Kanye West is one of the most complex creatives of our generation. In fact, we’ve seen so many different sides to the Yeezus rapper, it’s hard to tell what version of him we’ll get when he sits down for an interview.
After accepting the Visionary Award at the 2015 BET Honors this past weekend, ‘Ye decided to chat with good friend Ellen DeGeneres and talk all things North West, Adidas, and creativity on her talk show. Kanye was in a pretty awesome mood, as he revealed how many kids he wants with Kim and gave the world some perspective on his “terrible twos” phase.
When asked how marriage has changed him, Kanye responded with this sweet tidbit:
“I’ve definitely learned how to compromise more, which is something you have to understand when you partner with people in business. And I’ve learned how to shut up more. I think I’m a better human being because of her [Kim Kardashian] and because of my daughter, and I have always someone to think about going home to, something for me to not only to be brave for what I want to do for humanity but also to be more protective of myself for my family. Because there’s things I’ve done in the past that were considered negative, but I was really jumping in front of the tank for other people, or for culture in a way. So now, I always have to have that in my mind that I have a family that I have to protect, too.”
When Ellen acknowledged the change in how he’s expressing himself, Kanye had this to say:
“I think I was going through, like, my version of my terrible twos. My daughter, she wants to express herself but she just doesn’t have the words for it, and for me there’s so many things I want to do with film, with clothing, and I just didn’t have the words, or the resources, or the backing, or the perception that I could do it, being that I was a rapper. You know, all these things. And now, because of this Adidas deal, they allowed me a little bit of oxygen.”
Kanye continued:
“Because what you have to understand… the difference between what people give you about celebrity, the idea of money versus creativity – there’s no amount of money that someone can give you to make you not be creative, if you were born to create. So a lot of times people try to block you, block your creativity, control you with money, and Adidas allowed me to make my whole clothing line, which I wanted to do, and it was just, like, a little bit of oxygen. You guys – last year, two years ago, 3 years.. whatever – you guys were seeing someone being suffocated by perception, being suffocated by people in a position that could blatantly see ‘Wow, the Yeezys did really good, he was this influential, all those albums did this, but we’re not going to give him a shot at something else.’ And there’s a lot of people who were really calm about that, but the definition of crazy is trying to do the same thing and expect a different result. So, I tried something different over the past couple years and I actually got some really good results from it too, so.”
Check out the rest of Yeezy’s interview above, plus Ellen rapping for him below. He also premiered a very sweet video for “Only One,” an ode to his daughter, and it features baby Nori herself. Watch here.
SOURCE: EllenTube | PHOTO CREDIT: Splash
