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Speaker 1

00:02

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Strain by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night! All day!

Speaker 2

00:13

Hello Mr. West. What's up?

Speaker 2

00:15

What's going on man? Good to see you.

Speaker 1

00:16

Good seeing you too.

Speaker 2

00:17

We finally did it. We're here. We made it happen.

Speaker 1

00:19

We're in the building. Yes, sir.

Speaker 2

00:22

So what what are you doing? You're running for president?

Speaker 1

00:26

Yes. What made you decide

Speaker 2

00:28

to do that? Aren't you busy enough? Clothing company, successful rapper, family man?

Speaker 1

00:36

It was something that God put on my heart back in 2015, a few days before the MTV Awards, it just it hit me in the shower. And when I first thought of it, I just started like laughing to myself. And all this joy came over my body, just through my soul.

Speaker 1

00:59

And I just felt that energy. I felt that spirit. So then 2 days later, I accepted the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Awards at the MTV Awards. And instead of performing, you know, my array of hit songs, you know, I gave just my perspective on award shows, but always I knew at the end I was gonna tell people I'm running for office, I'm running for president in 2020.

Speaker 1

01:29

And you know just to have the, It even took heart to say it in that context, and people were just like, oh, their minds were blown. And then I was hanging out with different... I had different friends that were... Some people in the music industry, some people, tech elites, different things like that, and they would really, you know, they just really took it as a joke.

Speaker 1

01:59

And they're telling me all these millions of reasons why I couldn't run for president. I remember running into Oprah 2 days or 1 day after that and she's like, you don't wanna be president. You know, people just, you know, thought projecting, putting this on you. And I remember saying, 1 of my responses to 1 of the people that, 1 of the naysayers was, well, I'll definitely be a billionaire by that time.

Speaker 1

02:25

And not that that's a reason why someone should become president, but it's to say, You know, at that time I was around $50 million in debt. And I knew I had the confidence that I would be able to turn that around. And now, just going into, I wanna just give you a, that's a clear answer. So I'm gonna, I don't wanna go off onto a

Speaker 2

02:54

bunch of riff

Speaker 1

02:54

right there. No, it's okay,

Speaker 2

02:55

what you're basically saying is you know how to set goals, you know how to achieve them. But what was Oprah's rationale when she said, you don't wanna be the president? Like, what was she saying?

Speaker 2

03:03

Because remember when people were saying, that's our next president? Remember when Trump got elected, You know, they showed Oprah and they were saying like there was I believe it was like NBC tweeted it This is our next president Like they a lot of people wanted Oprah to run, and they felt like if Trump could win, Oprah could win.

Speaker 1

03:21

When I saw Trump win, I was like, see, you can win if you're coming from outside of politics. I was young when Ronald Reagan was president. I don't remember.

Speaker 2

03:34

But Ronald Reagan was the governor of California before he was the president. He had actually proven himself as a politician, at least somewhat.

Speaker 1

03:40

Which is an idea that people have thrown out at me to...

Speaker 2

03:43

To be governor of California?

Speaker 1

03:45

To be governor of California.

Speaker 2

03:46

Anyone's better than this guy. Just go ahead, start there. Give it a shot.

Speaker 2

03:53

Open things up again, man.

Speaker 1

03:55

But I think my calling is to be, I believe that my calling is to be the leader of the free world. Not, I mean, if it's in God's plan that part of my path is to be the governor, then that's fine. But my calling is to be the leader of the free world.

Speaker 2

04:15

So when you say this, like when you say your calling is to be the leader of the free world What what does that mean to you? Does that does it mean do you have a plan? That's different than the plans that have been implemented before does it mean that you have ideas?

Speaker 1

04:27

What kind of plan

Speaker 2

04:28

like the plan to be the leader? Like what would you do if you were the leader of the free world? Like what would be different about the way you would handle things?

Speaker 2

04:36

Like if that's your plan, what is it about that that is your calling? Like why would you wanna do that? Like what do you wanna do differently if you were the leader of the free world? Well,

Speaker 1

04:50

there was a couple questions in there. You said, why is that your calling? There's people who will say to me, you know, they'll say, well music is bigger than politics or more influential than politics or celebrities or more influential.

Speaker 1

05:04

And I thought of it like if I was a pastor of a 100, 000 person church, but then I was also a captain, a sailor. And then we went to war, and I said, I'm gonna man this ship that has a thousand people, a thousand soldiers on it, because God is calling me to take this position, even though I'm the pastor for, you know, however big my audience is in hip hop, in music, or as just an influencer or celebrity, or just as a dad and a husband in my house, the world is like, there couldn't be a better time to put a visionary in the captain's chair. And that's not to say we haven't had visionaries before. I'm not coming here to down any of the other...

Speaker 1

06:10

I'm not here to down Trump, down Biden. I'm just here to express why God has called me to take this position.

Speaker 2

06:26

So when you say a visionary, you think of yourself in terms of like, as an artist, as a creator, as someone who has these thoughts that they manifest in terms of music and art and creation and design, the things that you do. That's why you think you're different, as a visionary.

Speaker 1

06:44

Yeah, I think that... I think I'm different from... I mean, we're all different.

Speaker 1

06:51

So I'm definitely different from everybody. We're all different from each other. I mean, I do bump into people that seem to be like the same character inside of, it's like.

Speaker 2

07:01

I've seen 1 of those before.

Speaker 1

07:02

Yeah, people play the same roles, like, man, I just met you before. You're just like the head of this company over here. You're the same kind of person.

Speaker 1

07:10

Yeah, you know, I mean, I manifest, I see things, I'm a great leader because I listen and I'm empathetic and I feel the entire earth and I feel us as a species, as the human race. Sometimes people think that utopia as almost like a negative word. That's like, we couldn't have that, but I do believe in world peace. Like the people hit me with the, or 1 of the things Oprah said is she said, you gotta bone up on your foreign affairs.

Speaker 1

07:45

I remember this, like, because it's Oprah talking, so I'm gonna remember a lot of what the conversation was. But that's the first thing she said was, you know, foreign affairs and foreign policies. Like just, I think, the reason why I say leader and not politician and not even specifically president is, this is the time, you know, when the constitution was written, that was an innovation. Now, the world is innovated all around our political system, but We haven't innovated and simplified our political system.

Speaker 1

08:24

So I met with this gentleman, Sam, 1 of the founders of Y Combinator. So Y Combinator is a contract that my friend, the head of Dropbox, used and that a lot of tech guys use, and it's a standardized deal. So 1 of the ideas I had when I was...as I'm in this process of innovating, I'm not in war with the music industry, it's just, it's time for us to innovate. And we need to have contracts that make sense with exactly how we sell music.

Speaker 1

09:00

So, you know, people, every vicinia, and that's like every 20 years, that's like the, like decade is 10, vicinia is 20. And as you see now, it's like the world has just stopped for a second. And there's an opportunity to look and say, what are the things we need? What are the things we don't need?

Speaker 1

09:19

So I don't know if you saw when I posted my contract, I had 10 contracts that kept on putting me inside a labyrinth and there's things that we don't need. Now, I believe that the distribution partner that the label is, like Prince would go and say, oh, we don't need the distribution part Especially if Prince was, you know, really alive and thriving in this internet era I'm the kind of person where I'm not trying to go and eliminate anyone's job. So record labels are afraid of saying, okay, we're gonna hand over the distribution completely to you guys, which is, you know, that's a possibility. There's a way where both parties can be happy and that these infrastructural partners can be of service to the influencer, to the artist.

Speaker 1

10:13

Like these deals can be flipped in a way that they're just more fair. A record... Let me just go into this specific place with the record labels for a second. I know I'm talking about that

Speaker 2

10:30

for a while. Because it's a confusing thing for people on the outside.

Speaker 1

10:32

Yeah. So before, when I told my father I wanted to rap, he was very leery of that idea. He said, I heard this business is terrible. And he's right.

Speaker 1

10:48

People are all seeing things that are wrong inside of contracts, turning blind eyes to it, and everyone's responsible. Everyone's a part of it. You know, it's like when the Me Too movement happened, you know, it wasn't just the guys that were getting tagged and you know some of the guys should have got hit with it, some guys shouldn't, you know, that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm saying that in a way everyone's responsible.

Speaker 1

11:14

Everyone's a part of the problem. That's why I really loved that Black Mirror episode when everyone was making comments and anyone that even made a comment, the bees, it was about these mechanical bees, anyone, and this is a spoiler alert if you haven't seen this episode, but anyone who made a comment, the bees came to go get them. And that's the thing about what you put in the universe, even a thought, you know, you put that thought into the universe. It's another thing to say something negative and put that into the universe.

Speaker 1

11:48

It's another thing to see someone being raped. You know, that's the reason why I compare what's happening in the music industry to Me Too, because artists are raped. You've heard that term before. I'm not, this is not like, this is not like a new thing that I'm making up.

Speaker 1

12:03

The contracts are made to rape the artist. And I put my, like I think about, this is like a thought right now. It's like, is this a negative thought that I'm putting into the universe? But I have to say, like when I was going on Twitter, I was thinking about Bruce and Brandon Lee.

Speaker 1

12:25

That crossed my mind to say, this is Sony. This is universal. And I'm willing to put the blue paint on my face and go out and do this because it's the right thing to do. Like music, like at this point it loses me money.

Speaker 1

12:48

It doesn't make me money. My $5 billion net worth and $300 million of cash that I see a year, music is like negative 4000000 for me, So these contracts for me were kind of like Wangro and Heat, where this guy had everything, but he still said, Wangro messed up this heist that we were going to do. I look at the music industry, Not music and the love of music itself, but the music industry. I look at it like Wangro,

Speaker 2

13:25

like I

Speaker 1

13:25

blame the loss of my mother partially on the entertainment industry. Always fighting to represent who you are against media, entertainment industry that's trying to tear down anybody that's not going with the flow. I see, you know, I've got those kind of reasons personally, but vengeance is mine, said the Lord.

Speaker 1

13:53

So it's not a matter of going in for revenge. That's just me as a human being where I fall short. Like, I'm not a monk.

Speaker 2

14:00

Can you explain what you're talking about with Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee? I lost you there.

Speaker 1

14:04

Okay, so Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee were both murdered. Well, Brandon Lee died in an accident on a movie set.

Speaker 2

14:14

Yeah. You think it was a murder? I felt... That's a conspiracy, right?

Speaker 2

14:17

The conspiracy was that the Chinese triad killed him the same way they killed Bruce, but the coroner's report was that Bruce died from a reaction to a medication, right?

Speaker 1

14:30

Yeah, I mean, but I think about that anytime I go to the hospital. I'm very, you know, I'm mindful of that stuff. You think about like Bob Marley, they didn't just JFK or MLK him.

Speaker 1

14:44

There's like reports that it was something in his toe or...

Speaker 2

14:46

He had cancer, right? I believe he had skin cancer.

Speaker 1

14:49

Yeah, like I went to go, I got a shot in my hand because just from texting and stuff, my thumb was like hurt. And then I posted... Did you

Speaker 2

15:00

text so much you hurt your thumb?

Speaker 1

15:01

Absolutely. Just texting way too much. So I post a picture of the screen at the hospital and then I was asked to take it down. By who?

Speaker 1

15:17

People just call, I'm forgetting exactly who asked me, but it was like, they got to my management, they got to this, and they said, take that picture down. Like the hospital, it was in the weirdest place.

Speaker 2

15:30

What did they not like about the picture?

Speaker 1

15:33

I think it had like, it might have had some information on it that they didn't want to go out, like an address or something like that. But I don't want to go down these rabbit holes. I'm just saying like, Michael Jackson not waking up 1 day, Prince not waking up 1 day, Bruce and Brandon Lee, Bob Marley, all of these things have crossed my mind, as I'm going and saying, I need to innovate what these contracts are, not just for me, but for all artists.

Speaker 1

16:08

It's not about me getting my masters back. It's about, it's about freedom. And I say on a new song, I say, if I would put myself in harm's way to get my masters, they would put their self in harm's way to stay the master. And that's, there's a complete parallel to the way the music industry works and the way the world currently works and the influence that America has on other countries and the way governments work.

Speaker 1

16:42

The influence and the way government and the way people in power and control deal with, you know, disaster relief, deal with Haiti, deal with the Bahamas. Like, where is the money going? Why aren't things being built? And this concept of money, right?

Speaker 1

17:05

I asked myself this, I asked someone a week ago, how much is America in debt? And they were like, this many trillion. And then I asked a rhetorical question, but the dumbest question I've ever asked myself, I said, well, you know, how much does the earth cost? Think about...

Speaker 2

17:24

It's not a bad question.

Speaker 1

17:26

How much is the earth worth? Yeah, what is the earth worth? Everything.

Speaker 2

17:29

All the things on earth.

Speaker 1

17:30

Yeah. And it's saying we can't buy it. We couldn't make enough money to buy the earth, right? So that means we made money.

Speaker 1

17:39

So if money is the key to all people's happiness and will solve everything and everyone's doing things for money, let's just make more money. But it's not about making more money. It's about keeping poor people poor and rich people rich and keeping people in their place. And right now, we're experiencing the fall of Rome or the Titanic has now hit a glacier and there's people who would prefer to go down with the Titanic than to get on a lifeboat because they don't want to get seawater on their dress or on a nice outfit.

Speaker 1

18:15

People are so programmed and brainwashed into classism and protectionism that it's difficult for people to embrace innovation unless it has a tag on it that's got a name brand connected to it that says, with this innovation, you will be better than the person, you'll be better than your next door neighbor. You know, when I made Sunday Service, I completely stopped rapping because I didn't know how to rap for God. You know, all my raps always had like, you know, like nasty jokes on it. And then, you know, I made, when I went to the hospital, I know you wanna get into this, when I went to the hospital in 2016, I wrote Start a Church in Calabasas.

Speaker 1

19:11

And as we left from 2018, going into 2019, I said, I'm not gonna let 1 Sunday go by without starting this church. And there's people who said it wasn't a church and different things, but to start a ministry, I'm like the little drummer boy where I'm saying, you know, this is all I got to bring, my drum. I might not be well-versed in the word, but I know how to make music, and I know how to put this choir together and all things can be made good for God so it like quickly became the best choir of all time because all the best singers moved to California and now But a lot of them grew up in the church, so it's like the opportunity for them to actually get paid singing for God because I would be funding it and that for me was like a tithe for me to fund Sunday service. And I was 4 months in before I gave my life to God.

Speaker 1

20:02

Like I wasn't saved, it's just I had a calling saying just go make this church. And the whole thing, the comparison to this church, to me going and saying, okay, why am I running for president is to be in service, and that service to my own ego. I feel like God says to me, haven't I given you enough? And I gave you an ego that helped you overcome all these roadblocks and smoke screens and people telling you what you can't do.

Speaker 1

20:37

Now you need to realize when you're doing things for your ego and when you're doing things for me. This is what I feel God is saying to me. Because it really irritates me when people say, God told me to tell you... So I'm very, like, mindful with this kind of wording.

Speaker 1

20:56

I'm saying I have a feeling that that's what God is saying for me to be in service. So the ultimate service position is leader of the free world, to be the president of the United States. Sometimes you see me on Twitter, I say I want all the smoke, I want all the problems, because the problems are the opportunities. There's an opportunity to solve things.

Speaker 1

21:19

And Kurzweil, he created the keyboard, Kurzweil. He has this video that Mark Romanek, this director that shot 99 Problems for Jay-Z, which is like my favorite, maybe like top 5 or top 2 favorite videos of all time. He also did Closer for Trent Reznor. And I like, I just grew up on MTV in the 90s and I love Mark Ramb, romantic videos, but he would share, he'd share little bits and pieces.

Speaker 1

21:50

I remember Ray Kurzweil talking about the ability for us to have a utopia, but us being led by the least noble and the most greedy. But if someone, or when someone gets in a position of leadership that is in service to God and in service to people, period, but immediately the American people. I had this joke I was saying, like, man, no 1 outside of our country should be able to see these debates. This is family business right here.

Speaker 1

22:29

This is only for America to see. We can't let anyone outside the country see, but to be in service. So I stepped away already from my rap career for a year and served God every week, sometimes twice a week, 3 times a week, never missed a Sunday until COVID. And this is the thing, there were people inside of the church stealing, doing different things, trying to just take them away, and God still provided a way for us to keep that boat afloat.

Speaker 1

23:02

We never missed a service. And then 1 of my pastors, Pastor Adam, who is...the way he preaches is called expository. It's like one-to-one by the Word. I like all different kind of preachers, but there's some type of preachers, they get up, they have the Bible in their hand, then they close the Bible, and then they just talk for 2 hours.

Speaker 1

23:31

And some do have anointing, but the expository preachers go line for line. And for me, it's like, I come from entertainment, I got so much sauce, I don't need no sauce on the Word. I need the Word to be solid food that I can understand exactly what God was saying to me through the King James Version, through this translation or the English-Shannon Version. So Pastor Adams was coming by my spot, I got this 300-acre spot in Calabasas that we had a little house in that I was recording and I would play this music, these chords that I love, they're almost like monk-like and that's gonna go into something we'll talk about later because I'm building a monastery, I'm building a monastery that will then be the future of monasteries, just like full, sustainable energy.

Speaker 1

24:25

Now, he says to me, Pastor Adam says to me, when I was thinking about should I rap or not, he said, my son just said, I wanna hear Ye rap, do a album about Jesus, a rap album about Jesus. And it was through the mouth of babes. Like, this person, I'm gonna listen to the kids, bro. You know, I'm gonna listen to my daughter, I'm gonna listen to kids before I listen to super programmed out adults.

Speaker 1

24:53

And especially if that adult hasn't done something that I am looking to do. So it's so funny how people are so free and almost arrogant with their advice. And I'm just like, why would I listen to you? You don't even ask me for any advice.

Speaker 1

25:09

I'm the most successful person I know. So he said my son wants to hear a rap album from Ye, and that was the paradigm shift for me. I use that word a lot. I like paradigm shift.

Speaker 1

25:25

It's 1 of my favorite words. And I made this rap album, and for a lot of people, it was the first album that they could play with a certain production level in the house with their family. Now, you know, you could argue if the Watch the Throne production was stronger or better than Jesus is King production, but when I go and I, like I've been working with Dr. Dre and some of the beats would just be like, you know, the hardest beats possible, and it's something that was very spiritual and meditative about the mix on Jesus as King that it wasn't hitting as hard as Jesus or hitting as hard as Watch the Throne.

Speaker 1

26:12

It was like this is how God wanted me to make this make this sonic painting and the way he wanted me to communicate. And so we did that album, and then we did the Jesus is Born album, which also I got that idea from Pastor Adams. And I mean, there's people who that's the only album they play, and it's just bringing these gospel, and I'll tell you my formula for these hymns I'm writing, because I'm writing... The songs that we're doing at Sunday Service is basically my book of hymns for the future gospel university that I'm creating, where I've envisioned and will manifest a 200, 000-seat stadium, circular, with 100, 000 gospel singers.

Speaker 1

27:06

And people will go to this university and they will train the way, you know, a Russian Olympic swimmer, you know, I bet you're like, they would be in the pool 6 days a week at least, if not 7 days. But for people who sing for the church or, you know, because it's a tide, it's pro bono, it's all this, like, people don't practice that as much as we practice going to studio to rap or practice playing basketball if we're in the NBA. So it's making the NBA, so to say, the Coliseum for God. And what that...

Speaker 1

27:44

Have you heard soccer chants? And just like 60, 000 persons? So I envision that for God, 100, 000 people, sometimes singing in harmony, sometimes in unison. ♪ Glory, glory, oh God Almighty ♪ ♪ We lift our hands and give you praise.

Speaker 1

28:11

Glory, glory, oh God almighty. We lift our hands and give you praise. If I put you a hundred thousand people in unison and that feeling, what that would do for our spirits, our souls, it's healing. There's natural forms of healing about our environment, the friends that we're around, what we're wearing, what we're eating, our diet.

Speaker 1

28:44

So Donda is a design company that I formed around 10 years ago. And some of the people that worked at Donda are now have went on to become heads of fashion houses like Virgil's the head of Louis Vuitton and he was the head of Donda at a certain point. Another guy that worked at Donda is now the head of Givenchy. So this is like the talent pool.

Speaker 1

29:09

And this, Donda is basically my version of like a cyber extension of my brain. Like, here's something that I'm thinking of that you can't touch, but we need to bring it into fruition. We need to manifest it. And we have to see how to use things of our past and things of our now to create our future.

Speaker 1

29:29

So it's an organization created to guarantee the future of the human race. Really I thought about even calling it Aetna because I see us all as superheroes and Aetna was the designer in The Incredibles which is kind of really similar to Donda. I'm just seeing these lineups and stuff. So now our focus is food, clothing, shelter, communication, education, and transportation.

Speaker 1

29:58

So at the school that I just created, Yeezy Christian Academy, we call it NASA, we call it different places about this hydroponic vertical growing garden. And I remember sitting, you know, the idea of the garden is from A to Z, you have to be able to make your food right there, fully sustainable, right there on your land. And you know, it's a bunch of people like, oh, I made this salad right here. It's like, mm-mm, that's not good enough.

Speaker 1

30:25

You still gotta go to the grocery store for 80%, 60% of your stuff. I remember this 1, you know, this 1 farmer we had, you know, he wanted to build this class for the kids and all this, and we're gonna show the kids this. Like, people always make the kids version. I don't like this, the kids version thing.

Speaker 1

30:42

Like, kids need to understand how, what if the pandemic was, you know, they lost all their parents and it was lost. The kids need to understand early how real life works. So physics is 1 of the anchors of the school that I'm creating. I remember, you know, the city is all self-sustaining.

Speaker 1

31:01

So it works off of our 4 main resources, earth, wind, water and fire. And 90% of it is running off of water with like aqueducts, like the city of Masada. And I was talking to this engineer and saying I need the whole thing to run off of water and he said we're gonna have to use solar power and I said I don't and please you know don't take this as any offense I don't like solar panels I feel that they're part of still what Edison's idea was. I don't feel like they're really in line with what Nikola Tesla really wanted to do with alternative current.

Speaker 1

31:41

When we get into the whole Tesla and what Edison did to take Tesla down and the fact the world would probably be free by now if Tesla wasn't basically destroyed by the media that Edison controlled and the propaganda that Edison controlled. So I'm talking to my engineer and saying, this needs to run completely with water and I don't wanna use a solar anyway. And he says, no, I'm saying we're gonna use a mirror and it's gonna connect to a steam engine and that's gonna push the water back up. And I was like, after like screaming at the guy, I was like, look if I had known physics I wouldn't have been screaming at my engineer.

Speaker 1

32:19

So if we think about what we're learning in school to learn physics, to learn farming, I was talking to a friend of mine that's a rapper and super, super God-following, spiritual, super smart. And I was showing her some of the designs for the monasteries and some of the designs for the fully sustainable communities, it's all the same thing. And then it said bioengineering on it. And she said, well, what do you, she, it's like, for her, bioengineering has a negative connotation.

Speaker 1

32:57

And my response was, isn't like farming and cooking like bioengineering at the simplest form? Like we went to, going from like grabbing apples off of a tree to, oh, we put this, boom, in the ground. Oh, and we could grow this and we could grow this, you know, we could grow this harvest right here. So it's, you know, I want to just simplify and round up the principle behind the Danda way of thinking is we've got all this information and all this, you know, these scientific explorations, these things that Tesla never completed, these things that Da Vinci never completed.

Speaker 1

33:41

And we can look at all of these things and see how do we create the most primitive versions of this to create a fully sustainable ecosystem, which is, you know, what COVID actually helped us to, you know, get closer to our families, get closer to our children, understand like, oh, wow, that, you know, that was mapped out for us to be 50 minutes away from our home and our kids' school to be 30 minutes away and to put us in traffic for that amount of time. These cities have been designed to promote industry and just to make more money. They haven't been designed to promote happiness. So we're at this paradigm shift in our existence.

Speaker 1

34:22

You know, it was when Muhammad hit the market, I think that's who it was, and brought money because before it was slave and trade. And This is something, you know, dishonorable men honor money. I got this bar from Dave Chappelle. I'm not trying to like steal his bar.

Speaker 1

34:37

And, you know, we as human beings, this race on earth have like been honoring money. And, you know, money isn't, it's not even real. You know, it's not even backed by anything. I don't want to like go too far into that.

Speaker 1

34:53

But when you unprogram yourself, you see that there's other forms of currency now. Like relationships are a more important currency than money itself, and that's what we really saw. It's like the end of the movie. Our existence would be pre-COVID, post-COVID.

Speaker 1

35:11

And so as the Titanic is crashing and sinking and Rome is falling, There's got to be this new civilization like the end of Tron where everything starts to light up and it's been under this like dark cloud. So you know God is using me and he has a calling you know in my life to make the world better for all people. People say, it's bad people, there's good people. No, there's people that are possessed that have demonic ways, but we were all children at 1 time.

Speaker 1

35:42

They say some people, no, they were born bad. You gotta remember, say, oh, there's bad people. Even the devil's an angel, a fallen angel, a lost angel, like Los Angeles, if you think...

Speaker 2

35:57

But that's a city of angels. Let me start from the beginning. So you you essentially Deconstruct things.

Speaker 2

36:04

So when you say in many ways when you're describing yourself as a visionary This is what I'm saying is you you're looking at all the systems that are in place whether it's the record industry the contracts that are wrong with artists, the way civilization is set up.

Speaker 1

36:20

I think Visionaire is too glossy and too saucy of a title.

Speaker 2

36:24

Okay, well

Speaker 1

36:24

whatever it is. More of an engineer.

Speaker 2

36:26

You're deconstructing all of these things and you find flaws in the systems. So all these systems, whether it's the music industry system, whether it's the political system, whether it's the system of gathering food, whether even a religious system. Like I remember when you started doing your Sunday service and my friend was like, what is he doing?

Speaker 2

36:45

I go, he's making going to church cool again. Like you don't think that's... Look at all these people having a great time. You have thousands of people that are chanting and singing along.

Speaker 2

36:54

He's not asking for anything. I go, look, if anybody should be doing something like that, it's him.

Speaker 1

37:00

I

Speaker 2

37:00

go, because he's making great music, everybody's having a good time, and what do you get out of that? The best thing that people ever get out of church is sense of community, a time where you get together and you all agree, this is where you're gonna concentrate on good. You're gonna concentrate on goodness, you're gonna concentrate on trying to find these shared values that are going to help the community.

Speaker 2

37:21

Now you're doing this in this mass form. You got the superstar musician who's doing this in this mass form with thousands and thousands of people in these gigantic areas. Like that's nothing but positive. So you deconstructed the idea of how to do a religious service but make it cool.

Speaker 2

37:38

And now you're thinking about deconstructing all these different things. You're thinking about deconstructing how food is harvested. You're thinking about deconstructing how we make energy. You're literally trying to deconstruct and Reimagine the idea of civilization.

Speaker 1

37:54

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2

37:55

So wait talk me through how this starts with you. Have you? Were you always religious your whole life?

Speaker 1

38:03

Yes, I was. And then I, you know, then I hit high school.

Speaker 2

38:09

But, you know, when you're a young man and you're, you know, you're a superstar musician and, you know, you live in a wildlife, what was it that led you back to this? Just a feeling in your life that there was more to life, there was more to your position, there was more to this idea of a calling, that you felt like you could do more, and that it resonated with you more to produce these Sunday services, and to start thinking of life in this way, like you can improve things.

Speaker 1

38:45

Yeah, God knocked me off my horse. God literally called me and said, okay, now I need you. I need you right now.

Speaker 1

38:54

I mean, not that God needs me. We need God, but he called me to serve him. And I was tired of serving the music industry, tired of serving, you know, filling up stadiums. You know, the last concert, last tour I did, we had a floating stage.

Speaker 1

39:17

And actually it was a hanging stage, but it looked like it was floating. And that's just another thing, that's illusion, where we need to dispel the illusion. I wouldn't even call it the floating stage today, but the whole thing about it is people used to say how I would lose money on tours because I would put so much into the creative. And I was like, wanted to prove, but prove to who?

Speaker 1

39:36

Prove to man, prove to greedy people, that I could make more than anybody. And that's like the gladiator position that all artists are put into. We're in the middle of this Coliseum. Let me show you I can kill more lions and tigers and bears and people and blah, blah, blah, than any other gladiator that happened.

Speaker 1

39:54

So that's what I was doing. And then I remember talking to James Turrell, and I was, like, at the top of my lungs, like, screaming about saving ourselves and humanity and the reason why me and James needed to connect. And then I went to my show and then it's like my head popped back and the spirit jumped out and it felt like it was like my mom talking. And the last thing I said was, this thing is over.

Speaker 1

40:24

And I'm saying it like I sound like my mom, like Donda. Like that's something she would have said if she was in the physical form when she sees her son exhausted. I just went through a I had this fashion show. We had this fashion show where we took over MSG and just broke all boundaries, Sold 16, 000 seats and played the new album.

Speaker 1

40:52

And it was a thousand black people in the show. And you had all the young thug plugging in the iPhone and Travis and Cudi dancing. He had 50 Cent there, Jay-Z there. Lamar Odom, the first time that people saw him and walk again was we walked together into the stadium.

Speaker 1

41:17

And he's camo, Yeezy jacket, all head to toe. And the reason why that was so important is like when he was in a coma, I would come by and play him the new music. And once he was out of the coma, he said that He remembered that music when he was in a coma, and that was the album I was playing that day. So that's the reason why me and Lamar walked in together.

Speaker 1

41:40

And then the next few months later, I did a fashion show, and it started 45 minutes late. And the media, they just killed me. They LeBroned me as I would say, like when LeBron went to Miami and they said, who are you to have a choice? Like what 1 of my other heroes Tom Brady, he left.

Speaker 1

42:04

I didn't see no jerseys getting burned, like when LeBron left. So then less than a week after that, my wife is robbed in Paris. And so we just, cause I'm in the middle of a tour while I'm doing the fashion show, while I'm doing this. So we cancel the tour cause it's very traumatic.

Speaker 1

42:30

And then, you know, we start the tour back up and we get back into it. And then I just keep on saying, I wanna go to Japan. I just wanna go to Japan because Japan is like a way that people treat. There isn't like this systemic racism embedded in every single individual that's inside of the place, like in America.

Speaker 1

42:51

Black, white, anything. There's a systemic white supremacy. Like when I tag white supremacy or we say this, it's like, yes, that is America. That is the world currently.

Speaker 1

43:06

We've been taught that. My first superhero was Superman, you know? And my dad was a Black Panther, but when Disney makes Black Panther, now when you look it up, you don't see my dad protecting his neighborhood or snatching a mic out of somebody's hand while they're lying. I don't know, like father, like son right there.

Speaker 1

43:30

But you see this character that's made for black people to idolize that was designed by a white person and put out by a white company. So it's controlling the narrative to say, we're gonna show you Harriet Tubman, we're not gonna show you Nat Turner. And they do it every chance they get. Maleficent, they called her race of people the Moors.

Speaker 1

43:56

And the Moors are, and I just saw it again, I was just like, yo, if you erase our history, like most black people, we don't know where we come, we think we came from slaves. We don't know our bloodline and we're given Black History Month and we take that Like it's some gift to us. No, it's a programming to us. Racism doesn't end until we get to a point where we stop having to put the word black in front of it because it's like we're putting the rim a little bit lower for ourselves.