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Published 10 years ago
Kanye West visited the University of Oxford Monday afternoon and delivered a guest lecture to roughly 350 students.
The lecture lasted no longer than 30 minutes, and Kanye touched on a laundry list of topics, including being overshadowed by Nicki Minaj on his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and President Obama calling his home phone.
Check out a few interesting tidbits from the lecture below.
On Nicki Minaj:
“One of the most memorable things about MBDTF was Nicki Minaj, and the fact that she kicked my ass, on my own song, on one of the best albums – the best album – I’m just saying what the critics said – of the last 25 years. The best album of the past 25 years that I spent a year and a half making out there. I was exiled from my country. It was a personal exile, but exile. To come back and deliver my magnum opus of a work, and to be outshined… to be beat by a girl, basically. This was necessary. I think it was one of the most important points of working on that album, was to not stop her from her moment because of how good she is.“
On his “bad” reputation:
“People say I have a bad reputation. I think I’ve got the best reputation in the building. They want you to have a reputation of tucking your black nail polish into your pockets and sitting in the corner of the class and not fighting for your ideas out of fear of being ridiculed. That’s one of my favorite ones: to be called crazy.“
On Steve Jobs:
“I love Steve Jobs; he’s my favorite person, but there’s one thing that disappoints me. When Steve passed, he didn’t give the ideas up. That’s kinda selfish. You know that Elon like, ‘Yeah, take these ideas.’ Maybe there are companies outside of Apple that could work on them and push humanity forward. Maybe the stockbrokers won’t like that. The stockholders wouldn’t like that idea, but ideas are free, and you can’t be selfish with them.“
On President Obama:
“I understand that I’m a servant. And with my voice, with my ability to build relationships with amazing people, speak to amazing people. Call Elon Musk out of the blue, or call Obama out of the blue. He calls the home phone, by the way. With that, I have a responsibility to serve.“
Kanye is so random (LOL). You can check out the full transcript here.