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Drake Vs Kendrick Lamar Battle Rap On KOTD

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Kanye West Interview with 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen.

A conversation between Kanye West and 12 Years A Slave director Steven McQueen (McQueen also created the backing visuals for Kanye's "Blood on the Leaves" performance at the VMAs.) The two covered a wide range of topics, including Yeezus, the Grammys, the video for "Bound 2", Kanye's 2002 car wreck, and much more. Check out excerpts below and read the full thing here.

On Yeezus:

MCQUEEN: Talk to me a little bit about Yeezus. The album before that one, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, was a phenomenal success. Did that wear on your mind when you went in to make Yeezus? WEST: Yeah! So I just had to throw it all in the trash. I had to not follow any of the rules because there was no way to match up to the previous album. Dark Fantasy was the first time you heard that collection of sonic paintings in that way. So I had to completely destroy the landscape and start with a new story. Dark Fantasy was the fifth installment of a collection that included the four albums before it. It's kind of the "Luke, I am your father" moment. Yeezus, though, was the beginning of me as a new kind of artist. Stepping forward with what I know about architecture, about classicism, about society, about texture, about synesthesia—the ability to see sound—and the way everything is everything and all these things combine, and then starting from scratch with Yeezus ... That's one of the reasons why I didn't want to use the same formula of starting the album with a track like "Blood on the Leaves," and having that Nina Simone sample up front that would bring everyone in, using postmodern creativity where you kind of lean on something that people are familiar with and comfortable with to get their attention. I actually think the most uncomfortable sound on Yeezus is the sound that the album starts with, which is the new version of what would have been called radio static. It's the sonic version of what internet static would be—that's how I would describe that opening. It's Daft Punk sound. It was just like that moment of being in a restaurant and ripping the tablecloth out from under all the glasses. That's what "On Sight" does sonically. MCQUEEN: So Yeezus was about throwing away what people want you to do—the so-called "success"—so you could move on to something else. WEST: It's the only way that I can survive. The risk for me would be in not taking one—that's the only thing that's really risky for me. I live inside, and I've learned how to swim through backlash, or maintain through the current of a negative public opinion and create from that and come through it and spring forth to completely surprise everyone—to satisfy all believers and annihilate all doubters. And at this point, it's just fun. 

On "Bound 2":

MCQUEEN: I heard about all of this controversy that came to surround [the "Bound 2" video], which I had to sort of scratch my head about. I mean, call me silly, but when I saw that video for "Bound 2," I just thought to myself, "It's just a video. It's obviously a sort of romantic video of him and his partner, and it's a bit tongue-in-cheek." WEST: Yeah. I think all that stuff around it is just that: controversy. I think people are afraid of dreams, and that video is one of the closest things to the way that dreams look and feel, or the way joy looks and feels, with the colors. You know, I think there are rules to fashion, with the all-black everything, and rules to art, with white galleries. There are rules to how a lot of things are: the concrete jungle, stone pavement, brick walls. There are even rules to what a Brooklyn apartment looks like. But this video completely didn't respect any of those rules whatsoever. [laughs] It's a dream, and I think the controversy comes from the fact that I don't think most people are comfortable with their own dreams, so it's hard for them to be comfortable with other people's dreams. I mean, look, it took some time for us to be comfortable with a walking, talking mouse, but that became an icon. So this stuff, what I'm doing now, is the beginning of me throwing out what it means to be a rapper—you know, with the gold chain ... MCQUEEN: To me, "Bound 2" looked like a Prince video. Aesthetically, it had that kind of feel. It wouldn't have looked out of place if it were part of Purple Rain [1984]. WEST: Well, I'd be biased to think that the community of Geminis is the most consistently in tune with what their spirit is telling them to do or why they have breath in their lungs. But I do think that creative Geminis—Tupac, Biggie, Prince, Miles Davis, all being Geminis—have, throughout history, been really in tune with those things. You know, some different friends of mine have been showing me these interviews that Tupac did and how they're very simple and to the point. I watched them, and one of the things that Tupac kept saying is that he wanted thugs to be recognized. Now Jay-Z is a multi-hundred-millionaire who came from the streets, so Tupac's mission, in a way, has been realized. But my mission is very different from Tupac's—and I'm not Tupac. But I think that when I compare myself to Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Howard Hughes, or whoever, it's because I'm trying to give people a little bit of context to the possibilities that are in front of me, as opposed to putting me in the rap category that the Grammys has put me in. In no way do I want to be the next any one of them. But I am the first me. So I only mention those other names to try to give people a little bit of context.

On the Grammys:

MCQUEEN: It actually stunned me to find out that you've never won Best Album at the Grammys. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but it's kind of odd, considering what you've done in music over the last decade.

WEST: I wasn't even nominated for Best Album this year. This year, I only got two nominations by the Grammys: for Best Rap Album and Best Rap Song.

MCQUEEN: Well, that's my problem with all this stuff. It's ghettoization—and I'm talking about country as much as rap. It's all just music. And I've got a problem with people kind of trying to categorize it, where it's either good or it's bad. I find it all odd, to be honest. Have you ever been nominated for Best Album?

WEST: I've been nominated for Best Album maybe three times. I made Dark Fantasy and Watch the Throne less than a year apart and neither of them got nominated. "Ni**as in Paris" [off Watch the Throne] wasn't nominated for Best Song either. But let's go into the fact that I have the most Grammys of any 36-year-old or 40-year-old or whatever, and I've never won a Grammy outside of the Rap or R&B categories. "Jesus Walks" lost Best Song to some other song; "Ni**as in Paris" wasn't nominated in that category. But those are the labels that people want to put on you. People see you in a certain way, so if I was doing a clothing line that had rock tees in it or whatever we just did for the "Yeezus" tour, which sells $400,000 of stuff in two days ... You know, I like Shame [2011] as much as 12 Years a Slave, but Hollywood likes the idea of a black director directing 12 Years a Slave more than it likes the idea of a black director directing Shame.

On the car accident:

MCQUEEN: Let's go deep very quickly then: Talk to me about who you were and who you've become—both before and after your accident, the car crash. Who are those two people, Kanye before and Kanye after? Are they different people? Was there a seismic change in who you were after you nearly lost your life?

WEST: I think I started to approach time in a different way after the accident. Before I was more willing to give my time to people and things that I wasn't as interested in because somehow I allowed myself to be brainwashed into being forced to work with other people or on other projects that I had no interest in. So simply, the accident gave me the opportunity to do what I really wanted to do. I was a music producer, and everyone was telling me that I had no business becoming a rapper, so it gave me the opportunity to tell everyone, "Hey, I need some time to recover." But during that recovery period, I just spent all my time honing my craft and making The College Dropout. Without that period, there would have been so many phone calls and so many people putting pressure on me from every direction—so many people I somehow owed something to—and I would have never had the time to do what I wanted to.

MCQUEEN: So basically, it allowed you to focus, and you realized at a certain point that it was now or never—and that you had to do it now.

WEST: Yes. It gave me perspective on life—that it was really now or 100 percent never. I think that people don't make the most of their lives. So, you know, for me, right now it seems like it's the beginning of me rattling the cage, of making some people nervous. And people are strategically trying to do things to mute my voice in some way or make me look like I'm a lunatic or pinpoint the inaccuracies in my grammar to somehow take away from the overall message of what I'm saying ...

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Daughter is made up of Elena Tonra for the vocals and Igor Haefeli on guitar. I think what first attracted me to this band, after listening to their song ‘Medicine’ from ‘The Wild Youth-EP’, was the haunting simplicity of it; indeed most of their songs have a beautiful eerie quality to them. Almost as if you’re transported to the very heart and soul of the song itself. You can feel it, feel the undertones of the song. And ‘Medicine’ demonstrates that incredibly well.The opening lines of the song resonate heavily with me:’Pick it up, pick it all up and start again. You’ve got a second chance, you could go home, escape it all. It’s just irrelevant.’I won’t bore you with why these lyrics cut so deep for me, but just keep it to the beauty of it all. Albeit a slightly melancholy song, it nevertheless has moments of, dare I say it, clarity. It’s a song that seems to in fact, be giving us a second chance. At what, it depends. Whether people feel the song describes a lost love, a time in their life they miss, an opportunity they missed, or something that brought them down.

Elena Tonra’s vocals do justice to what I think are beautiful lyrics; her almost quiet tone of voice breathes over the piano backing and the beats that almost sound like heavy breathing. For me this makes the song more inviting; her vocals stand out with a simple beat in the background, focussing entirely on the words and their meaning.

For example: ‘You’ve got a warm heart, you’ve got a beautiful brain, but it’s disintegrating.’ Of course this may seem like it’s describing a mental breakdown almost, but for me it represents how we all feel sometimes: a little bit lost. We feel fine in ourselves for most of the time, but we have these moments when we question things, we think we’re not doing our best, in fact that we don’t know what we’re doing. The line ‘you’ve got a beautiful brain, but it’s disintegrating’ for me represents society today. We are all intelligent, we all have brains, but we’re led to think that if we don’t ace tests, if we don’t get the best grades, if we do something that isn’t ‘intellectual’ we’re not clever. It’s not true. Everyone has a beautiful brain. And even those who are what society calls ‘clever.’ Their brains and their thoughts are torn to pieces. Have you ever been to university? Been told things you don’t believe? Had something driven into your head, ideas you don’t believe in? I’m not talking politically here, I’m talking life. Ideas that we have to achieve something in our life to be someone. Have you ever felt like everything you once thought, once believed in has disintegrated?

Well I have.

These thoughts are further clarified for me with the next part of the song:’You could still be, what you want to, what you said you were when I met you.’ I bet we all have dreams and wishes inside of us. Different things whether it be someone dreaming they could be a singer, actress, author, whatever. But sometimes we’re forced to, not by people, but often by ourselves, into thinking these dreams can’t become reality, so we don’t think we can be that person we want to. We think it’s easier to let go of these dreams, just become someone others expect you to. This part of the song as well, seems to describe a lost friendship to me. Two friends who have drifted apart, neither of them achieving what they want, but still holding onto hope and reminders that once everything seemed possible.

These thoughts of course are just my own, but listen to the song, the haunting vocals and melodic nature of the song and see hear for yourself the beauty in it. It may not be the most happiest of songs, but it made me feel a little bit better about myself, about what I think, what I believe in.

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From his lyrics to the artwork for his albums, Tyler the Creator is quite a creative. So it’s not too surprising when the Odd Future leader puts on his other arty hat and directs videos.

‘Glowing,’ by an artist who remains anonymous, is a dreamy pop song that sounds like something out of the late ’60s and early ’70s. The track is far removed from Tyler’s own hard rhymes. However, the rapper clearly presents a romantic and beautiful visual, which depicts the progression of a couple’s love from childhood to old age. And despite all the bad things that occur — from war to poverty — the two stay together.

“This was a song I heard nine months ago and couldn’t get out of my head,” Odd Future manager Christian Clancy told NPR. “We thought it would be a cool opportunity for Tyler to show another side of himself. I played the song for him on a plane, not knowing whether he would like it (he’s a tough audience), and he did. What people take from it is up to the viewer I suppose. Controlling the narrative seems contradictive to the point. For me it’s a challenge to the assumption that ignorance is bliss, and that challenge is as timely as it’s ever been.”

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Kanye West. Interview with Zane Lowe. Part 4.

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Kanye West. Interview with Zane Lowe. Part 3.

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Kanye West. Interview with Zane Lowe. Part 2.

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Kanye West. Interview with Zane Lowe. Part 1.

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@blackfashionbyj | Facebook 

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"His master plan reads like a stream-of-consciousness riff that becomes an epically ambitious screed (think Jerry Maguire’s infamous manifesto). There will be summer school programs with filmmaker Spike Jonze! An overhaul of the prison system! Nutritional consultation on achieving energy balance!...

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Kanye West’s Creative Agency, DONDA

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There is no denying that with his knack for catchy melodies, descriptive songwriting, and excellent beat selection, Chance displays qualities on Acid Rap that have the potential to catapult him into super-stardom. As a project itself, Acid Rap is one sweet, smooth musical journey that grapples with some serious topics in a pleasing manner.

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Aesthetic Perfection

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Aire

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Gucci interior R20 000 - R28 000+ depending on your specifications. This excludes installation and shipping.

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Drake photographed by Mario Sorrenti for GQ Magazine July 2013.