Kanye West is a rapper, record producer, fashion designer, and current independent candidate for office in the 2020 United States Presidential Election. @kanyewest

Strain by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night!

Clothing company, successful rapper, family man?

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

But Ronald Reagan was the governor of California before he was the president.

He had actually proven himself as a politician, at least somewhat.

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

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.

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?

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?

Like if that's your plan, what is it about that that is your calling?

Like what do you wanna do differently if you were the leader of the free world?

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.

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...

I'm just here to express why God has called me to take this position.

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.

So I'm definitely different from everybody.

I mean, I do bump into people that seem to be like the same character inside of, it's like.

Yeah, people play the same roles, like, man, I just met you before.

You're just like the head of this company over here.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Like these deals can be flipped in a way that they're just more fair.

Let me just go into this specific place with the record labels for a second.

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

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.

People are all seeing things that are wrong inside of contracts, turning blind eyes to it, and everyone's responsible.

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.

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.

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.

I'm not, this is not like, this is not like a new thing that I'm making up.

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.

That crossed my mind to say, this is Sony.

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.

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.

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.

So it's not a matter of going in for revenge.

That's just me as a human being where I fall short.

Can you explain what you're talking about with Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee?

Okay, so Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee were both murdered.

Well, Brandon Lee died in an accident on a movie set.

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?

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.

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

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

So I post a picture of the screen at the hospital and then I was asked to take it down.

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.

What did they not like about the picture?

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.

It's not about me getting my masters back.

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.

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.

I asked myself this, I asked someone a week ago, how much is America in debt?

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?

We couldn't make enough money to buy the earth, right?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Now you need to realize when you're doing things for your ego and when you're doing things for 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And then 1 of my pastors, Pastor Adam, who is...the way he preaches is called expository.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

So he said my son wants to hear a rap album from Ye, and that was the paradigm shift for me.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And we have to see how to use things of our past and things of our now to create our future.

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.

So now our focus is food, clothing, shelter, communication, education, and transportation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Joe Rogan Experience #1554 - Kanye West