Yeezy Taught Me: 3 Nuggets of Wisdom From Kanye West’s T Magazine Interview

I’ve been a Kanye West fan since MySpace. The only “Homecoming” I acknowledge is “Home.” Like many of us other human beings, Kanye transformed over the years. He went from singing “Jesus Walks” to attempting to walk on water himself. As his fame, influence and power enhanced, so did his wild, uninhibited and unapologetic nature. George Bush didn’t (doesn’t) care about black people. Taylor Swift really didn’t deserve that award over Beyonce. Kanye is the king of “well, you were all thinking it anyway.” I love the arrogance. I loved Kanye almost as much as he loves himself.  But now that he has reached his final (?) douchebaggery form, I wonder how long my love will last. When Kanye lost himself in the superficial world of fashion and the even more superficial galaxy that is Kardashian, I still rocked with him. Every outrageous rant, I defended. Every obscure and experimental song, I forced into my ears until pleased. I stood by every questionable, contradictory, side-eye Yeezy moment. It wasn’t until his “appropriation” of the confederate flag that I started to fall a little bit off the ‘Ye wagon. Add in some weird support of statutory rape and ramblings about the extinction of racism; and my feet are now on the ground and I am walking away…far away.

Vintage T-shirt. Acne Studios jeans, acnestudios.com. Kanye West x Adidas Originals Yeezy Season 1 boots.Credit Photograph by Juergen Teller. Styled by Joe McKenna (via T Magazine)

It’s no surprise that I was a little apathetic  when I learned of Kanye’s latest interview with T Magazine.  It took me a few days to read, mainly because I’ve been bored with Kanye’s recent interviews. It’s always: “I’m marginalized!” “Kim is the greatest of all time!” “Beyonce is the real MVP! (Ed. Note: true story)”  “I am fashion!”  “I am God’s father!”  Just as the sky is blue and water is wet, Kanye’s latest Q&A session was definitely chock full of all the aforementioned sentiments. However, whether it just be hopeful perception (because I definitely do want that old Kanye back) or an actual meaningful interview, Mr. West dropped three nuggets of wisdom that we could all learn from. See excerpts from T Magazine’s “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Kanye West” below:

About Ego

“I have this table in my new house,” West said, offering a parable. “They put this table in without asking. It was some weird nouveau riche marble table, and I hated it. But it was literally so heavy that it took a crane to move it. We would try to set up different things around it, but it never really worked. I realized that table was my ego. No matter what you put around it, under it, no matter who photographed it, the douchebaggery would always come through.”

“I feel like now I have an amazing wife, a supersmart child and the opportunity to create in two major fields,” he said. “Before I had those outlets, my ego was all I had.”

About Self-Investment
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West resists calling himself a designer — out of humility, maybe, or to pre-empt criticism. But he has certainly invested time (and plenty of his own money) to teach himself the business. In 2009, he and longtime collaborator Virgil Abloh interned at Fendi to learn how a fashion house operates. And like many established designers, West took counsel from the late Louise Wilson, the Central Saint Martins professor who mentored Alexander McQueen and Mary Katrantzou, and who died last year. His poorly received ready-to-wear women’s collections were paid for completely out of pocket, which he says put him in debt. “I gained because I had the privilege to be educated,” he now says. “I had enough of a value to be able to go into debt, and that was a blessing. Some people don’t even have the opportunity to be able to go into debt.”

About Influence and Innovation

West’s overall ambition is to be to fashion what he is to music: a mainstream innovator, a translator of tomorrow’s ideas for today. “Before the Internet, music was really expensive. People would use a rack of CDs to show class, to show they had made it,” West said at one point. “Right now, people use clothes to telegraph that. I want to destroy that. The very thing that supposedly made me special — the jacket that no one could get, the direct communications with the designers — I want to give that to the world.”

A couple of days later, it was the middle of Fashion Week, and West was in the lobby of the Mercer Hotel, killing time before the designer Jeremy Scott’s runway show, one of several front rows he’d enhance. It was a far cry from 2009, when he and a few flamboyantly dressed friends barnstormed their way through the Paris men’s collections. “That was the beginning of the sit-in,” he recalled, likening his quest for fashion-world access to an act of social justice.

“I dreamed, since I was a little kid, of having my own store where I could curate every shoe, sweatshirt and color,” he said. “I have sketches of it. I cried over the idea of having my own store.”

Some critics called the [Kanye West x Adidas Originals Yeezy Season 1]  collection derivative, citing Raf Simons and Helmut Lang as far-too-obvious references. But West didn’t feel any anxiety of influence himself: “I would like to be influenced as much as possible,” he said. “I don’t care if you can see the influence in something, as long as I made it better.” And of course, though Helmut sent bulletproof vests down the runway in the late ’90s, Tupac Shakur and other rappers were wearing bulletproof vests as fashion years before that. Influence can have many tributaries, if you’re willing to see them.

It seems like Mr. West has become a bit more humble than he’s been years previous. It’s nice when artists acknowledge both their ego and influences. I think Kanye is slowly but surely returning to the relatable version of himself. Not sure if I can return as a disciple of Yeezus though.  Check out the full interview here.