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Kanye West might be good at ruffling up feathers and riling critics up with his consistent rants, but there are still many gems of thoughts, ideas, and information that we all should pay attention to.
The Yeezus rapper recently spoke at Oxford University Museum of Natural History earlier today, and he addressed a ton of topics.
Speaking for 20 minutes to about 350 students, `Ye talked about wanting to do fine art at a younger age, Nicki Minaj’s famous verse on “Monster,” Drake dominating the charts, and talking to Obama on his house phone. He also revealed that Steve McQueen is directing his music video for “All Day,” the new track he performed last week at the 2015 BRIT Awards.
A transcript of the lecture was posted by The Tab, which you should try and read when you have a little bit of time, as it’s pretty long.
Read a snippet below, and the full lecture here.
“I’ll take one question. I wanted to vibe off an idea, and then I can riff off of that…they said I’ve got 20 minutes or so, I might go longer.
“OK, everyone please be completely quiet, because I can literally hear a whisper, and it’ll throw off my stream of consciousness, and when I get my stream of consciousness going that’s when I give the best, illest quotes. Literally, a whisper can throw it off.
“Today was the first time I realised, If I could have done it again I would have gone to the Art Institute over the American Academy of Art, I would have researched where I could have got the best and the strongest education.
“And I’m sure this will end up online, so I don’t want to diss anyone at the American Academy, I’m sure it’s equal to the Art Institute of Chicago by now, but at the time I was going I would look around at the work of the class and not feel inspired by the teachers, and I kinda, the idea of being a fine artist, that’s a really difficult profession to get into, to be respected in, to make money at. Maybe the goal for some of the people was just to work at an advertising agency or at a record label.
“My goal, if I was going to do art, fine art, would have been to become Picasso or greater.
“That always sounds so funny to people, comparing yourself to someone in the past that has done so much, and in your life you’re not even allowed to think that you can do as much. That’s a mentality that suppresses humanity.
“Some of you here probably remember the night when the Donda tweets came through me and I started talking about professions that you guys are going into, that seemed they had nothing to do with a rapper. I was talking about a band of thinkers that could remove religion, race, gender, and somehow come together to find solutions for a broken planet.
“We have the resources as a civilisation to find a utopia, but we’re led by the most greedy and the least noble.
“What I notice about creatives is that, and one of the reasons why I get into trouble, is, not only do I want to design video games, or make music, or ride bikes, I think one of the most important things to my ability to create so much in the past 30 years is my desire to play sports. I approach creativity like a sport, where if I have a drawing I react just like a jock: LOOK AT THE FUCKING DRAWING RIGHT THERE YEAH!
“We’re all creatives here, we’re all born artists. Some people are artists of business, some people are artists of composition.
SOURCE: The Tab | PHOTO CREDIT: Splash
