“Mr. [Kayne] West has had the most sui generis hip-hop career of the last decade. No rapper has embodied hip-hop’s often contradictory impulses of narcissism and social good quite as he has, and no producer has celebrated the lush and the ornate quite as he has,” Jon Caramanica writes for The New York Times.
“He has spent most of his career in additive mode, figuring out how to make music that’s majestic and thought-provoking and grand-scaled,” Caramanica writes. “And he’s also widened the genre’s gates, whether for middle-class values or high-fashion and high-art dreams.”
Caramanica writes, “At the same time, he’s been a frequent lightning rod for controversy, a bombastic figure who can count rankling two presidents among his achievements, along with being a reliably dyspeptic presence at award shows (when he attends them).”
Caramanica interviewed West for several hours over three days. One snippet caught our eye:
An excerpt:
I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means. I am undoubtedly, you know, Steve of Internet, downtown, fashion, culture. Period. By a long jump. I honestly feel that because Steve has passed, you know, it’s like when Biggie passed and Jay-Z was allowed to become Jay-Z.
I’ve been connected to the most culturally important albums of the past four years, the most influential artists of the past ten years. You have like, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, Nicolas Ghesquière, Anna Wintour, David Stern.
I think that’s a responsibility that I have, to push possibilities, to show people: “This is the level that things could be at.” So when you get something that has the name Kanye West on it, it’s supposed to be pushing the furthest possibilities. I will be the leader of a company that ends up being worth billions of dollars, because I got the answers. I understand culture. I am the nucleus.
Full interview here.
MacDailyNews Take: Plus, he’s going to be the first man on Mars. Right after they crown him King of England, of course.