Kanye West covers the new issue of Interview Mag. The interview is conducted by Steve McQueen, the director of 12 Years a Slave. I’m surprised that McQueen is such a huge Kanye fan, but now that’s I’ve read most of the interview, I guess it’s not surprising. McQueen has a lot of respect for Kanye as a visual artist and a musician, and oddly enough, Kanye tones down the rants a bit around McQueen, an artist he obviously respects. Yeezington talks a lot about his car accident and how the accident basically allowed him to spend several months in solitude, working on his first album, and how important it was for him to take a step back to follow his dreams. He also talks about fatherhood and all of that good stuff – you can read the full piece here, and here are some highlights:

His car accident: “It gave me perspective on life—that it was really now or 100 percent never. I think that people don’t make the most of their lives. So, you know, for me, right now it seems like it’s the beginning of me rattling the cage, of making some people nervous. And people are strategically trying to do things to mute my voice in some way or make me look like I’m a lunatic or pinpoint the inaccuracies in my grammar to somehow take away from the overall message of what I’m saying … As my grandfather would say, ‘Life is a performance.’ I’m giving all that I have in this life. I’m opening up my notebook and I’m saying everything in there out loud.”

Throwing out the success of Dark Fantasy to make Yeezus: “So I just had to throw it all in the trash. I had to not follow any of the rules because there was no way to match up to the previous album. Dark Fantasy was the first time you heard that collection of sonic paintings in that way. So I had to completely destroy the landscape and start with a new story. Dark Fantasy was the fifth installment of a collection that included the four albums before it. It’s kind of the “Luke, I am your father” moment. Yeezus, though, was the beginning of me as a new kind of artist. Stepping forward with what I know about architecture, about classicism, about society, about texture, about synesthesia—the ability to see sound—and the way everything is everything and all these things combine, and then starting from scratch with Yeezus …”

Healing from the 2009 VMA backlash ‘mentally, physically, spiritually’: “It’s funny that you would say “mentally, physically, spiritually” because my answer before you even said that was going to be “god, sex, and alcohol.” Well, I don’t have an addictive personality, so that means that I can lean on what might be someone else’s vice just enough to make it through to the next day. You know, just enough religion, a half-cup of alcohol with some ice in it and a nice chaser, and then …Yeah—a lot of sex. And then I’d make it to the next week.”

The “Bound 2” video: “I think all that stuff around it is just that: controversy. I think people are afraid of dreams, and that video is one of the closest things to the way that dreams look and feel, or the way joy looks and feels, with the colors. You know, I think there are rules to fashion, with the all-black everything, and rules to art, with white galleries. There are rules to how a lot of things are: the concrete jungle, stone pavement, brick walls. There are even rules to what a Brooklyn apartment looks like. But this video completely didn’t respect any of those rules whatsoever. [laughs] It’s a dream, and I think the controversy comes from the fact that I don’t think most people are comfortable with their own dreams, so it’s hard for them to be comfortable with other people’s dreams. I mean, look, it took some time for us to be comfortable with a walking, talking mouse, but that became an icon. So this stuff, what I’m doing now, is the beginning of me throwing out what it means to be a rapper—you know, with the gold chain …”

He’s a fine artist: “Well, I’m a trained fine artist. I went to art school from the time I was 5 years old. I was, like, a prodigy out of Chicago. I’d been in national competitions from the age of 14. I got three scholarships to art schools—to St. Xavier, to the American Academy of Art, and to the Art Institute of Chicago—and I went to the American Academy of Art. So the joke that I’ve actually played on everyone is that the entire time, I’ve actually just been a fine artist. I just make sonic paintings, and these sonic paintings have led me to become whatever people think of when you say “Kanye West.” Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way. I mean, you know as much as anyone how important the visuals are. So I like to collaborate with different masters—whether it’s George Condo or Nick Knight or Takashi Murakami—on the visuals that are connected to the pieces, and just have a simple high school conversation with whoever I’m working with and bring our thoughts together, but ultimately what we do is through the lens of that collaborator, and it ends up being their final hand.”

Oh, he’s a Gemini: “Well, I’d be biased to think that the community of Geminis is the most consistently in tune with what their spirit is telling them to do or why they have breath in their lungs. But I do think that creative Geminis—Tupac, Biggie, Prince, Miles Davis, all being Geminis—have, throughout history, been really in tune with those things. You know, some different friends of mine have been showing me these interviews that Tupac did and how they’re very simple and to the point. I watched them, and one of the things that Tupac kept saying is that he wanted thugs to be recognized. Now Jay-Z is a multi-hundred-millionaire who came from the streets, so Tupac’s mission, in a way, has been realized. But my mission is very different from Tupac’s—and I’m not Tupac. But I think that when I compare myself to Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Howard Hughes, or whoever, it’s because I’m trying to give people a little bit of context to the possibilities that are in front of me, as opposed to putting me in the rap category that the Grammys has put me in. In no way do I want to be the next any one of them. But I am the first me. So I only mention those other names to try to give people a little bit of context.”

His mama: “It’s funny, because I think about … You know, the sketchbook, the train of my ideas, is named after her. It’s called Donda. And it’s amazing because my grandfather, who just passed away this year, was named Portwood, and he had the sensibility, as a Southern black man out of Oklahoma, to name his daughter Donda. And then Donda had the sensibility to name her son Kanye. How futuristic and worldly are both of those names? And then the teachings and the confidence that was instilled by my grandfather into my mother, and from my mother into me—which will now, of course, be instilled by me into North—will create the best winter coat against doubters and dream-killers ever made.”

Fatherhood: “I think I have to experience it for another few years to be able to give you an opinion. It’s all brand new, how it feels to be a father. There are some things that I understand, certain things that I don’t understand, certain things that I like to get off my chest in interviews, certain things that I want to talk about. But when we talk about love, I don’t have an answer. All I can say is that I’m happy I have it… Well, I’ve got my astronaut family. You know, becoming famous is like being catapulted into space—sometimes without a space suit. We’ve seen so many people combust, suffocate, get lost in all these different things. But to have an anchor of other astronauts and to make a little space family … I mean, it’s not like I’m the guy in The Hunger Games [2012] begging for people to like me. I’m almost the guy with the least amount of “likes.” I wanted a family. So god gives you opportunities, and you make sacrifices for something that’s greater.”

[From Interview]

There’s so much more but you should really just read the whole piece. I’m sorry if I gave the impression that Kanye is toning it down overall – he’s not. He just doesn’t seem as angry as usual. He’s still pretty crazy and rant-prone, but I still love reading his interviews. There is literally no one else talking like this, about art and about themselves. It’s fascinating.

Photos courtesy of Interview Mag, Fame/Flynet.