KANYE DOES FADER

Kanye is on the cover of the 58th issue of Fader magazine. Crazy interview. Here are some of the questions and answers. Go copp it.

For this issue, we’re talking to the people who inspire us, who give us something to talk about every issue. You, of course, do that, but also, by pushing the things we love to the masses, you’ve become almost like an ambassador for us.

Yeah, I just think about when Jay-Z would be like, “I do this for my culture, I do this for the hood.” I’m doing it for that. I’m doing it for where I came from being the only dude in my class that dressed in a certain way, and then finding there’s other people who think like me too, they just weren’t in my school. And I think that’s what the FADER kids are made of, people who were different or wanted something better than what was the norm. But I had to come to the realization, it wasn’t just the search for something different, but something better, a better solution. I never forget that. I just don’t want people to think that because I’m big I’m not into the same things I was into that made me big. For y’all to put me on the cover, it’s kinda dope. It feels like I’m on the right path.

Does this album feel like your purest vision then?

I always felt like that, every time. When I did The College Dropout, it was really a new idea that caught people off guard. This album is a complete new idea, some whole different shit that’s gonna change music again. I think it’s our responsibility to be fearless, to have the masses’ and radio’s ear and still push the envelope. That’s why I was always supposed to be the independent champion. And that’s why it was such a big, terrible thing when I ran on stage on Justice [at the MTV Europe Music Awards]. It was like, Aw, he’s one of them now. He’s no longer the kid who went to art school and stuff. It’s like, now he’s just…

Do you feel like you’re getting to a point with music where you’ve done all you could? Like you could move on and focus on your fashion line or something else entirely?

I can’t foresee myself not wanting to make music. What was so great about this album was at any given time, I could just Superman in the booth and pull out arguably the best rapper in the world. Is this the final frontier of music? I would think its not quite conquered yet, there’s still a ways to go. There are levels. Did you see the Michael Jackson in Budapest concert? When I look up two, three years from now, and I’m doing my own concert for five hundred thousand people, it’s like, maybe this was a beginning point. There’s gonna be people that, as big as a celebrity as I am, really just discover me on this album. I learned so much from going to those fashion shows. I thought I was making some fashionable shit on the last album, and they weren’t playing my shit. I want my music to be played the same place you could play a Feist song, but I want it to still work in a strip club, still work in a car. One thing about traveling a lot, it gives me a lot more worries about places I’m not being played. I go to Starbucks everyday, listen, look at the CD rack, and I’m like, I’m not here. I could easily give up and be like, Well, I’m black and I’m a rapper, or I could be like, Man, what could I do to get here? you only got one life and shit. Who’s to say what you can and can’t do? “Love Lockdown” is just a great accomplishment in the idea of, like, Thom Yorke in the strip club.

From Fader