Kanye West Believes ‘Yeezus’ and ‘808s & Heartbreak’ Is Better Than ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’

This morning (Oct. 6), Kanye West sat down for a live and uncut interview with SHOWStudio's Lou Stoppard​. During the interview, he talked extensively about his fashion career and endeavors plus pretty much everything that's going on in his life right now. He briefly talked about music. 'Ye believes that Yeezus and 808s & Heartbreak were better albums than My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy He says that the latter is more of an apology project to his fans. He didn't talk much about his forthcoming album, Swish, but he did say that he changed the name from So Help Me God to Swish because he felt like he put too much pressure on his shoulders. He stated that he's releasing the Cruel Summer movie, but didn’t reveal any details. Cruel Summer was a compilation album by G.O.O.D. Music, Kanye's label, which released in 2012. Kanye also reiterated that he is definitely running for president in 2020 and has been talking about it with his team for the past five years. Watch the interview above.

Here are some of his best fashion quotes from the interview below, read the rest here.

On if he felt he would be criticized less if he was a white artist:
If I was a white man that became a really successful musician, that box would have put me in a chamber that would have said I shouldn’t work. There are white people that are super good at something they also get discriminated against in another field. You could be a photographer and someone could say you can’t be an artist. You could be a designer and someone could say you can’t be a musician, or someone could say you can’t be a film director. As far as the advantages in life, yes if you are born white you have that in your gene pool currently, because the world is controlled by whites. You have that at 100 as an advantage. If you add a couple of other things to it, then you have a really high chance of success. If you’re born black and you make it to something like the Met Ball or the Grammys, most likely you’ve done ten times the amount of everyone else there to get there.

On being and calling himself a creative genius:
"When people try to take the piss out of  me for clothing, they never think about the fact I never had the opportunity to be properly educated. And if given the opportunity to be properly educated or given the proper support group, I would completely light the lights out. We sell shoes that people want to line up for because we put love in them. We put heart in them, we want to make Christmas presents. We make something people want so bad it hurts them if they can't have it. It's not just a financial opportunity—of course you need finances—but it's a form of discrimination and racism especially with blacks in fashion. It literally... It took me being Kanye West to get this far in fashion. I was able to become a multimillionaire and invest in myself because no one else would have in a million years."

On being criticized in fashion and how that affects him:
"I'm convinced that I know what I like. I just know. I know and I don't care. I don't care because anyone that's criticizing mostly likely saw the 350s and acted like they didn't like them because they're racist and discriminatory. They're not only racist against black people, they discriminate against celebrities, people with multiple art forms. They discriminate against... Or they can say, 'Oh wait a second that cut wasn't that good.' But they do enough to throw a stab at all that. 'That didn't fall the right way or that wasn't styled the right way.' But they didn't do the research on how difficult it was to, one by one, put together a design team and fight against the idea of celebrity, to get overcharged because you're a musician or people feel like you have money. And I love it because it's like going to Harvard. That's the reason I'm in fashion. I think it's the ultimate training.

"I dropped out of art school—eventually I got a PhD at The Art Institute of Chicago—but I dropped out of that school and wanted to go back to the school of hardknocks. And right now, I feel that... Whatever the fuck I'm gonna say to them I'm gonna say it, and I'm just going to fucking own it. That's how I feel right now. If I feel differently in three years, I'll tell you how I feel. But right now, the highest art form is actually fashion. And what's funny about that is people in art look down on fashion designers. The most energy currently is around fashion because in music it's within question if a song is popular if that person is a really good artist or not. In fashion, if someone is popular it's because it's agreed upon that they're an amazing artist, they're amazing at what they've done. And people do the history on what their background is. Did they intern for Christian Lacroix? Did they work at Margiela for a period? They find out what the history is and see if that person is making a connection to something that is current, is relative, that's in touch. Fashion designers are superstars currently, too.

"It feels like hip-hop felt to me in the '90s. Me, I'm a hip-hop artist but 'Why are you going to the fashion world?' I mean, it's just a really interesting art form. It's just a different art form. Every... Business is art, the way you talk to people is art, and interview can be a form of art. Everything is art. I appreciate the critics because when I see the collection I just did... When I use the stretch French Terry I found in Japan and I use heavyweight canvas and I put it in my color palette and I see 64 different tones come down together I've created a moving expressionist painting, and that satisfies me. If someone wants to go up to a Monet and this wasn't on a Louis Vuitton level, I'm like, 'What do you mean? It's all an expressionist painting.' By the way, you know in 80, 60, or 50 years we'll die. We'll die, but on that day I lived."

On whether or not he was trying to make a political statement with Yeezy Season 2:
"I think it's racist when white people assume that when a black person uses color it's a political statement. [I wasn't making a political statement.] It was a painting, it was a beautiful color. People say this a political statement... That statement is not gonna stop the murders in Chicago. That statement is not gonna help people get jobs. That statement is not gonna get guns out of hands in Atlanta. That statement is not gonna stop Zimmerman from bragging about... It's such a thing... I had this one stylist come up to me, and Virgil was standing next to me, and said, 'You need to watch out for him. He's taking your place.' And I was like, 'Oh the one spot for the black guy at the dinner table in fashion? That place? Is that what you're talkin' about?' The assumption that my artistic expression of clothing has something to do with race or politics and more politically correct term ironically for racism is racist in itself. If it wasn't my intention for it to be political, and everyone gives it this credit and somehow they're giving it a credibility I'm like, 'No I don't even want that kind of credit.' I don't want anything I don't deserve. I just want a chance to drink at the clear fountain. I just want a clean shot, I just want a clean bat to swing at the wall—and it's not."