protect my wife and
raise my kids as Christians,
and have my wife be a
Christian and innovate,
and America made rock and roll,
I wanna innovate as a creative person
and be a successful American.
But all of that had
been taken away from me.
So I'm coming back,
and I'm removing the
PSTD right now, right?
I'm standing up and saying,
"The only way that we're gonna be able
to get past this, and the way God is gonna
use me right now is for me to
stop talking about the pain.
Stop talking about what happened
and do something about it."
And that's where I'm at
right now in this moment.
Like, yeah, people agree.
At least there was something
where you could say,
"He has a reason of why
he got to that tweet."
And what you're doing
for me today is saying,
"Yo, that was a sorry
apology, and let's specify."
I'm not asking for anyone out here
to empathize or sympathize for, you know,
a dude worth $11 billion
that can make money,
I mean, appear outta thin air
in five different industries, you know?
I'm not asking for anybody
to sympathize with someone who's married
to Kim Kardashian, dated Irina Shayk,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
I feel like I'm just not
gonna get the sympathy vote
in this situation, (laughs) right?
- (laughs) I feel your pain.
I feel your pain.
- Yeah, I feel like no
one's gonna feel my pain.
Only Brad and Leo could
feel my pain, right?
- [Lex] But still...
- But here today, when you
said it's a sorry apology,
what's the apology that you're looking for
as a Jewish engineer?
Oh, not...
As Lex, let's not talk about
you being Jewish, as Lex.
What's the apology that
you want me to say to,
am I allowed to say Jewish?
Tell me, is it anti-Semitic
for Ye to say, "Jewish," out loud?
- No, I don't like the allowed,
that presumed censorship.
I think you choose-
- [Ye] You censor.
- You have a powerful voice.
- Did I prove that there was censorship
over the past two weeks?
I proved it.
- Who censored you?
Oh, "Drink Champs."
- Who? Oh my Lord. (laughs)
- Oh, like Twitter, and so on?
- Twitter-
- That has less to do-
- "Drink Champs."
- That hurt you, the "Drink Champs,"
that N.O.R.E took you down,
took down your conversation.
- No.
- It didn't hurt you?
Man, you gotta be honest about the-
♪ And I'm free but still
the kids we used to be ♪
♪ I put my hand on the stove ♪
♪ To see if I still bleed ♪
♪ And nothing hurts anymore ♪
♪ I feel kinda free ♪
- No.
Do you think...
You know, I went to Japan for
two to three months, right?
The day I had Sunday service,
my kids are supposed to be there,
and my kids were nowhere to be found.
And I text Kim and said,
"Where are my kids?"
We get into an argument,
and then I get a text from
a number I don't know,
and it's Pete Davidson bragging
about being in bed with my wife, then...
- [Lex] Just fucking with you?
- Well, at that point,
it's like they're trying
to put me in jail or put
a friend of mine in jail
because then I'm gonna
go surround the hotel
and you know, do something
which would have me
not be able to be here.
And instead, I walked
away from that situation.
I went to Japan like
the samurai that I am,
and went to the top of the mountain.
And 'cause, I mean,
I knew there was no way
she could love this dude.
Not just because he's ugly,
he's not Black, she likes Black guys.
Every guy that she, you know, is with
looks exactly the same.
Ray J, Reggie Bush, at
that time, Kanye West,
she has a type.
Just like how I have a type,
like a lot of my girls
look kinda similar to her
because in a video game character,
people have their type, right?
- [Lex] Yeah.
- So I knew that this
was like-
- The princess has a
type and she likes Mario.
- Right, there you go.
- As somebody cares for you
and hopefully can be a friend, Ye,
I gotta say these words
and the words about Jews is
not the words of a samurai,
of a great man.
I would say, you know, you said something
that inspired, that resonated
with a lot of people
when you said George Bush doesn't care
about Black people.
I have to say, as somebody
who cares for you,
that Ye, the artist formerly
known as Kanye West,
doesn't care about Jewish people
in the same way you spoke
about George Bush being a politician
and not giving a fuck
about the poor people
that suffered after Katrina.
You're not giving a
fuck about the suffering
of the Jewish people across the world.
- Why? Why am I not?
- Because you're feeding,
you're giving strength,
motivation to hate groups.
- But we already updated.
I gave an apology.
You said it wasn't good enough.
- Yeah, that's right. It's not.
- And now you're telling me...
No, I'm not gonna-
- No, no, no, you don't
need to kiss anyone's dick.
- [Ye] You asking me to kiss a dick.
- Just to say it was wrong to say.
There's no Jewish media,
there's no Jewish-
- There isn't?
- There's no control of
the media by Jewish people.
- You're an engineer, brother.
If you're an engineer
and you're not holding
to the truth, that's not engineering.
- Engineering, that's not...
That's hate, that's not engineering.
Engineering is-
- [Ye] No, it's called-
- I'm gonna build a better record label.
- [Ye] It's called stereotypes.
- And I'm going to respect our-
- Stereotypes exist for a reason.
- Engineers don't do stereotypes.
- I do.
- Stereotypes are dumb.
They allow you to channel
hate towards the other.
- You know what the biggest thing is?
- [Lex] Yeah.
- With something a veteran
that was sitting next to me
at Cheesecake Factory last night, he said,
"You know, the general justice, he serves
for whoever is the president," right?
And he said, "What's happening in politics
is we're forgetting
we're on the same side.
We're forgetting we're on the..."
This is someone is practically...
Now he's a nurse.
So he's still, you know,
fighting for humanity in a way.
He went from holding,
you know, guns in battle
to being a nurse,
and when people are
battling for their lives.
And he said, "We're forgetting
we're on the same side."
This is a person that no
matter who becomes president,
he can still be told to go to war.
And the chaos that's created by the media
has split the country in half.
And what us as beings
with an engineering opportunity
need to do right now
is find the blue water.
Where are places that we agree on?
And I want you to finish everything.
Hey, I'ma let you finish.
Everything that-
- I've heard that before.
- That you want to express
to me, get off all...
I'm your scarecrow today.
I'm your punching bag
today for everything I did,
and I want you to stand up
for all of the hate that...
I'm your Al Gore when
he lost the election.
Remember, he almost became
a punching bag for the lady
that had voted on him.
And she just said all this stuff,
and he's like, "I know,
I agree with you," right?
But there's nothing, you know,
that he could do about it.
With this, it's like
things that you're saying,
I agree with you.
You know, it's like if you sit some kids
in the principal's office and
I punched somebody, right?
I took my hand, right?
As what it really means.
Even Ari Emanuel had to say.
This is a pop icon, right?
And I went and just punched
an entire people at one time
or said that I was about to.
I went like this, right?
And I got blacked out, black mirrored.
Done, right?
And it's like, "What
were you even gonna do?
And why did you go like this?"
I went like this because
I can't even do...
I would look insane to
physically show you a metaphor,
a physical representation
of my last 20 years
of what I've been through
as a musician, as a father,
and as a Black person
with a political opinion.
- A great man still.
Through the pain does the right thing.
And I think the right thing is to not say
that there's Jewish
control of the media, and-
- That's incorrect though.
That's a fucking lie.
There is.
And they did come and bully me.
It proved the point.
- No, the reason you don't say it
- [Ye] Why?
- is because the world
is much bigger than the forgive me,
the narrow little world you exist in.
Your impact
stretches way past those
little boardroom meetings
over contracts.
You understand?
- So what should I have done?
What should I have done?
- Not say that you should be a strong man
that doesn't mention religion
or people, and then fight.
Do you wanna win this fight? Because-
- How do I win?
How do we win?
- Call out individual people.
That's one way because
you have a big voice.
The other voice that I prefer
is to build another label
or support another label.
- I feel like you're
controlling my creative
narrative and my...
Because just like how you're
telling me I shouldn't have said that.
Do you think there are people
telling me I shouldn't
have wore a red hat?
- No, 'cause you asked me,
"What should I have done?"
You're supposed to be a scarecrow.
So I thought I'm gonna beat the shit out
of the scarecrow with my words, right?
You let me.
- Yeah, yeah.
- It was consensual.
- The punching bag is a bag
'cause scarecrow actually
has a different real view.
- Yeah, that's right, I'm not a good-
- [Ye] So let's say a punching bag.
- Yeah.
- [Ye] I shouldn't say a scarecrow.
- Yeah, yeah.
- But every single
person that I've sat with
from the point when I wore the red hat
to now has done the same thing.
Sit in the principal's office
and don't do what you're doing.
- We're in the generalist
closet right now, together.
- [Ye] Yeah.
- And the red hat is very different.
The red hat is you have a set of beliefs.
You represent half the
country that has a hope,
a vision for the future of America.
That's very different than
without any purpose whatsoever
saying Jewish media.
Jewish control of the media.
- You said that there's no purpose.
So you're taking away my history
and my reason of what my purpose was.
- I'm saying you look dumb. (laughs)
- [Ye] Also, it can-
- I'm speaking my voice, vocalizing it.
- Also, it's God's plan.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- There's a lot of things that open up.
Let me tell you something that open up.
There's a guy, like I told you,
that was running Stem Player
who I've had issues with.
We hadn't got paid on time.
Certain things, right?
And he took his IQ, his knowhow,
his engineering knowhow to...
He basically was trying to Adidas me with,
even though I was the bigger
money in the situation.
That was fun.
And we funded together.
And he hired these engineers and he said,
"Well, because of your comments,
we're not gonna be able
to hire anybody else."
And I was like, "Well,
how many Jewish people
do we have in our company?"
He said, "I don't know."
He didn't say exactly, right?
I said, "Do we have Black people?"
He said, "Yes."
I said, "How many?"
He said, "Two."
So we have like 60 full-time employees,
like 40 halftime and part-time.
And I took it as a responsibility.
Let's take a step back
from us being one species
and say, "Hey, you're
Jewish, I'm Black," right?
- [Lex] Why step back?
- For this example, for
the sake of this example.
- [Lex] Cool.
- And I said,
"Wow, I'm sure I can hire more
than two Black engineers."
And what happens is,
because there are so many
businessmen that just so happen
to be Jewish that it's
good business, right?
Just to monopolize, that's
where people are looking.
Everybody wants to be Elon, right?
So the-
- [Lex] I disagree with that.
- Okay, but let me finish this point.
- [Lex] Sure.
I'ma let you finish, I'ma let you finish.
- A lot of businessmen
want to be as successful
as Elon and as popular as Elon.
A lot.
Just word it like that,
which I hate the term a lot actually.
I wanna be more specific,
but I haven't done the math on it.
Let's say some.
Factually, for sure,
there are some business
people of all different walks
and backgrounds that would like to be
as rich and as popular as Elon Musk.
So let me just take a step back
from the we are one species
into the we're separated by race,
gender, socioeconomic class conversation.
And say, as a Black owner
of two tech platforms,
hardware and software,
I need to take action.
Let's not call it affirmative.
Let's just say I need to take action
and I need to take accountability
in ensuring that Black
engineers are hired.
And guess what? Hired together.
Because when the Black people
that are brilliant are
separated from our culture,
we forget who we are.
And we'll get to a point where, you know,
OJ has said, "I'm not Black, I'm OJ."
Because just to be on the golf course,
we put on the golf shirt,
but the golf shirt might not be something
that our culture would've done.
And now our culture in
poorer communities is,
oh, everybody's got Draco on 'em.
Everybody's got a gun on 'em.
Oh, if you run up on me on a gas station,
I'ma kill you.
Hey, you ain't gotta talk to me
like a man if I haven't
killed at least five people.
But you know what happens
is we can kill five people,
we could kill 10 people
and still be in the media
as long as we play by the rules, right?
'Cause what will happen
is any of these guys
that have talked about killing
people and different things,
unless Trump had pardoned them, right?
But let's say even if
Trump had pardoned 'em,
they could still go to
someone like a Lil Boosie,
or a Meek Mills or Puff Daddy, anybody,
and say, "Hey, we need you to
talk shit about Ye right now."
And also, you're not allowed.
If you do wanna vote for Trump
or vote outside of what
this arrangement is,
then we're gonna put you in jail.
Now we're not gonna bring you down,
we have this on you.
You get what I'm saying?
If I had ever killed someone,
if I wasn't the bitch
with the pink polo on,
I wouldn't be able
to be the vocal man that I am today.
You understand what I'm saying?
This is the reason why I'm happy
that my gangster disciple brothers kept me
from the initiations,
which made me feel like a
pussy my whole life, right?
But now I am someone who
legally can say this.
Other people in my position,
they legally cannot speak.
They legally cannot speak,
or they will go to prison.
I am in a bit of a glass prison
because I don't have say so
of where my children go to school.
But I'm in a freedom place
where I can have this
conversation with you right now.
And that is, I don't like
the word breakthrough,
you know, that's God's
hand on this situation.
But you get what I'm saying about
if I hadn't said the tweet,
I wouldn't have had to take
the accountability myself
to hire Black engineers
into my two tech platforms?
- Yeah.
And do you get what I'm saying?
That's a beautiful
personal journey you're on.
But do you get what I'm saying that that-
- It's not personal.
It's for my people as a whole,
as a tribal person.
- It's a small company.
It's a small company.
- As a tribal person, I
believe that I am my people.
- Yeah.
- And the thing that businessmen
have done to my people
have pulled the brightest out
of our tribes and siloed them,
and made us lose our culture
and lose who they were.
The only thing I wanted to
say at Virgil's funeral,
which I wasn't allowed to, right?
It was a white pastor
that talked the majority
of the funeral, half the funeral
was pissed, pissed, right?
And this pastor actually
married me and Kim, right?
He looks like Justin
Timberlake a little bit.
And he talked half the funeral.
He knew Virgil's passing,
did a collaboration with him
before he passed, by the way.
Right? A clothing collaboration.
I didn't know Virgil was passing.
But the thing I wanted
to say, I saw ASAP Rocky
and I saw some other members
of his gang, you know,
in the audience at the funeral.
And all I wanted to tell him is,
"Don't let them split the gang up.
Don't let them split the gang up."
When I did the first Yeezy,
'cause I did Kanye West
2 fashion shows before
as a high-end luxury, all
leather kinda designer.
Not all leather, but you
know, high-end materials,
mink, this kinda thing.
And then I came back
with Yeezy with Adidas.
And this fashion show was so popular
that Justin Bieber had to
sit in the second row, right?
This thing had every
name you could think of.
It had Kim Kardashian, Kris
Jenner, Kendall Jenner.
It was Kylie's first
fashion show she'd been in.
And in the second fashion show,
I put Kylie and Bella
Hadid next to each other
in the fashion show.
You had Puff Daddy at that time.
Puff Daddy had beef with Drake.
Drake still came to the show.
And Jay-Z had to break
up the fight backstage.
The designers, you had Jerry Lorenzo,
that's head of Fear of God.
You had Kim Schraub, head of Skims,
you had Virgil Abloh,
head of Louis Vuitton,
you had Demna, head of Balenciaga,
all working for Ye, for the leader,
for the philosopher, right?
For the person that put...
Who put this together? Me, that's who.
Right?
You had these people working
for the king of New York,
basically, the boss.
Ye, right?
You had Jay-Z in the audience,
Rihanna in the audience,
Beyonce in the audience,
sitting next to Anna
Wintour in this audience.
And guess who heard wind of this?
One of the richest men in the world,
Bernard Arnault, caught wind of this.
What's going on?
They're building up something
and we need to stop it.
So then he met with me
and politely offered me
backing for my clothing line.
It would be Kanye West.
They would get 49% or 51%.
I would get 49%.
They'd have control.
And they were gonna give me all
of the support from Louis Vuitton.
So I had to go to Adidas,
and I told Adidas, "Hey,
let's indemnify the apparel."
So Adidas, you're not gonna
do the apparel anymore.
Hey, we had a good time,
but we're gonna run off
with Gisele now, right?
So that's like you told your girl that,
and she's like, "Oh, I
know we're supposed to...
We had the proudest moment
of our career and stuff."
(Lex chuckles)
So then he offers me the deal,
and Alexandre Arnault
who's went to gone on
and rape and pillage
from all of the talent
that I had afterwards, said...
I said, "Before I tell Adidas
to indemnify the apparel,
can I get a written contract
from your dad, Bernard Arnault?"
And he says, "My dad will
never go back on his word."
So you already know what
this thing is going, right?
- [Lex] Yeah.
- You can spoiler alert, right?
He went back on his word.
So three months into the deal,
I get Anna Wintour, I say, "Who
should I use for my lawyer?"
She picks my lawyer for me, right?
I just found out even a couple of days
that the lawyer demanded a
airplane during negotiations,
had nothing to do with me, right?
They said that Bernard
Arnault got freaked out.
And then Alexandre Arnault calls me
and says, "The deal got
dropped at the board."
I went back and told my
high maintenance wife,
I was supposed to become this
designer at Louis Vuitton,
or the Louis Vuitton group
was gonna back the Kanye West line,
'cause that's how good
I've done in fashion, babe.
And now the deal has dropped.
Now the deal has dropped.
So then I did a second collection,
and we didn't have any support
to be able to build the collection.
Then I went and found, and
third collection, we did it.
We took over MSG.
Fourth collection went,
and the show started an hour late.
Then a week later, Kim got robbed.
Then I told Scooter Braun,
my manager at that time,
I say, "I'm looking...
You know, I need to go to Japan.
I'm tired, I'm tired."
He says, "No, you need
to make more money."
I do four more shows on
a second leg of the tour,
and I suffer from exhaustion
and go to the hospital,
and then get diagnosed with a disorder.
This is the first time I ever
suffered from exhaustion.
By the way, I haven't been
to the hospital since.
I haven't been to the hospital since,
and haven't taken, you know,
medication in two years.
And I'm sure there'll be people
in the media, we won't say.
Where phone will say, "Well,
that's obvious," right?
So right now, I'm talking to you, right?
I'm not on medication.
I just go to sleep.
Right? I have sleep.
- Have you been able to sleep?
- That's too low hanging fruit for you.
I expect more.
- Yeah, that's right.
I agree, I agree, I agree.
- [Ye] I expect more.
- That was dumb, I regret it.
- Okay, okay.
That's like Piers Morgan
trying to grab ratings,
like you got a whole life ahead of you.
You got a whole life ahead of you.
- Oh shit.
- These guys are at the end of their life.
- Oh, good.
- [Ye] So this story is-
- Throw me outta my shit.
I love it.
- But then amidst that,
(Lex laughs)
the same guy
- [Lex] Yeah.
- that dropped my deal,
Bernard Arnault, goes
and hires my best friend,
goes and hires my main engineer, right?
It would've been like
them hiring, you know,
Elon from Peter before
they figured out Paul,
before they figured out PayPal.
But Paul sounds like...
Powell sounds like Paul.
I just said, 'cause I'm a Christian.
I thought it was cool.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- But it would've been like,
what if someone could have went in
and took Elon away from
Peter before they pay Paul,
before they...
'Cause they PayPal.
- Pay Paul.
Yeah, before they pay Paul.
- Before they PayPal.
It's just too close.
- [Lex] Yeah, too close.
- It just sounds so fresh
to the fact that it's so close, right?
And that's what happened, right?
They broke the gang up.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- And I'm telling you right now,
that hadn't happened, Virgil's alive,
I'm still married, you
know what I'm saying?
The power structure
was broken then, right?
Because we were building some...
Kylie wasn't a billionaire at the...
You know what I mean?
- [Lex] Yeah.
- We were
building something together
that a French colonizer came in
and caught it early and
tried to destroy it.
But the only thing is God
is alive and I'm anointed.
And even with those
drawbacks, losing my wife,
losing my friend, exhaustion,
all of these late night tweets
that pissed off an entire group.
You know, like the
frustration still there.
I work for God, and God runs the world.
And we'll see what happens.
- But in those words,
don't you feel that, being split up,
don't you feel you're doing the thing
that you stand against,
which is playing victim?
Aren't you playing victim
to the forces in the world?
- I didn't play victim.
I didn't even get a chance to play.
I just said I was about to.
I said like this, like...
- No, you played pretty damn well.
What do you mean?
What do you mean about to?
You're like one of the greatest designers
in history of fashion designers.
You were playing.
You are playing.
What does that even mean?
- I thought you were referring
to the tweet, saying I'm
playing the victim there.
- No, all of it.
Well, there's a full set of things
that you're under attack for,
the tweet and everything beyond that.
But like, you're blaming, not blaming,
but you're saying that the Jewish media,
the Jewish record labels,
the Jewish people.
Jewish or not, it doesn't matter.
It's playing victim, right?
- Ultimately, I am fighting a
battle in the spiritual form.
And anyone that believes in God
and is looking at this
interview would agree with that.
And I just so happen
to be a bright part of God's army.
I'm fighting for us to live.
The greatest gift is life itself.
I am pro-life.
I am pro-God.
I believe that Jesus Christ
is our Lord and Savior
and died for our sins.
- What do you feel about another attack?
Another painful thing,
I imagine super painful
is Balenciaga pulling.
You had a really close relationship
and friendship with
their creative director.
Like how do you feel about all of it?
- I told you, I sang the song.
I sing another song from
one of my mentors, "Future."
I never feel pain.
I done felt too much pain.
(laughs) Like there was a day
where I was headed to Nashville to meet
with George Farmer, who
was the CEO of Parler,
the day when we made the announcement.
At that same day,
Balenciaga was taking my
imagery off of their sight,
and the "Drink Champs"
was being taken down.
And I said, "This is the
happiest day of my life."
I love cutting the grass low.
People wasn't really with
you, they was part-time.
People switch up when it's wartime.
I'd rather have people
who are really with me
and not people who are
just trying to use me.
- Listen, as a friend, as
somebody who cares for you,
you have to be really
careful by the people,
by all people always.
The people that are gonna
try to be close to you now,
you don't know if you can
trust them anymore than-
- Even more.
With Balenciaga, I have
more to say about it though.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- Let's do this.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- Demna will still work
for Ye someday.
And this is just speeding the process up.
- Have you talked?
Can you share if you've talked?
- Yes, I talked to Demna.
This is like we're kindred spirits.
None of this can keep
us away from each other.
I brought Demna to Gap to be able
to bring the best product in the world.
At that time, I wanted to
go under a hundred dollars.
Now I'm like, "Okay, we're
gonna go $20 a product."
I brought Demna in to engineer.
That's why I said,
"Engineered by Balenciaga."
Yeezy got engineered by Balenciaga.
To engineer the best
product for the people.
The people that they say are at the bottom
of the Maslow hierarchy of need chart.
They're at the bottom
of the pyramid, right?
So Gap didn't want that.
Balenciaga didn't want that.
Our agendas were not aligned.
I was brought in to the
Gap for political reasons
and influence like a
Virgil, like a George Floyd.
When popular celebrities are brought
into Fortune 500 companies,
it's not to raise the stock,
it's to strengthen the
position and influence.
And it's definitely not to be out here,
letting a nigga think he's Steve Jobs.
- Yeah, there's people like that.
But you as a great man, a visionary,
your job is to understand that game
and be one step ahead.
- Well, that's why I'm telling 'em.
That relationship.
You know, some relationships
only last for a summer.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- You know, some last for a year.
The relationship ran its course.
You know, in that
relationship, I invested a lot
of my social capital and actual capital.
I spent somewhere between
five to $10 million personally
on Balenciaga.
How much money do you think
Balenciaga had paid me
in the past two years?
Just take a really wild guess.
A really wild-
- [Lex] Less than that?
- Just take a super wild one.
Just go to the furthest
extent of your imagination.
- 1.2 million.
- Lower.
- 500,000.
- Lower.
- Zero.
- Zero.
- [Lex] All right.
- And actually,
two weeks ago, I paid at a
Saint's account, $862,000.
Not in clothes, for me, from
Balenciaga, from the store,
in royalties to Balenciaga
where the deal had been engineered,
where I was coming outta my pocket.
So last year, I paid Demna $3 million
to design the collection, right?
And we got it out of
the Gap marketing fund.
And he was gonna deliver
160 skews or 120 skews.
A hundred skews are
separate items of clothing.
So styles of clothing.
So he ended up delivering about 60.
And I feel like we're
on "The People's Court"
'cause we actually are, right?
We're in the court of public opinion.
So he delivered about 60.
There were all kinds of
people that were working.
Part of the reason why I had to get Demna,
like I didn't wanna have to get...
I wanted to compete with him.
I didn't wanna to have to like get him.
You know, when I made stronger,
I did it to compete with Timbaland
and Justin Timberlake because my fiance
at that time liked Justin Timberlake
just a little bit too much.
So I made it to compete.
And then we have the song out.
It's number one on Apple.
It's blowing up.
I play it in a club and it sounds muddy.
It doesn't sound the way
"SexyBack" sounded in the club.
So I go to Pharrell
Williams to do the drums.
And it sounds like a different record.
And so it can't be a different record
because I'm like, "I'm gonna
swap it out on radio," right?
Then I go to Swizz Beatz.
It sounds like a different record.
I go to Timbaland, the
person who did "SexyBack,"
and he did it in five minutes,
and then spent the rest
of the hour talking
about how nobody could have done it,
except for him.
Running around the studio, "I'm the best.
No one could.
That's why he had to go to me.
Had to go to the king."
- Well, he had a point, right?
- He had a point, right? So-
- What makes the sound muddy?
Is it the beat?
- It was in the drums.
It was something that
Timbaland had in those drums.
Like, now watch this.
I said I'm going DEFCON 3, right?
And the actual...
I spelled it wrong, I have
a tendency to do that.
I'm not quite John Legend,
tight sweater level, spelling B level.
So I feel a parallel to
me going to Timbaland
to when I said, "Hey, you as an engineer,
I need to work with you as
an engineer that is Jewish
to look at these contracts
and what my people, not just Black people,
let's say artists, are dealing
with in our contracts."
These contracts need to be fixed.
Everyone could be so mad
at the messenger, right?
Ye, you said it the wrong way.
You're offensive.
You're like Hitler now 'cause you said it.
You said this out loud, but it does not...
You weren't getting enough sleep.
All this shit does not negate the fact
that we do have Houston,
we have a problem.
- Yeah.
But we, it's just the music industry.
Like there's a lot of
hate that was created
by just saying that, you know?
- But you're saying what is
jest is everything to me, right?
- [Lex] Yeah. Yeah.
- One person can mean
everything to me, right?
- And for George Bush,
winning an election was everything.
And then when you said George Bush
doesn't care about Black people,
that you woke him up,
you woke the people up
to the fact that he was
narrowly being selfish.
There's a sense to which
you're being corrupted
by your own greatness.
That you're focusing
too much on the industry
that you've made great.
That you've rose at the very top.
One of the richest artists in history,
one of the greatest designers.
- I am the richest artist in history.
- Probably, the richest artist in history.
Yeah.
- They say, the funny thing is they're
like, "Oh, richest Black person.
"Like, oh, also richest
actor, richest musician,
richest fashion designer."
Like it's a bunch of richest in that one.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like richer than Ralph Lauren.
Like richer than Armani.
Like richest, like of that.
But still low.
Like 'cause where you put that?
You know, like on the totem,
'cause I don't even want to-
- Man's bank account isn't everything.
I would say you and I are
equal in a certain deep sense
no matter what the bank account says.
- Voom, voom, voom, voom.
So I wanted to give you some
theme music for your moments.
- It sounded a little muddy.
- Let me give you the Timbaland version.
(Ye imitates upbeat music)
- Thank you.
- [Ye] But okay.
- Play that at the club.
- So the other thing about
say, like, Balenciaga is,
Demna will work with Ye someday.
And for Cedric and for Francois Pinault
and Selma is a beautiful human being.
Five years from now, you'll
hear and know the name Ye
and know things that we did.
And Balenciaga is not gonna
make it onto your questions.
Well, would you, as a gambling man,
would you bet on that?
- [Lex] I would bet on that.
Could see it in your eyes.
(Ye laughs)
Let me ask you.
- So it was actually a sad day for me.
Not for me, but more for Balenciaga.
When I heard that, I was just
like, "Oh, shame." (laughs)
- Let me ask you a silly
question just about Demna.
I read something that you two talked
about like buttons for a few hours.
- Then my gum drop buttons.
- Just an added accent.
- Me and Demna always speak in Shrek.
- What's your philosophy
with which you approach design?
You are one of the great
fashion designers of our time.
How do you think about it?
Do you have a philosophy?
- You know what I like about the zipper
is the zipper hoodie
replaces the dress shirt
'cause you could get
on your douchebag shit
and like unzip it and
give a little bit of,
you know, that type of look and-
- [Lex] Which is the douchebag?
- You know, like when the, you know,
the douchebags that go to Vegas
and unbutton their dress shirt?
- [Lex] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- And the problem with the pullover hoodie
is you can't do the douchebag
thing where you unbutton it-
- [Lex] Yeah.
- But then still get like the stomach.
'Cause the thing is, the
ultimate look would be like,
you know, military tank, pullover hoodie,
and if you get a little hot,
you take off the hoodie,
but you're like crazy in shape.
- So it gives you that flexibility.
- Yeah.
The zipper's giving some flexibility.
And it's like, maybe you
wanna keep your jacket on,
like, it's considered like a
hoodie to be like a jacket.
If you wanna keep your jacket on,
then you might wanna do this
as opposed to pulling it all the way off.
- Yeah.
- You know, and it's just comfort.
But then you get, okay,
can I do a jogging pant
on this with elasticity?
Now, people argue about climate,
where we are with the climate.
I take responsibility
as being the most influential
designer of all time
to say we're gonna use
biodegradable clothing.
Now the issue there is the
elastic is not biodegradable.
So that means it's actually
better to use jeans
and a belt than to have
an elastic waistband
because elastic waistband
is not biodegradable.
So I use the planet as a big...
The future of the planet is a big piece
of the way I engineer
and the way we talk about
where designs are going.
- The constraints on your design
and engineering is given by the planet,
by the future of the planet.
- Yes.
That could almost make
Jewish people like me again.
(Lex sighs)
(Ye laughs)
- Every time you say Jewish people,
I think I've been maybe
reading a little too much
about World War II,
but man, I'd recommend you listen
to some audio books or read
some books on the Holocaust
'cause like, it's heavy.
It's heavy.
It will put into context
the impact of your words-
- Would you read books
on the current Holocaust
that Black people are in?
- [Lex] No, I mean, I read-
- What have you read about abortion?
- I've read a lot of short form writing
and I've listened to a lot of debates
'cause it's really
humbling that the question
of when does life begin is
a really difficult question
for me as an engineer and scientist.
It's a philosophical question.
- I mean, we could just
go on population control,
not like if abortion is right or wrong.
We could say, factually,
the clinics were made
by eugenics for population control,
and it is controlling the population
as is the never being given
of 40 acres and a mule.
So you don't have the opportunity.
And when the people that
do have the opportunity
are separated from our people, our tribe,
and placed in suburban
communities next to us,
Chris Rocker put it, "The dentist,"
and you know, whitewashed
and made to shut the fuck
up and you know, vote left
or whatever, you know,
niggers are supposed
to do when we make it.
As opposed to saying,
"Okay, we're building schools,
we're building up choirs,
we're building up our own leagues,
basketball teams, our own factories."
We started the first
sportswear factory in America
since World War II was actually
this factory I put in Cody.
So, you know, I'm 45 years old.
We're on this journey right now.
It's the other thing about this is like,
people, just in general,
they love me so much.
I'm like actually a
hard guy to really hate
for a long period of time
just 'cause of like my huge cock and-
- That's what I noticed.
I didn't understand why you showed it
to me when we first met,
but now I understand.
- [Ye] Yeah. (laughs)
- It's very nice.
Congratulations.
I know you don't talk about it,
but your hat does say, "24."
- [Ye] Yeah.
- If you run for president,
what kind of ideas would you represent?
- That we're beings with
engineering opportunities?
I would represent...
Just as you served a platform here,
there's something that
happened on my last run
that I thought, I feel,
I know was brilliant.
It was noisy, but it was brilliant.
I had one rally, and in the rally,
I just let people come up
and I gave them a platform.
It's our responsibility
to listen to the pain
and hear the pain and understand,
even when we're the ones
that cause the pain,
like with my tweet.
It's my responsibility to hear you
and understand why you feel like that,
but it's our responsibility as the people
to understand each other.
- To give people a voice.
- People need the voice.
And even right now, what I'm doing
or how God is using me, I'm showing
where our voices are being muted.
There's professors that
are actually intelligent,
actually have multiple degrees
that have been canceled
from their schools.
And they don't have a music
industry or a fan base
or a shoe design or a smoking
hot ex-wife to complain about.
They've just got the
truth of what they saw
and what they dedicated to this country
and to education that
has been muted by schools
that have been taken over with an agenda.
And so you want the brightest minds
to be these professors
and then you mute them,
and they have nowhere to go.
And you might get a guy now
that went from being
someone's favorite professor
to he's working at Starbucks,
like he was back at school,
or like he was back in high school.
- So even if that voice
is about anger and hate,
it still deserves to be heard.
- Yeah, deserves to be heard,
and we deserve to ask why.
You know, like you have to ask why.
I just feel like that's what's...
I feel like that is
sympathize with Mr. Huge Cock.
I'm just saying that it
just needs to be... (laughs)
- You should change that
to your name on Twitter
while you're still allowed on there.
- Yeah.
I do think that would get censored.
I feel like, you know,
they definitely cut it down some inches.
(laughs) I'm pointing out this truth.
No, I'm serious, this is not
a Christian thing, right?
And you know, I wonder right there,
when I say these jokes,
is it something that...
'Cause I do feel like laughter is the key.
Engineering and laughter,
right? Is the key to peace.
Like when I go get my teeth cleaned,
and I have the nitrous.
There's something that I
wanna go and hug Kris Jenner.
I wanna go and hug Corey Gamble.
I wanna go and hug,
you know, Howard Stern.
No one wants to hug Howard Stern.
But you know, just if one-
- No, no, no.
I would love to see you two hug it out
and make up, even though all this shit
talking back and forth.
- What about talking it out?
Or is he gonna be screaming at me?
- Yeah, judgmental,
and that kind of stuff.
No, I hope there's love there.
- You know, the thing is, I
think Howard's just jealous.
You know, not just jealous of my cock,
also, he's jealous
that I started my
campaign earlier than him.
- [Lex] You gotta let go of that jealousy.
- You gotta let go of
that jealousy, Howard.
You gotta let-
- Howard and everybody else.
Jealousy is a natural human thing, man.
- I wonder just as a Christian, right?
When I joke and say this stuff, it's like,
"Hmm, am I being disobedient to God?"
Because as a boss, right?
I'll talk to an employee,
and I'll be like, "Why
didn't you just listen?"
Because I've got the bigger plan, right?
So it's like me talking to God.
Were there things that
I did in this interview
that were disobedient to God?
And for those things,
I pray and I repent for anything
that I've said that
was disobedient to God.
- But humor is not one of them.
I feel like humor is the way we
avoid so much suffering in the world.
It's like a catalyst for love.
- [Ye] Yeah.
- Like it's a way to...
People that have gone through
some of the darkest trauma
that I've ever met since the war.
I just came back from
Ukraine, they're laughing.
they're making jokes.
That's the best way to
deal with dark times.
I don't know what it
is about, like humans.
I feel like humor.
That's the best way
to socially engineer a good
future I think is humor.
Not taking shit too seriously.
That's the problem with censorship.
One of the things that really
suffer is humor, jokes,
maybe going too far in the jokes.
You mention Anthony
Jeselnik, that guy goes hard.
That guy goes really hard, and it's great.
He crosses all the lines,
and that's why he's a genius.
And that's what feels
refreshing when he does it.
I don't know what it is.
- But then it's like hurtful when I do it.
But I'll tell you something
that was interesting.
I'm pretty sure Anthony doesn't like,
sorry for the assumption,
but just most comedians I
know didn't vote for Trump.
- That's interesting.
- Not saying there aren't
comedians that did,
but just the ones I know
'cause I live in California, right?
- But they have an appreciation for Trump
'cause of the sense of humor.
- Yeah.
- I gotta ask you about Parler engineering
'cause I'm interested about that.
- Doom, doom, doom, doom.
- Hey man, I'm actually
trying to hold it together.
You're pretty offensive towards a lot and-
- I'm not looking to be offensive.
I really wanna bring people together
and get these notes done.
- I know.
But 100%, I see your vision.
- [Ye] How do we do that?
- But somebody you care...
Well, don't say, "Jewish media
and Jewish-controlled media."
- JM.
- Like, man, it sounds too
much like 1930s Nazi Germany
that was leading up to the atrocities.
- Oh, he would say, "JM?"
- Yeah, he was branded JM.
That's right.
No, the implied like
this memeified prejudice
towards a group in a way
that's going to lead to hate.
And I know you don't mean that.
I know you have love in your heart.
That's what I'm trying to-
- You know what's a prejudice
towards a group that led to hate?
BLM.
BLM took a Black person,
showed his death on camera
because okay, there are examples
of us being killed and
being killed on camera.
But if it was spread on camera,
it was done on purpose by the media
because 14, 20 kids get
killed in Chicago every week.
And it's not spread that much.
They, like you said, singled out a person,
directed everything on that person, right?
As the martyr, and raised the people
that hadn't had any.
We didn't have our 40 acres and a mule.
We didn't have, you know,
like a lot of things, right?
Like that Black people
have not ever been given.
So once we're given just a little bit,
like your life matters, right?
Then we literally like,
"Oh, okay, now we're being heard," right?
But actually, the death toll is up.
The city where this happened is completely
been turned to a war zone.
It's actually something like Candace Owens
can actually specify this better,
but it's like its own city or something.
Like they made it not be a part
of the actual state or something.
It's like DC and stuff.
It's like Washington, DC now and stuff.
And that has to be from a government,
you know, that's got higher level agenda
written all over it.
- Yeah, they're using the
death of an individual.
Yeah, sure, the media are.
Not the Jewish media,
the media.
- [Ye] The media.
- And that's the media's fucked up.
That machine takes whatever tragedy
and pushes it towards whatever narrative
that gets more clicks and views and so on.
Sure.
And then politicians do the same.
They use the media,
they influence the media
to tell a story, and-
- Aight, this is a simple thing I put.
I believe that the idea of antisemitism
and the closeness of the Holocaust is used
by certain individuals in media
to not take accountability
for the bad things that are happening.
And what's happening is
there's a new frontier, right?
Meaning like it used
to be okay for somebody
to be a billionaire.
We thought about a billionaire, right?
A lot of times,
you think I'm actually
kinda being outta shape,
and you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago,
like Onassis or something,
like you thought about it a different way.
Now you think about it,
but you think about Elon,
you think Kim, you think Ye.
You think it's a new kind of billionaire.
You know, it is not just
Soros as a billionaire.
It's a new form of billionaire.
Well, right now, what I'm calling
for the industry is I'm
calling the industry out
and saying like, "Hey, it just so happens
that there's been times where
I had my lawyer was Jewish,
my regular was Jewish,"
but like eight people
that basically would collude
and talk without me were in groups saying,
"Okay, this is what the tour is gonna be.
This is his next house,"
and they were making all these decisions
and they're making all this money.
And at the end, I was
like, I ended my tour
and I don't have the money.
And it just so happens that
that's the case, what they were.
But what I'm saying is
if everyone can say,
"Hey, you can't point out this fact,
or we're gonna say you're anti-Semitic
and we're gonna call you Hitler."
I feel that there has to be at least 1%
of safeguarding the ability
to screw the artist based
on saying it's anti-Semitic
by pointing out that they just
so happen to all be Jewish.
And I don't think that's antisemitism.
I just think that's, hey,
this is another thing like,
okay, the Kardashians, when you hear that,
do you think male or do you think female?
You think female.
You get what I'm saying?
You think this is the realities,
this is why rap works, right?
They're gonna make a anti-women thing
in a second, right?
And it's gonna say, well, if you point out
that these five women, six
women are having a meeting
on where the Christmas party is
and none of the ball players or rappers
that they have babies
with have any say so.
So that Christmas happened
at Courtney's house all
eight years when I was there.
And it never happened
at anyone else's Black
family house, right?
If I'm the one that pointed it out,
they don't have their,
oh, your anti-Semitic word
to say, "Shut the fuck up!"
- [Lex] Yeah, but-
- 'Cause this is the way it
runs, and this is the way we wanna do it.
- If you say that women are
silencing the Black voice,
yes, you're gonna get the same response,
but especially, if it
historically resonates.
- But what about the fact that it's true?
- When you talk in
groups that breeds hate,
when you talk about
individuals, it solves problems.
You're engineering.
- Okay, but this is something
I pointed out on Piers.
I said, "If a Black person
gets pulled over with a car
and there's three other people in the car,
they're also going to jail.
They're not going to single them out.
They're gonna say, 'You
guys are all in collusion.'"
I just described collusion
five times in this interview.
And you keep on going
back to this is like 1930.
This is like this, this is like that.
What I'm saying is, look,
I want to work with you
as an engineer to free my people.
Can we start as a being
with engineering opportunities right here?
- [Lex] Yeah.
- I am sorry to the
people who had to be hurt
and affected by that.
Now we are here, and
I'm looking to solve it.
But what happens is every time,
if I talk to any of these
business people one by one,
'cause mind you, I didn't get to the tweet
by not having a conversation.
I had the conversations beforehand,
before I got to the tweet.
Now we gonna take it to the stage.
Now we're on the world stage, right?
And you saw Ari Emanuel
do exactly the kinda thing
that I was saying had been
done behind closed doors.
Now he's doing it in open doors.
They told Candace Owens I
couldn't be on The Daily Wire.
Like you can't even explain yourself,
and we don't care how you
got to that point either.
And that's fucked up!
- They told Candace you
can't be on Daily Wire?
- Is that even about...
Yes, she did.
That's what they said.
And you know what?
And you can have my
voice raised or lowered.
I'ma do it lower, right?
Because what's happening to me by,
I put in your words, the media is saying,
"Not only can you not explain yourself,
we don't care how you got to that point.
You need to apologize
and you can't explain.
And that's the end of the story.
So just apologize,
so we can have Mel Gibson
do some more films."
It's exactly what Ari Emanuel is saying.
No one is looking to change the problem
that led so many people
to that same level of frustration.
And I just so happen to be the one
that's not gonna back up
on it until this changes.
'Cause you know what?
I'm sorry I had a sleepy text.
I'm sorry I wrote...
I'm sorry for everything.
I'm sorry that I was
5'12 or 5'11 on Tinder.
Okay, my cock is not 14 inches.
I lied, okay?
It's only 13.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- So I'm sorry, right?
- [Lex] Yeah.
- So the... (laughs)
- Why you dropping so many facts today?
- So what I'm saying is,
but where do we get to this?
'Cause even you as engineering,
as intelligent as you are,
you, just like everyone else
that I'm saying was colluding,
won't let us get to
the point of fixing it.
- Yeah.
But I think you're more
powerful than the media.
I'm not saying you need to
apologize because of the media.
I'm saying everything
we've been talking about,
just 'cause I care for you
and I want you to be the
best possible man you can be.
To me, a definition of a great man.
I'm with Martin Luther King on this.
You don't talk about Jews or Black people.
You talk about engineering,
you talk about humanity.
You solve problems.
You identify the problems in the world,
and you don't come from
a place of resentment.
This group did this, this.
Fuck all that.
That is in the past.
You just build solutions.
I'm gonna create a new record label.
I'm gonna create a new design firm.
I'm gonna create a new social network.
I'm gonna do it better.
I'm gonna do it right.
I'm gonna do it right by the people
that I know don't have a voice.
I'm gonna give 'em a
voice and talk about that.
- Is it okay to call out collusion?
Do people collude in
your business under you?
Like the engineers that come together
and like say they collude
against the bosses, right?
You know why Bernard
Arnault offered the deal
and took it away from me?
Collusion.
Because I was too powerful
with the collective
that I had right there.
He had to stop that at all costs.
They said, "For whatever
reason, this kid, Ye,
it has the ability to have
all of the Kardashians,
Jay-Z and Beyonce, Justin
Bieber, Demna, Virgil,
all these people in the same room-"
- [Lex] Yeah.
- "Working towards a same goal."
I've been that person since preschool.
That's called a leader, right?
And right now, what I'm saying is, hey,
for the people in business,
whatever their background is,
whether they turn their cell
phones off on Friday or not,
there's been some bad business done.
There's some bad business practices.
And we have to change that
because this game is like boxing.
More people end up retarded than rich.
And I'm saying like beat
to a pope, driven crazy,
beat by the media to a pope.
Right now, the media has
done everything they could
to make me apologize and
to make me look crazy.
And that one person has done anything
to find out why I was frustrated
enough to do that tweet.
And that's facts.
And that's fucked up.
- Well, I was hoping to, I am finding out.
We found out.
I mean, like I want solutions.
Like, see, there's
something about human nature
where if you focus too
much on resentment towards-
- We're not focusing on anymore.
Fuck the resentment.
- [Lex] Right, right.
- We're moving forward.
- Right.
So there's two things I think
that are required for...
I mean, this is how I've lived my life
for great engineering.
You surround yourself
in your personal life
by people you trust,
and then in your professional life,
from the engineering
perspective with the team,
with an incredible team,
and everything else doesn't matter.
That allows you not to
focus on other groups,
how they're fucking you
over, how they're like trying
to manipulate or collude,
and all that kinda stuff.
You focus on solutions,
and you find a way around
all the difficult shit.
That's it.
If you have people in
your life you can trust,
that's like lifelong.
You said like some people you're with
for the summer, for a year.
Find people you can be
with for your whole life.
Do you have people in
your life that you trust?
Like really trust?
- No, I trust God.
At any point, a human being...
If I like go and like really, you know,
treat this guy like a piece
of shit or do this, da da da.
Am I supposed to, you
know, trust him to be loyal
and stay in the situation or
I trust people to be people?
And people are flawed.
And people can have the right intentions,
but it only makes sense for us
to work together when our agendas align.
When Kim was pulled
really far to the left,
our agenda's no longer, you know, aligned.
So that made the marriage impossible.
It aligned where it's like,
"Oh, I could wear a red hat
that can help her to get
Alice Johnson outta jail
because Trump's willing
to do that for my wife."
Because I was the only
person in my position
that stood up and said,
"Wait a sec, I like you."
You know, because-
- But isn't there deeper agenda,
the human agenda of just being in love?
Like that's just...
What you're talking about, red
hat is just politics, right?
- I mean, the world is becoming more
and more transactional every day.
And actually, marriages
were actually originally
based on transactions, you know?
And that's why they're less needed,
the more autonomous as we come,
or the world makes it less needed.
I feel like we do need each other.
I feel like we do need
someone we can always,
you know, count on.
It's like, I'm Ye pulled
away by King Koopa,
which is the media, the
politics, the promise.
Oh, we're gonna keep you safe.
So the reason why I get, you know,
really frustrated with Kris Jenner,
she says losing Rob Kardashian
was the greatest mistake of her life,
but she never gave Kim's
hand over in marriage
because this is the bottom line.
When me and Kim met,
we were millionaires or whatever, right?
You're telling me you just
hand her hand over in marriage
that your daughter's not successful,
handing your hand over in marriage too.
But no, she had to still be the husband
to all of her daughters.
And we see what the
results are consistently.
So that's where I get,
you know, frustrated.
It's like, let that go.
Let this person do what
you made mistakes on.
Don't make this person
relive those same mistakes,
and then put that agenda
into my daughters too.
- Is there somebody in
your life close to you
that you trust enough to call
you out on your bullshit?
We're all full of shit sometimes.
- What's my bullshit?
- Well, some of it, I pointed out today,
but I don't know you deeply enough.
- [Ye] What was the bullshit?
- Jewish media, Jewish-
- That's not bullshit.
The bullshit is that the Jewish media
- No, no.
- [Ye] won't admit.
- Your dad was right, your dad was right.
The words you used.
The point you were-
- And I said it,
you're not gonna make me
say it 800 more times.
- I don't know if it resonated
'cause you keep saying like the words-
- Did it resonate to y'all
that y'all ain't do nothing about it?
And that all y'all wanna do
is have somebody apologize
or sweep under the rug your bullshit
that you've been doing the whole time.
You on the same bullshit
as the other people.
So you're doing the same
thing that the other,
let's say media,
'cause I'm not allowed to say, has done.
So until somebody stands up-
- Which is what? Which is what, man?
Which is what?
I'm trying to call you
out in your bullshit
'cause I hope I'm somebody you can trust.
That's it.
- I don't fucking trust you.
- Well, you should find people
in your life you can trust.
- Don't tell me what I should do.
I'm not one of your BLM marchers.
- Listen, I'm with you on the BLM.
A lot of organizations use tragedy.
And I watched the Candace
Owens documentary.
- And what was your take on it?
- I think it's important
to question the mainstream narratives,
but I don't agree with it.
I still believe that George Floyd died
from the knee of the
cop, not from fentanyl.
- And even if that was the
case, there's still 50%
of Black deaths is actually abortion.
So let's get into engineering.
Let's just go 'cause that's so-
- [Lex] Well, how do you fix that?
- Population control is social engineering
in its most literal form.
The Blacks are under population control.
That's something that...
I mean, that's just what it is.
- African Americans are not
choosing to get the abortion?
I mean, it's a choice.
It's an individual choice.
- But we're being influenced to.
- Well, then speak to
the community and help.
I mean, I don't know
what the engineering solutions there are.
It could be you are doing that in part
by speaking to the value
and the power of family.
- Well, watch this.
I was building shelters.
I bought land in Calabasas,
and I bought two ranches in Wyoming,
300 acres in Calabasas, 12,000
acres in total in Wyoming.
And I started building ideas for shelters,
and God set it on my
heart to make monasteries,
which would be modern-day facilities
that don't turn people down,
that have farms, that
have shelter, clothing.
But first of all, water,
first of all, knowledge
because knowledge is the
most important resource
to our species above water.
Knowledge (laughs) itself
because then you can go get water.
I mean, you could argue,
like if you're a baby,
how do you get water?
But the baby doesn't have it.
You know, so someone with the knowledge
then feeds the baby the water.
But it's important that those
with the knowledge teach the baby
how to find the water themselves.
And the business people
that I've been dealing with
have been keeping the baby sick
by not sharing the information
and the knowledge with
inside of those contracts.
My people are sick.
If I load up Apple Music right now
and I play the top songs in the rap chart,
I will tell you my people are sick.
If I go to the restaurants
in opportunity zones
and we look at the calorie rating
and the cholesterol, I would tell you
that my people are sick.
If we look at the obesity rate,
if you go to just a restaurant somewhere
in Middle America, Denny's or something.
I went to Denny's the other day.
You will see that my people are sick,
and my people, meaning all people, right?
But Black people are very
influential to all people.
So, right.
So if the media picks a
overweight Black woman
and says, "This is body goals,"
then the media are influencing
my people to stay sick.
And it just so happens that that night,
I was so frustrated after 20 years
that I had to call it out
in one tweet that now,
even if I say, "Hey, okay,
I was frustrated for these reasons,"
now it's not good enough.
You've literally tried
to make me re-apologize
10 times in this meeting.
Re-say this, re-say that.
But it doesn't change the
fact that my people are sick,
and I'm the only person in my position
that will say that my people are sick.
Today, not 30 years ago, not 60 years.
My people are sick today.
50% of my people's deaths
are abortion today.
My people don't have
the opportunities today.
Even to the point that
because if JP Morgan had been nice to me,
and if Alex Klein in Stem
Player had been fair to me,
different things, then I
wouldn't even point it out
that we don't have any Black...
We have two Black engineers.
So I have to have a responsibility,
obviously, to all people,
but specifically, to my tribe
because tribes, tribes move.
You know, tribalism is
real with Black people
to separate the brightest from the tribe
or to separate the leaders.
It is factual that the CIA
removed the leaders from
the Black community,
put crack in the communities,
put guns in the communities,
and locked up all the leaders,
and called them gang leader, right?
Locked up all the leaders.
Locked up all the fathers.
Now 72% of Black mothers
are raising children
by themselves.
This is agenda like a Tuskegee experiment
set on my people, right?
And what I'm calling out
for the Black people in
entertainment is what are we doing?
We have to collude.
And if we don't collude,
because even if I said,
"Hey, I'd like to make a company
that's all Black," right?
Is that okay for me to say?
Is that okay for me to say?
Or is that anti-Semitic?
See, if I hadn't crossed the line so far,
then that would've sounded anti-Semitic.
Now I've stretched a bit.
So now we can go to,
okay, let's make an all Black company.
But that would've been
anti-Semitic, just that concept,
'cause you could word
that in a different way
that would sound anti-Semitic.
- [Lex] I don't know, man, I have to-
- No, no, listen.
If I said I didn't wanna
have the Jewish people
in the company, would
that be anti-Semitic?
It would sound like it, right?
You'd say I'm from 1930s, right?
- [Lex] Yeah.
- But for me, as a tribe to say,
"No, I want an all Black company," right?
- I'm generally against that kinda thing.
But first of all, you have the right
to do whatever the hell you want.
That's the matter.
- Well, what I'm saying
is that's what I feel
may need to happen for my
people to have power again.
Because when my people have been left
under the media's control,
we've been made sick, we've
been allowed to be sick,
and we're promoting sickness.
- I think at least in
the engineering realm,
I haven't met an engineer
who happens to be Black,
who would like to be
called a Black engineer.
And when you have a
company of all Black people
that are engineers, I don't
know the creative arts,
I apologize, but engineering,
they really try to look
at each other as humans
and look at the problem.
And you want to know, you
want to have the confidence
that everybody on the team
is the best possible person
for the job.
- What I can say is the world is sick
and I have slight images of utopia,
slight images of happiness,
slight images as a
visionary and a creator.
And I know for a fact the way
that business deals have been done for me
are keeping the world sick.
- Fix 'em.
I see that's what you're trying to do.
And you probably listen.
People should not doubt Ye.
But I gotta tell you, I have to be honest,
this is silly 'cause you don't know me,
but it hurt when you
say you don't trust me.
You kinda lost me.
I don't think anyone's
ever said that to me.
I don't know, man.
Fuck that.
I don't care about views or clickbait
or any of that bullshit,
I just thought you were one
of the greatest artists ever.
It'd be cool to talk to you.
And I feel like you got
pain you're working through.
I never had anyone say that to me.
Maybe I'm just being a
mess about it, I guess.
That's fucked up though.
But maybe it's not.
Maybe you shouldn't trust any,
but I just haven't had that experience.
- Yeah.
Do you think I would trust
anybody at this point in my life?
- Yeah, it's tough.
It's tough, it's tough, I hear you.
And it's also kind of good
to see how much strength you got.
You're not broken by any of this.
You're under a lot of attack,
a lot of attack by a lot of people.
You have a vision, and you're trying
to feel your way through it,
and you might get destroyed for it.
That's the risk you take.
- It's a wonderful life though.
- What do you hope your legacy is?
- To be forgotten.
- You think you'll be forgotten?
- 'Cause the memory,
there's ego and memory,
and the memories.
Who designed the sidewalk?
Who designed the water fountain?
Who designed the stop sign?
Who designed the stoplight?
These things are so
ubiquitous that the person
that designed them is forgotten.
If it's a good idea, it's a God idea.
And no VCs can own it.
- So you want your designs
in all rounds of life
to be so simple that
they permeate everything,
they take over, and you are forgotten.
That's a successful design
is you're forgotten?
- Yes.
- You have advice for people?
A lot, a lot, a lot of
young people look up to you.
You have advice for young people
of how to live a life
they can be proud of?
- Don't tweet while you're sleepy.
- Take a nap?
Surely, there's other things.
I love the humor.
Don't take it seriously, I
suppose, is what that means.
- Don't send sleepy tweets,
unless you buy your own social
platform the very next week.
Call Parler.
But other than that,
if you're not gonna buy your own social...
Then don't.
- Is that why you bought Parler's,
so you could be sleepy and send
messages out into the wild?
I actually am really interested
in the engineering aspects of Parler.
Is there a vision there?
'Cause I'm also super interested
in Elon buying Twitter.
- I like Instagram better than Twitter.
And I'm sure Mark
Zuckerberg liked Instagram
better than Facebook, or saw, you know,
how valuable that was, and he bought it.
- So you'd like to take
Parler or something.
Whatever is the magic
that makes Instagram work,
you'll wanna push there.
- Well, I thought it was interesting
how it felt like Snapchat
made the Kardashians
bully Instagram.
- What's the point of Snapchat
going to war on Instagram?
- Yeah, I mean, just
everyone wants to say,
"Well, this is our value, Snapchat."
You know, no one wants to lose their value
to someone else's value,
whatever, it's like...
And everything is just...
What's the difference
between permanent and temporary?
You know, it's just a permanent structure.
And until God says it's not, you know,
it's like nothing's permanent.
Our life is not permanent.
So how do we just let go of those things?
Even like going from the
name Kanye West to Ye
was the beginning of just
letting go of some things,
of these titles.
Like we need to remove the titles.
Like, hey, if I have to leave Adidas
and I have to go next to
computers, that may take me out
of the billionaire standing altogether.
And I gotta get low
for however long God says I
have to get low and refocus.
I've been reshaping, refocusing my staff.
I had some people that were good
and I had some people that weren't,
and I had too many people.
And I've got a vision inside of me,
and I'm like, "This is
how I make this vision.
I have to bring this vision to life.
I have to bring these houses to life."
I was talking to one
of our architects on...
You know, we're actually
getting close on it.
I've like built it a few times.
I had like the domes you probably saw,
and I said, you know, how
he transformed Kim's house
and you know, we're getting there, like-
- So you wanna get into architecture.
Like you really want this
to become physical reality.
- Yes, and I've got close.
Rome wasn't built till today.
- Yeah, but Rome had to start somewhere.
- Yeah.
- I gotta call you out on the advice.
There really is a lot of
people that look up to you,
and you've lived a really difficult life,
and you made it through all of it.
What do you advise them to do?
- Do everything that you feel,
even if you are told that
it's the wrong thing.
No, no, no, no, no.
But not anything violent.
- So do what you feel, say what you feel.
Like, trust your heart.
- Yeah, trust your gut.
Trust your instincts
because that instinct is
who God made you to be.
Not, you know, what
lines up with your life,
frat brothers, or what lines
up with what your dad wanted,
or what lines up with your classmates,
or, you know, it's just God
has something inside of you.
And when you walk down the street,
you're thinking about it,
and then you just see it in the window,
and you go down another street
and you see the same thing.
Or you're thinking about a
number and that number pops up.
Or you see it on a license plate.
And that's just, you know,
something is trying to
say, "Be the maximum.
Ye, you know, be the maximum you,"
and God won't give you
anything that you can't handle.
So for me, everything is a yes.
I think they say, "Be like water."
I know Bruce Lee said that,
or matter of fact, just be
because we are beings with
engineering opportunities.
- (laughs) Beautifully put.
Ye, I have hope, I have faith,
however this turns out,
that you have the skill
and the capacity to really
add love to the world.
And I hope you do that.
I really, really hope you do that.
And we talked about the tension of that,
the challenges and the
opportunities of that.
- I mean, I see how we could
be of use to each other.
You actually have a
particular thing for me
as I eject from media.
'Cause even also, you know, I'm really big
at like, you know,
burning the phoenix too.
You know, as an engineer
that your cells completely
regenerate every seven years,
I think I rushed the process a little bit.
So I run around looking like
a burn victim sometimes.
- Yeah.
But I gotta tell you,
anyone I am close with,
I work with, there has to be
trust, there has to be love.
And I think you've been burned
quite a bit in your life.
- Sometimes I did it myself.
♪ I put my hand on the stove ♪
So how do we get to engineering?
There's a deal to be done here.
Not saying you're making
this money off of that,
I'm making that money off, but there's-
- I don't care about money, by the way.
- Same, twins.
So there's dealings here.
You got pain, I got pain,
but we're beings with
engineering opportunities.
- For a long time,
I thought somebody should
create a new social network,
and it looks like great
engineering could do that.
- You got two at one time,
from two of your homeboys at one time.
- Yeah.
And that's a great way.
I mean, you know, it
can be done from scratch
or it can be done anew with an
already established platform.
Yeah.
I'm very excited by that possibility.
Parler is smaller, Twitter is larger.
I wonder whether you can do any kind
of revolutionary engineering
with a large company.
If anyone can, I would say it's Elon.
- Well, Elon can look
at what we do over here.
That's why I like...
God does this a lot of times,
He creates doppelgangers.
There's a lot of examples
where a theory happened
two places at one time.
A really similar type
of personality happens
- [Lex] Yeah.
- at one time.
- It's weird.
It's weird, it's beautiful.
- [Ye] Yeah,
- It's hilarious actually.
- [Ye] Yeah.
- It's kinda humorous.
- So we should just share every piece
of information together
as I go build Parler
and as he builds up Twitter,
and see how to make both those better.
But I'll be like,
"Hey, I'm not gonna let Snapchat
bully me out of, you know,
adding something to it that's best.
It should just be the
best platform possible."
- [Lex] Yes.
- You know, that means
TikTok has amazing features.
Twitter has amazing things about it.
But I know this girl that's like,
"I like Instagram better than Twitter,"
is just she likes that Twitter has porn.
But other than that, Instagram.
But I was like, "Well,
Instagram is porn also.
It's like soft.
It's more subtle.
It's not telling you.
It's not conservative by
any means," you know, and...
- I mean, that's the thing.
You have to please a lot of
people with these platforms.
And I think the goal of a platform
should be to help individuals
maximize their long-term
happiness and growth,
like intellectually, spiritually,
psychologically, all of that.
And it's a tricky thing to
figure out how to do that.
Of course, you could just have a platform
that's just strictly for fun.
I think that's where TikTok leans.
But I think there's a balance to strike.
Like Twitter, there's a lot
of intellectual philosophical
stuff going on on Twitter,
but it somehow currently makes
it too easy to be divisive
and hateful towards each other and cancel,
and all that kinda stuff.
- I think we need to have
these healthy conversations.
That's what it is, healthy
conversations, healthy dialogues.
That's the biggest thing.
Like when I first wore the red hat,
the conversation is less
healthy than it is today.
The conversation about George Floyd.
You know, it's like, did I
send the tweet the right way?
Is Candace Owens' documentary perfect?
Michael Moore, is that
documentary perfect?
"Century Self" isn't fully accurate.
You know, it's two to three hours
of a transmit of information
through a particular,
usually, one person's view.
And anything you want to research,
if you're interested in it,
you gotta look at 10 versions
of it, 20 versions of it.
George Floyd, we've looked
at one version of that.
Now we have a second.
Well, by the time we get to the...
You know, I know this is like...
It's not my last hoodie,
but it's definitely not my
first hoodie that I put on.
You know, it's like
that's how we got to it.
Like even this particular size of zipper
or the fact that, you
know, for people who know,
they know that that's like Carhartt.
Even though the Carhartt
tag isn't there anymore,
you just know by the shape of it.
You feel it.
So it abstracts,
it takes into like this
cubist place like Picasso,
Matisse, or African
cubism, or Dire Straits
♪ Is money for nothing
and your chicks for free ♪
Look at that.
- Great band.
Hey, I wouldn't think you
could reference Dire Straits.
Look at you.
- That video.
- [Lex] Yeah, I know.
- [Ye] It's a great video.
- [Lex] Your encyclopedic
knowledge of music is great.
- I think that, you know,
porn is not just sexual.
That term actually relates to torture.
Like, you know what I'm saying?
Like watching people beat each other up
on World Star or something.
You know, it's like,
that's called torture porn.
- There's also food porn.
How do you explain that?
- What's food porn?
- Food porn is like looking
at really delicious cakes and
cookies and steak, and so on.
And you're like, "Holy shit."
- Exactly.
Architecture.
Like there's people
- [Lex] Architecture.
- who love architecture.
When they see architecture, I know,
I got friends that'll be
like, "Oh, that's porn."
- [Lex] Yeah.
- Architecture.
- Yeah, yeah.
That's like love,
like dopamine-fueled love for a thing.
Yeah, that's beautiful.
I think that's beautiful.
- [Ye] Well, I think-
- As long as nobody's getting hurt.
- The intoxication that people have.
You know, the worst part is like
when one person's in love
and the other person's in like.
- That's us right now.
- Well, who's in like?
- No, 'cause you said you love Bill Maher
and you like me.
- Not in-
- And I love you.
So that was-
- No, I actually love you both.
- All right, all right.
- And the funny thing
is like as a visionary,
visionaries are more
extreme than business people
because a visionary would do
bad business for their vision.
A business person will
never do bad business.
- [Lex] It's well put.
Yeah, it's really well put.
- So when you say, "I
don't care about money."
It's like, "Yeah, I feel you."
Like I feel that I care
in a way that I need that,
but I care about the vision that I have
to a Steve Jobs level
to the point of putting that
above my regular human existence,
meaning having to go
and take all the arrows
that I become a soldier of the vision.
Because someone could say,
a wife could say to, say like in the '60s,
their husband's about to go to war.
The wife may not want
their husband to go to war
because of their children,
but he's going to war
because of their children.
- Definitely.
Do you regret any aspect
of just giving everything to your vision?
I mean, you've spoken
about that, saying like,
"I got fucked over in the business side."
- I promise that I had to
stop envying cool people
at their current cool time.
If anything, if someone's cool
and I say their name a lot,
I'm gonna flash the light on them so much
that it ages their coolness.
It's actually a war technique
showered in compliments.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- You know, because to be able to stay
at 45 years old and still
be the bad kid in class,
at 45, I'm still in the
principal's office...
Because if you look at
like say fashion, right?
If you think of something fashionable,
it's probably gonna look like the kid
in the principal's office.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- That's gonna be the fashion.
And that's part of the reason
why I'm the most influential
person in fashion
'cause I refuse to leave
the principal's office.
If the substitute teacher
comes in, I'm gonna say,
"You got a big butt!"
- [Lex] Yeah.
- (laughs) And they gonna-
- Right back.
Right back to the principal's office.
- And people gonna be like, "Yo."
And that's what you keep on saying, like,
"Who can we talk to?"
'Cause no one can talk to me.
I'm out of control, bro.
It's just God, then me,
and then fuck everybody.
You know what I mean?
That's really how I live my life.
And I would just wanna say this,
one thing about the children thing.
I wanted to, you know,
put that point together,
put that idea together.
I don't like the word point.
I'm really big on like
words, words being powerful,
says the person with the sleepy tweet.
- [Lex] Yeah.
- So-
- You're full of contradictions.
- Yeah, I'm a human being, right?
It's like some days, I'm like,
"I could go 30 days to be celibate."
You know, really, like I'm a monk,
I'm being like faithful to God,
and then I'll go like
working out, no carbs.
Like my weight will fluctuate,
and I'll have times where I'm like,
"I don't feel like being told what to do."
So I don't wanna work out with a trainer
and I just wanna drink this Hennessy.
But I wanna say this thing
that I will text to Kim sometimes.
I'll say, you know,
"You may not understand
what I'm doing right now, but you will."
And that's what I would say to everyone.
You may not understand what I'm doing.
And this gives a little bit,
maybe we're like 20% there,
but there's still gonna be people,
we leave this interview,
and they'll be like,
"I still don't like the way he apologized.
I still don't wanna
say what my involvement
would've been to lead him to that point."
And we just want things
to be how they are.
There's people in the world
who want the world to stay as it is
and there's people who
want to change the world.
And that's happened throughout time.
They say that with Da Vinci
halfway into a conversation,
he could not suffer fools so much
that he would walk away,
halfway into the conversation.
And I said, "Well, that's
why it's the Da Vinci code
and not the Da Vinci world."
And every time I go and
piss off a group of people
or do these things, on some end,
it's like I could be turning my thing
from a potential world vision to a code,
or I could be opening up conversations
with new friends that I may trust someday.
- Yeah, that's beautiful.
That's beautiful.
(Ye laughs)
Because the change you
will have on the world
that you don't know for sure,
but it'll happen across
years, even decades.
So you have to think in the future.
Like you're working in the future,
your actions are working in the future,
and a lot of people will
judge this conversation,
and others, you've done
and so on in the present.
And that doesn't matter.
- You know why I apologize,
why I say I'm sorry
to the Jewish people that I hurt?
It's not about, oh, I said,
"I'm not gonna hold this
apology hostage," right?
Obviously, it's about God,
but God is everything, right?
So what's the point of having language
and you can't engineer if you
say, "God, God, God," right?
It's like, it's God asks
us to be judgmental,
so that you become, if
you're a doctor, right?
It's your judgment that
saves grandma, right?
And God puts that in there,
like we have God inside us.
We're a piece of God also, right?
So I'm gonna go specific to a person.
That story about Da Vinci
alone is enough of a reason
for me to give a sincere
apology to the Jewish people
because I do believe that
there's a Da Vinci code
inside of all of my misspellings
and scribbles right here,
that God wants me to get to the world.
And when I'm in my way,
if God has set something on me,
when I'm in my way, I'm in God's way.
Now I can point at other people
and say, "Hey, you guys are in God's way
because you're not listening to me.
But if I'm in my way, I'm
not listening to God."
And for me to be a philosopher
and a leader, whatever other language,
I have to listen to God.
So before God, what I will
do is start off as a samurai
and say, "I'm sorry for
hurting you as a Jewish person.
I'm sorry for the way that made you feel.
And I'm sorry for the
entire population of a race
that I feel is actually my brothers,"
'cause I classify and feel
that I'm also connected
with Christ in that way.
That my people came
from Africa in that way.
And I can't say it's this exact teaching
or that exact teaching,
but I feel that there's an important...
You know, the sons of Abraham,
however we wanna word it, right?
For us to come together
and bring our different talents together
to serve God collectively.
And as much of a alien as I am,
he did not call for me to alienate.
And that's what the problem has been,
especially in politics.
And in America, he
plays America as the TV,
as the radio to the world.
We invented rock and roll, right?
We are the influencers of
the rest of the planet.
We are the youngest
startup in history, right?
We're the youngest country.
We're the youngest superpower, right?
So for me, in my position,
the fact that I can talk to Trump one day
and be at a game with Kim
Kardashian the next day,
and then be at Paris Fashion
Week, they don't want me
to be involved with language
of decisive, divisive language.
You know, proving that
I can be just as racist
as a racist white person.
Oh, I can be a racist Black person also.
That's not what God has called me to do.
So how do I simplify
and say, "Hey, to you as a visionary,
as an engineer, as a person
that's given me a platform
that as my brother, I
wanna apologize to you
for how that made you feel
and to the rest of the people
that carry specifically that pain."
Not the pain that I talk
about that doesn't seem
to be as much of a pain for people
when I talk about the
abortion clinics and stuff.
It's like that's the argued pain,
even in my own community.
Like not everyone thinks that's a pain.
But for the Jewish community,
it's collectively this was a pain.
And I've gone so far just
psychologically on this journey
since that statement had happened
where I didn't want to like
give up the candy in my pocket.
I didn't want to say,
"Hey, I stuck my hand in the candy jar."
I wanted to defend my freedom of speech.
I wanted this.
But even with freedom
of speech, pain is pain.
Causing people to hurt is not helping.
Causing people to hurt is not helping.
So that means I have to take
a more sophisticated approach
to engineering this problem.
This problem is an opportunity.
And yes, what could some
people may deem as a mistake?
Would it be more genuine
if I called it a mistake?
I think I would be hypocritical
by calling a mistake
with the ending of that,
the idea I'm gonna say out loud.
So I don't try to be a
hypocrite on purpose.
But I will call it a mistake
to be genuine about the feeling.
With that mistake with
me as a human being,
not to justify, but I have to state
that God makes no mistakes.
Because if I hadn't made that mistake,
I wouldn't be in front of you today.
And that's not to
justify this sleepy text.
- But I can tell you're a man
that has love in his heart.
And I hear that.
I hear it through the words
explicitly, implicitly,
and I think if we were to
engineer a better future,
the way to do that is with love.
So as one human to another,
I love you, brother.
Thank you for talking today.
This is great.
- I like you too.
- Son of a bitch.
(Ye laughs)
Thanks for listening to
this conversation with Ye,
formerly known as Kanye West.
To support this podcast,
please check out our
sponsors in the description.
And now let me leave you with
some words from Ye himself.
Nothing in life is promised, except death.
Thank you for listening, and
hope to see you next time.