On Thursday afternoon, Kanye West will appear on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to discuss his infamous Twitter rants, his family, his fashion interests, and more. Clips from the show have already made their way online, and they feature Kanye talking extensively about the impact he wants to make on the world.
At the beginning of his sitdown interview with Ellen DeGeneres—which you can watch in the clip above—Kanye began by saying, “Nope,” when Ellen asked him if he regrets anything he has ever sent out on Twitter. However, he then admitted that he probably should have saved the tweets he sent out about Mark Zuckerberg in February for Facebook. If you don’t remember, Kanye asked Zuckerberg for financial assistance in a series of tweets and said he needed money “to bring more ideas to the world.”
“Now I understand why he didn’t hit me back,” Kanye told Ellen. “I understand that Zuckerberg doesn’t use Twitter. Even though I have had dinner with him and his wife and told him about how I wanted to help the world and he said he would help me and blah, blah, blah. That’s how it feels. It’s like The Pursuit of Happyness. It’s like you’re trying to sell this bone density machine or something. I feel that if I had more resources, I could help more people. I have ideas that can make the human race’s existence, within our 100 years, better.”
After Kanye provided that answer, Ellen pushed him to explain himself further. She asked him to provide people with specific examples of how he plans to change the world, and Kanye responded by going on a long, passionate rant that included him touching on everything from his music to his clothing line. He also heard several people in the Ellen audience laughing towards the end of his rant and apologized for his “realness.” You can read his full rant here:
We’re in a renaissance period. We’re in a place where people are multi-disciplined artists. Like Steve McQueen who directed 12 Years a Slave. He was considered to just be a photographer, but then he won an Oscar. We’re not in a place where people can only have one career or one profession throughout their entire life. So the exact amount of emotion and color palette and sonics and everything I put into my music, I put them into shoes and they worked.
‘Kanye’s pissing everybody off.’ They try to position that through the media in some way that I’m like, whatever. Whatever your friends might say. ‘I saw Kanye.’ ‘How was he? Did he…?’ I care about people. My dad lived in homeless shelters less than five years ago. To find out he’s a psych major. My mom was the first black female chair of the English department at Chicago State University. I was raised to do something, to make a difference.
You know, I didn’t take the Oscars as a joke. It was funny. It was like the moment. All black actors can talk about the glass ceilings that we’ve dealt with out in this town. And this is the moment. ‘You get your night. Go ahead. Chris Rock is going to do it. Bam. Talk about how many times you’ve been blocked from being able to excel.’ I didn’t take it as a joke. It ain’t no joke, as Rakim said. It ain’t no joke. ‘I used to let the mic smoke, now I slam it and make sure it’s broke.’ That’s what I was raised on—Rakim, Phife Dawg, hip hop, expression. ‘Hip hop started out in the park…’
Everybody’s trying to…I don’t care how much you sold, if you’re playing on radio. Are you connecting? Picasso is dead. Steve Jobs is dead. Walt Disney is dead. Name somebody living that you can name in the same breath as them. Don’t tell me about being likable. We got 100 years here. We’re one race, the human race, one civilization. We’re a blip in the existence of the universe, and we constantly try to pull each other down. Not doing things to help each other. That’s my point. It’s like I’m shaking talking about it. I know it’s daytime TV, but I feel I can make a difference while I’m here.
I feel that I can make things better through my skill set. I am an artist. Five years old, art school Ph.D, Art Institute of Chicago. I am an artist. I have a condition called synesthesia where I see sounds. I see them. Everything that I sonically make is a painting. I see it. I see the importance in the value of everyone being able to experience a more beautiful life.
When I make clothes…It’s funny because I’ll sit there with Obama and Leo’s talking about the environment and I’m talking about clothes and everyone looks at me like, ‘That’s not an important issue.’ But I remember going to school in fifth grade and wanting to have a cool outfit. I called the head of Payless. I’m like, ‘I want to work with you. I want to take all this information that I’ve learned from sitting in all these fashion shows and knocking on all these doors and buying all these expensive clothes, and I want to take away bullying.’
Michael Jackson and Russell Simmons is the reason I was able to go so far in music. There was a time when Michael Jackson couldn’t get his video on MTV because he was considered to be ‘urban.’ The Michael Jackson. So I literally have to be the Michael Jackson of apparel in order to break open the doors of everyone that will come after I’m gone. After I’m dead. After they call me ‘Wacko Kanye.’ [crowd laughter] Isn’t that so funny? That people point fingers at the people who have influenced us the most. They talk the most shit about the people who cared the most. I’m sorry daytime television. I’m sorry for the realness.
In a less serious segment, Kanye and Ellen played a game called “5 Second Rule” that required them to name three things that applied to a prompt in less than five seconds. After he was asked to “name three things that are hairy,” Kanye replied with “balls, balls, balls.”
During his Ellen appearance, Kanye also talked about how his daughter North is adjusting to the birth of his son Saint.
“She’s really advanced for her age,” he said.
“What does she do?” Ellen asked.
“She’ll prop him up on the pillow,” Kanye said.
Kanye’s Ellen interview will air on TV this afternoon. If you missed it, you can also check out Drake’s appearance on Ellen from Wednesday here.
