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Kanye West sees himself as some sort of savior–for music and fashion. During his highly talked about interview with BBC Radio 1’s Zane Lowe, Kanye West attacked the glass ceiling Black musicians and artists face and denounced racism across the industries, all while ironically using his “valley voice” to do so–I digress. Among other things (we’ll get to that in a few) Kanye made it obvious he has no desire to be on the radio, and didn’t make an album docile enough to do so. “I look round the room and there is no one here who looks like me,” he said during to Lowe. “And if there is, they are keeping quiet.”

But the quotes don’t stop there, keep reading…

1. On “N****s In Paris”

“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.”

2. On Lady Gaga

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

3. 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.”

4. On self-hate

“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?”

“I have driven my Truman Show boat into the painting. I have hit a glass ceiling.”

he continued, noting that Blacks are limited to only being creative on T-shirts, “but if it’s anything else, your Truman Show boat is hitting the wall,” he said. This all made for a smooth transition into his passion for fashion.

MUST READ: Want To Work For Yeezus? Kanye West Posts Job Openings For His New Clothing Line On LinkedIn

5. 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.”

6. On creating school uniforms in the future

“But if it’s anything else, your ‘Truman Show’ boat is hitting the wall. … I want to make uniforms for my high school basketball team. I want to make that one step, and then another step. And then eventually do uniforms for the entire city. Then I want those uniforms to be hot and make money, then I eventually want to be the anchor and the force behind a billion-dollar company … and I eventually want to be the anchor of the first trillion-dollar company.”

7. On his song “Gold Digger”

“I designed the set … okay, ‘Surround Vision,’ there should be a screen above you, below you, to the left, to the right and in front you also,” he said. “Then I pay my own money that I get paid for doing ‘Gold Digger,’ which I never really liked that song, but I knew I would get paid for doing ‘Gold Digger.’ ”

8. On Michael Jackson:

“For me, as Kanye West, I would not be Kanye West if it wasn’t for Michael Jackson,” he says. “Michael Jackson, he had to fight to get his video played because he was black. This is Michael Jackson.”

9. On leather jogging pants

”Whether I’m at a dinner with Anna Wintour or a listening party with Pusha-T, or in Rome with Virgil, giving Fendi our designs and getting them knocked down … [We] brought the leather jogging pants six years ago to Fendi, and they said no. How many motherf***ers you done seen with a leather jogging pant?”

10. 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…’ ”

He may be erratic and a bit off the walls, but let’s face it, Kanye West is a musical genius. He constantly pushes boundaries and isn’t afraid to revolt against a society that holds Black artists by their ankles. He’s surely crazy, but aren’t the greatest artists all a little insane?

MUST READ: Kanye West Thanks Kim Kardashian: ‘She Gave Me Everything. She Gave Me A Family!’

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For 2024’s iteration of MadameNoire and HelloBeautiful’s annual series Women to Know, we knew we wanted to celebrate the people who help make the joys of film and television possible. To create art is to create magic. This year, we spotlight Hollywood Executive’s changing the face of cinema.