Kanye West BBC interview with Zane Lowe: Listen to the full interview and read the best quotes.

The Best Quotes From Kanye West’s BBC Interview, Part 2

The Best Quotes From Kanye West’s BBC Interview, Part 2

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Slate's Culture Blog
Sept. 24 2013 2:20 PM

The Best Quotes From Kanye West’s BBC Interview, Part 2

Kanye West
Kanye West has surprisingly intimate knowledge of Wreck-It Ralph.

Still from YouTube

In part 1 of Zane Lowe’s rare radio interview with Kanye West, he managed to discuss everything from Star Wars to his struggles with America’s racial dynamics to wanting to get into water bottle design.

Today, the full audio from the interview went online, and, as with yesterday's segment, it's full of uniquely Kanye insights and gems. In it he discusses the Internet, explains why he called himself “a god,” and makes a compelling case for how he’s like Vanellope Von Schweetz from Wreck-It Ralph.

The audio is a little glitchy—and Kanye is clearly more interested in talking fashion than music—but it’s worth listening to the interview in full. If you don’t have time for the entire, hour-long tour through the fascinating mind of Kanye West, we’ve rounded up a selection of the best quotes below.

On Lady Gaga
“Look at Gaga. She’s the creative director of Polaroid. I like some of the Gaga songs. What the fuck does she know about cameras?”

On self-love as political act
“We got this new thing called classism. It’s racism’s cousin. This is what we do to hold people back. This is what we do. And we got this other thing that’s also been working for a long time when you don’t have to be racist anymore. It’s called self-hate. It works on itself. It’s like real estate of racism. Where just like that, when someone comes up and says something like, ‘I am a god,’ everybody says ‘Who does he think he is?’ I just told you who I thought I was. A god. I just told you. That’s who I think I am. Would it have been better if I had a song that said ‘I am a gangster’ or if I had a song that said ‘I am a pimp.’ All those colors and patinas fit better on a person like me, right? But to say you are a god, especially when you got shipped over to the country that you’re in, and your last name is a slave owner’s. How could you say that? How could you have that mentality?”

On the Internet
“It’s our Earth. Like, you remember, like, you’d see future movies, and everything was in the sky? Like, it moved to the sky? That’s the Internet! That’s what it is! That’s our sky! That’s our future sky! We kinda thought we knew what it was, and it’s flying cars. … We didn’t get flying cars, but we can send movies, in, like, two seconds.”

On Kim Kardashian
“She was in a powerful enough situation where she could love me without asking for money. Which is really hard for me to find.”

On splitting his time between music and fashion
“I’ve dedicated the last 10 years of my life to this. I’ve spent 80 percent of my time working on this, and 20 percent working on music. Why do you think the song ‘Niggas in Paris’ was called ‘Niggas in Paris’? Because niggas was in Paris! That’s why we were in Paris. I put in the 10,000 hours.”

Vanellope Von Schweetz aka "the glitch" from Wreck-It Ralph
Vanellope Von Schweetz aka "the glitch."

©2012 Disney. All Rights Reserved.

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On fashion being in his DNA
“It’s in my code. Have y’all ever seen Wreck-It Ralph? You remember how that girl in there … the glitch. You’re tellin’ me people don’t look at Kanye West like the glitch. Right now. And she was on the side of the video game, the whole time! It’s in my code. It’s in my code. [Zane Lowe: …I see what some people say in comments and whatever after these things get posted, and I go alright, those are the people that think you’re the glitch.”] Yeah, they broke Vanellope’s car! Vanellope Von Schweetz, they broke her car!”

On what he likes the most
“For me, first of all, dopeness is what I like the most. Dopeness. People who want to make things as dope as possible. And, by default, make money from it. The thing that I like the least are people who only want to make money from things whether they’re dope or not. And especially make money at making things as least dope as possible.”

On how people will react to this interview
“People are going to look at this interview and say, ‘I don’t like Kanye. Look, he looks mad. I don’t like his teeth.’ They’re gonna say, ‘Why doesn’t he just focus on music? I liked him as music.’ They’re gonna say ‘Hey, I want the old Kanye, blah blah blah.’ But one thing they will do? They will play this interview in five years. They will play this interview in ten years, and say, ‘He called that, he called that, he called that…’ ”

Previously
The Best Quotes From Kanye West's BBC Interview, Part 1