Kanye West appeared on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Wednesday night to bury the hatchet with the late-night program’s host, and the rapper — or “messenger,” as he described himself — had a lot to say.
Seriously. The guy barely took a breath over the course of the 25-minute interview.
Also read: Jimmy Kimmel’s Kanye West Episode Scores Best Ever Ratings Win Over Leno, Letterman
He did, however, offer viewers a lot of interesting insight into who he really is, the challenges he faces in the fashion world, and why he was so enraged over Kimmel’s parody of an interview with the BBC.
Unfortunately, all of his deeply personal social commentary was buried by the dozens of other topics he addressed while unabashedly ranting from one subject to another, so we carefully transcribed the entire interview and picked out some of the most insightful — and craziest — Kanye quotes of the night.
Enjoy.
Kanye on publicity stunts:
“Everyone out there in TV world, real world, whatever world you stay in needs to know that I’ve never done a publicity stunt in my life. Any time I went up and spoke my mind — whether it put my career in jeopardy or whatever someone so-called said — it was always what I thought was the truth, whether I’m like reading through a teleprompter or whatever I felt emotionally. I don’t follow rules of, you know, normal celebrities or what their publicist tells them to say or anything. I don’t do publicity stunts, period. So don’t ever think that.”
Kanye on why Kimmel’s BBC interview sketch angered him so much:
“When I saw the skit, which I didn’t even watch all the way through because I didn’t want to be infuriated, I said, ‘Well, I know you.’ So a combination of me knowing you, but also me not knowing the person who put a bad headline on the cover of In Touch, and me not knowing this person. I was like, ‘Well, this is the one person I know. So I can I can go and let out everything I feel about every single bogus weekly cover, every single bogus skit, every single rumor in barbershop, every single thing that people think is okay to treat celebrities like zoo animals. Or act like what they’re saying is not serious, or their life is not serious, or their dreams are not serious.”
Kanye coming out of the celebrity closet…as a creative genius:
“When I did that interview, I was just really vocal about a lot of things that I had been dealing with for the past 10 years when I was put into the classification of just ‘a celebrity.’ For me, I’m a creative genius, and there’s no other way to word it. I know you’re not supposed to say that about yourself, and I say things the wrong way a lot of times, but my intention is always positive.”
See video: Before Kanye West’s Bizarre Rambling on Kimmel: 5 Other Late-Night Meltdowns (Video)
Kanye on helping people by producing cool stuff:
“I’m going to bring more things to the world. I want to help the world. I want to make people’s lives easier. I spent two of my checks in telemarketing when I was 18 years old on my first pair of Gucci slippers. And this was before there was H&M, Azara — you know, you couldn’t just find cool stuff when you were growing up and I care about cool stuff. It means something to me, it means something to a lot of people that are like me.”
Kanye on doing anything he puts his mind to:
You do music, you can do anything. Once you learn how to produce, at that point, you’re a producer and you understand textures and colors. I have an art background before I was even a musician. People told me I couldn’t rap and had all this advice for me about how I shouldn’t try to rap, but you know — and I wouldn’t even say that I’m a rapper.
Kanye on not being a rapper:
“I’d say I’m more of a messenger than a rapper. So even when you say ‘rap beef’ it sorta undermines it. It keeps on re-contexting what I said, where as if you guys looked at what I said in this insane interview, it’s really something extremely fearless for someone in my position to do, because most people just bow down to TV or bow down to these cameras. I could care less abut any of these cameras. In all honesty, all I care about is my family. I care about protecting my girl, protecting my baby and protecting my ideas and my dreams.
Kanye on honesty:
“I’m totally weird, and I’m totally honest and I’m totally inappropriate sometimes. The thing is, for me to say I wasn’t a genius, I would just be lying to you and myself.”
Kanye on being Kanye, and us learning to love it:
“I’m just going to give y’all the truth and you’re going to learn to love it. It’s like, my grandfather loved Ali until the day he died, and my grandmother hated Ali till she passed. So you gonna love me, or you’re going to hate me, but I’m going to be me.”
Kanye on Pooping:
“Yeah, that’s when I think of the best shit.”
Kanye on “wiling out” on Kimmel over Twitter:
As we were writing it, there was a frustration that I was getting out, but also they were really funny to me as I was writing it. I just thought it was so amazing that I was saying this in real time, in real life. You know what I’m saying? With my position, because people would be so scared to say anything as soon as you’re a celebrity you’re not allowed to say anything anymore. But just to completely wild out — and the only reason we could do that is because we could speak on a similar level. We could go back and forth.
Kanye on breaking the big, bad media:
“I feel like media does everything they can to break creatives, to break artists, to break people’s spirits, and I do everything I can to break media.”
Kanye on fashion:
“Fashion isn’t always practical. It’s more about emotion. It’s more about swag. It’s more about, you know, pussy. It’s more about, like, club. It’s like, It’s more about style and stuff.”
Kanye on black people in fashion:
“Currently in fashion, and the way the fashion world works, there’s no black guy at the end of the runway in Paris, in all honesty.”
Kanye on racism:
It’s not about racism, anymore. It’s classism. That’s what I talked about. Like Paula Deen? She was old school with it. They’re like, ‘We don’t do it like that anymore!” … so this classism is what they do to try to say, ‘Well, you’re a rapper or your girl is on a reality TV show, so you’re not up here with us. We’re old money. It’s snobbery.”
Kanye on snobbery:
“I’m not into all that snobbery, like, seriously.”
Kanye on his purpose in life:
“When I compare myself to Steve Jobs or Walt Disney, Howard Hughes, David Stern, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Jesus or whatever, I’m saying these are my heroes. These are people that I look up to. This is the type of impact I want to make on the Earth. If I could make this type of impact up to this point, what can I do if you called Bob Iger and said, ‘Yo, give him a shot!’ If you called Oprah and say, ‘Yo, back this kid. His parents were educators, he wants to educate. He wants to look at curriculums and say how do we re-simplify that?’ Exactly what I did in music, I want to apply to product and apply to education.”
Kanye on the paparazzi:
“The way paparazzi talks to me and my family is disrespectful, also. You know what I’m saying? We bring something of joy to the world. When people hear my music, they have a good time and I Should be respected as such when I walk down the street. Don’t ask me a question about something you saw in the tabloids. Don’t try to antagonize me. You know what? It’s not safe for you in this zoo.”
Kanye on the paparazzi after an applause break:
“People say, ‘Well, you signed up to be a celebrity, blah, blah, blah.’ And I understand paparazzi. I understand you gotta get your money. It’s hard out here — blah, blah, blah — but lets have respect for each other. You do help me get money, paparazzi. You show people how fresh my outfit is.”
Kanye on false humility, which apparently is running rampant in Hollywood:
“It comes with your first ticket to L.A. As soon as you get off a plane here’s a thing of false humility, and maybe if you just keep up the act long enough, and go with this agency — blah, blah, blah — you might just get a star on the Walk of Fame one day, and shit for kissing everybody’s ass.”
Kanye on Kim Kardashian‘s Hollywood legacy:
“By the way, I want to shout out the Walk of Fame real quick. They said something about they’re not going to put my girl on the Walk of Fame because she’s a reality star. It’s like, people are so, so dated and not modern. It’s like there’s no way that Kim Kardashian shouldn’t have a star on the Walk of Fame.”
This Jimmy Kimmel interview is the truth!
— Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian) October 10, 2013