Kanye and Sway – You Ain’t Got The Answers!

This Kanye West interview with Sway is easily one of the most fascinating interviews of the year. Kanye is on another level of thought which can be misconstrued as nuts. It’s hard to tell if he’s always on point because to people watching him he comes off as incredibly egotistical and thinks of himself as someone who is rising above. The title of his latest album is Yeezus. He’s not naming himself after Jesus which is a common misconception and would probably make people think he’s a bit full of himself. When broken down, Yeezus is Yee-is-us. I’m not sure if us is black people or a human being but he’s saying that he stands for the people. Knowing that Kanye thinks that everything Kanye does is higher level, I wanted to breakdown some of his answers with Sway and try to get into the mind of someone of this caliber.

[pullquote align=”right” background=”on”]I am Warhol! I am #1 most impactful artist of our generation. I am Shakespeare in the flesh. Walt Disney. Nike. Google – Kanye[/pullquote]

Kanye is one of the easiest people to interview because he has so much going through his head and can talk for minutes at a time uninterrupted. The first thing I noticed is that he has been playing ball with the bigger corporations in fashion and is finding the industry difficult to deal with. He’s upset with Nike and the way they are handling his sneaker the Red October’s. Nike has “marginalized” him and this bothers him. This poor relationship being described by Kanye and the corporations pushed Sway to ask why Kanye doesn’t do these types of deals himself? He calmly answered “you need proper production to bring something that has a certain value.” I thought this was a brilliant answer because you need Nike because they have the set up. Sure he could do it himself but it would take his time to make it happen the correct way and he’s always balancing time and money. When he’s working on his fashion, he isn’t working on his rapping. He then gives some wonderful business advice when he says when he’s not rapping, he’s losing relevance and relevance is power. He’s juggling so many balls that he can’t do everything himself.

This thought of him concentrating on his fashion and not rapping lead into a comment on how he is #7 behind Big Sean on the 2012 MTV’s Hottest MC list. You can tell he took this personally by his look in the interview. He made it a point to address this when he asked Sway “what do you think now” which was after Yeesus came out this year? Sway slyly says, your #1. It was even amazing when he asked who was hotter right now Kanye or Drake, Kanye answered Drake which I thought was incredible. Even behind his egotism, he still lives in some reality which is quite extraordinary.

The climax of the interview is at 17:23 where Kanye loses it. Sway again asks why don’t you do it yourself and Kanye started spazzing out that Sway doesn’t have the answers. He took it like Sway was telling him what to do and he started with the phrase, “You Ain’t Got The Answers!” He lost his cool which was quite amusing and entertaining. He even took a pot shot at Sway when he said, “What’s the name of your clothing line. We don’t know.” This came at about the same time where he paraded that he’s 13 million dollars in debt to his clothing line. The way he looks at money was strange too because he was saying how there are about 20 hot celebrities a year who have power but that it won’t last forever. Yet if you were a billionaire you could make the celebrity status last forever. The oddest part was when he said there are “1,470 billionaires in the world.” Who the fuck knows that specific of a number of how many billionaires there are unless you are someone who aspires to be one. Which there is nothing wrong with but it’s quite apparent money is on his mind.

To conclude the interview, Sway asks Kanye to rap a little bit for the audience. It starts here and it’s classic. Watching his face when the beat starts immediately makes me wonder what is going through his mind. Is he thinking of something to say? Is he getting into the groove? Then he starts rapping by not rhyming which is hilarious if you ask me. He’s using the higher level thought process that I read in a Steve Martin book that says that he would tell jokes without a punchline. I think the rapping at the end is someone who thinks incredibly hard at what their image is and what they are trying to produce. I have a lot of respect for Kanye even though he’s definitely bonkers. Don’t forget, he married and has a child with Kim Kardashian.