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EPISODE LINKS:
Ye's Twitter: https://twitter.com/kanyewest
Ye's Instagram: https://instagram.com/kanyewest
Ye's Website: https://kanyewest.com

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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
0:11 - Engineering
11:05 - Kim Kardashian
12:51 - Sex and the future of humanity
22:57 - Happiness
25:33 - The Holocaust
1:14:43 - Fashion
1:30:15 - 2024 US election
1:34:55 - Humor
1:37:04 - Media and antisemitism
1:49:07 - Trusting people
1:52:21 - Accountability
2:02:20 - Legacy
2:03:12 - Advice for young people
2:16:13 - Regret

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The following is a conversation with Ye, the legendary artist, producer, and designer formerly known as Kanye West.

Based off of our connection and just you being a friend, I need to show you my 2 tech companies and get your perspective on it.

Because now I have friends that can give perspective.

Like when I would work on albums, I had other friends that worked on albums and they would give me their perspectives on

Oh, well, I wanted to finish, the thing is, okay, you're gonna ask me different questions, but I'm about growing and building and bringing the idea to life.

So when I see you, I say, oh, this guy understands how to hire engineers.

Where I'm coming from, coming from Hollywood, coming from press, coming from media, all of the guys that, so many of the guys that have been like voices and faces and talking heads, whatever, have not understood how to engineer product.

And that's the reason why I was able to jump past everyone in the entertainment field and become, you know, whatever the net worth is, 11 billion.

I'm gonna stop putting the whole black thing on my worth.

Like, let's just see where I am on the scale of life because that's a cop-out for me to say, Rich is a black guy of all time, because that's feeding into the same, you know, trauma economy that Black Lives Matter feeds into.

That's the only thing that we really need to teach in school is engineering.

We don't need to teach anything that is subjective.

It needs to only be engineering taught in school and everything else needs to be recess.

Nothing at all, any forced subjective information is just to weaken and indoctrinate our species, and that's what schools do now.

As an engineer, I love hearing you say that, but to push back, history is not, the interpretation of history might be subjective, but history has some facts, and they're useful to give a grounding to the way you do engineering.

I don't 100% believe in anything, any concept of the future or any concept of history, because history was just written by the victors.

So if I see stuff happen on the day that later that day is reported wrong, so how wrong is something reported a thousand years ago?

And why would we argue about something that's not in the now?

Because that's the only thing that everyone can agree upon, is that it is now, right now.

Yeah, well, you try not to make the mistakes of the past.

That's the usefulness of history, the limited usefulness of history.

The biggest mistake from the past that we keep making is looking at the past.

We are now, we are here, we are 1 species, we are 1 race, we're here, and it's time, and the leadership is changing because you have Elon as a leader, Ye as a leader, and we are the top leaders.

We're more influential than the presidents.

So you're a human being with engineering challenges before you, with a stem player, with parlor.

What's the hardest thing in front of you on the engineering front?

That's the first sentence that any of our species needs to hear when they're born.

You are a human being with engineering challenges, and I consider challenges to be opportunities in front of you.

Literally, like, let me see a piece of paper, I need to write that down.

That's the beginning of our new species constitution.

I'm gonna do the paper like this wide, put it in widescreen.

I'm sorry, I don't spell as good as John Legend.

I like the before, cause it can mean, actually can mean forward or before you.

This right here, I've always said I'm the top 5 writer in human existence, but this right here is pushing me to like number 4 or number 3.

Because who would you say is the top, it's top writer in human history, we know who it is.

It's like, okay, who's the top person in tech history?

There's a non-subjective answer to both of those.

Both of those people have influenced 30% of our existence.

So the influence is the main metric of greatness.

Okay, 1 person, 30% of our language was, the English language was written by them, the other person, 30% of the products we used was led by them.

And then the product, product, product, product.

You put Steve above like Eons of the world?

Because Steve is a designer, not, he's a designer and engineer, but he's a designer, he's a visionary in the design space.

Well, I would lean to him because I'm not an engineer, right, so I'm more like.

If Steve is an engineer, you're an engineer, essentially.

Like the people who run the emotions of the world and run the world off of people's emotions right now are social engineers.

And social engineering is so important, like city design.

But I was in Oxnard last night to see Anthony Jeselnik, and I gotta find out what his opening joke was because I'm doing interviews and I'm thinking I'm funny.

And I like that he said, he just kept on saying 20 year anniversary, I've been doing this for 20 years.

And his opening joke was so high level, I realized that I wasn't funny.

I realized that this dude is a professional at what he does and so many things are subjective.

I always talk about this, it's like, you know how people are arguing like, is Emily Ratajkowski the hottest, you know, person?

And I'm like, That's such a subjective thing, but if you go and shoot 3 pointers with Steph Curry, it's not subjective, right?

Or if you go and compare bank accounts with Elon, it's not subjective.

And another thing that's not Subjective, porn.

Dick size, it's not subjective, you can measure.

But porn is more about, more than just dick size and greatness is more than the size of the bank account.

Right, so do you care about the stuff that's objective or subjective more?

The impact on our society, like you said, social engineering, the impact on the collective intelligence of our species, that what permeates throughout the rest of time.

I like what you said, the impact, I'm taking notes.

of- On the collective intelligence of our species.

When Ye is writing down the words that came out of my dumb mouth, I have made it in life.

There's a lot of people that have kind of like sat through, I wanted to wear a different color hoodie because I was just tired of saying this hoodie in all the interviews.

And there's a lot of kids that are with me, they see what I'm saying.

And they had to sit through all of the muck of all the previous interviews to get to this.

Every interview has been just an emotional, it's just like been an argument up to this point.

This is the first of, this is the next frontier of where our species is gonna head.

So this is the first time I heard you say the word engineering at least so many times, which I love hearing.

You're a being with engineering opportunities.

Yeah, and we're all a newborn, because in Christianity we say born again.

We're all newborns, and everyone can, everyone shall, I don't like the word, can, shall, my only thing about shall is like, it kind of dictates and can kind of lets people off the hook.

So I haven't found the perfect post Shakespeare and post Steve Jobs and post Elon and post Ye and post Drake way to communicate this.

And what the current media structure, no, it's not actually nothing that's holding us, there's nothing actually holding us back because I'm still alive.

Like, they could have killed me at, Beyonce had the best video, but we're here now.

So we just keep on leaning and leaning and leaning and there's these things where I just think about, you know, there'll be times when I'm at war And every now and then when the bombs stop going off and all the headlines and the smearing and all that stop going off, I think about my family and I'll think about Kim and I'll think about how King Koopa has her in the castle right now and just on Mario Brothers, you know how it is, just go for the princess and you get to this level and it's like, da da da da, I sung the song wrong, right?

What's your favorite thing, the thing you love the most about Kim, from a Mario perspective and the princess?

She's definitely my favorite of all time.

Yeah, was there a moment that, you know, like that catches you off guard and you say, I love this human being?

Yeah, I mean, it's just the DNA is like, she's a mix of Rob and Chris.

I mean, that's like a really high pool right there.

So, okay, So like the entire history of evolution of the human species created this DNA, they created this being, there's a life there, there's a set of memories and a history that brought you together and you're like, damn, I like this DNA.

Yeah, certain people have just like high DNA.

I think we've seen that, it's been proven.

I mean, but look at my mom and look at my dad.

You know, me and my dad have a water purification center in the DR right now.

And he was blocked by people around him and people were using him and taking advantage and not believing in his vision, my dad's the educated version of Ye.

What'd you learn about life from your dad?

That's a big detail, being that I found my dad's Playboy when I was 5 years old, it greatly affected my motivation.

So that's part of the engine that drives Ye.

I remember when Pharrell was first in all the videos, And my girl was like, girls like Pharrell.

And I was like, I want girls to like me too.

Funny that that's behind all the ambition, all the drive.

the individual level just being noticed and also at the societal level of scale?

Well now, I've gone past, I'm like at that place where Nikolai Tesla was later into his career where it wasn't about being loved, it wasn't about sitting at the dinner parties next to Anna Wintour and stuff.

So I have these cells that are very, and I just keep on saying Ridley Scott, but Ridley Scott has a special anointing.

There's something in there, just like George Lucas.

There's something different that's there.

I'm drawing these new living cells that we will exist in.

And this is over, okay, let's do like, I don't like talking about money because man-made money, anyway, is like 4 quadrillion respected dollars and then you have other forms of currency.

Of course, social currency is super important right now.

But this is a drawing and it's at a pretty good place now.

I just think we should go to anything to restore the Tower of Basel.

Like they said when the, I'm just drawing a person here for scale.

Look at my person, see the scale in this room?

It doesn't go all the way to the top and it's 1 hole for light.

But the water and the light and air all come in from the top, so that's like the mouth.

We're God's iPhone, we're his greatest creation.

Yeah, so I'm drawing how these other cells go next to each other.

Then we talk about what's the motivation?

Like yeah, there's a motivation somewhere in the back of my mind of my family.

And if it's like where Moses smithed the rock and God didn't allow him to get to the promised land, Because the promised land is family.

I mean, that is heaven on earth is family.

So say I smite the rock and God doesn't let me have my family back.

My mission in life is still to promote families at all costs and make families' existence easier.

So you take this thing, you put a localized farm, say if it's in a community, that we do localized growing, and then we partner with big farmer, and say, hey, you're actually gonna make more money by making better food.

Because at the end of the day, you want money right now.

It's like everyone knows that between the pesticides and between the medical industry, and especially America, that we're keeping people sick.

And we know that McDonald's makes food that kills people, and Coca-Cola's selling sugar water and all this.

Just in case I haven't pissed off enough people in power.

It was like a reverse documentary on sugar.

A reverse, I don't know if you call it a reverse, like a sub, but if you watch it again, when they show sugar in it, it's just, the sugar looks super clean.

So as I state these things, I know that, I know I have protection.

If I have God's protection, that's why I'm here to this date, right?

So It's for me to have this platform and express exactly what I feel because it's kids out there, right?

That it's kids that are gonna save the world through engineering and through facts.

And I've gotta get download as much of the information and as much of the don't be afraid to state your facts is the biggest thing because the world is being ran by fear and that is, no actually God runs the world but there's just like little cloud, this patina of our ego that deals with the money and the car and the girl we're dating and all this in the clothes you wear and spending too much on clothes.

And a lot of stuff that I've been involved with promoting.

So now what I'm promoting is you have the idea, you say it out loud, Like if you had Tourette's, say your truth out loud.

If you hate, yay, you hate me, say that out loud.

Like you say it non-violently, you know, non-violent.

Non-violent, I have to say that like as, you know, as a shout out to Alex Jones and Trump where they try to say that when they say their truths out loud that it's inciting violence.

I'm saying that they have criminalized free thought.

I hate when people use they, like they gets the blame for everything, right?

What we needed to do is turn I to we, so we take the responsibility, and turn they to us, so we take accountability to us.

And that relates, it's a language at the same time.

You're seeing the language of our surroundings.

You're seeing the language of, 1 of the things, okay, let's go back to the cell explanation because I'm also doing, what's that thing when Elon just put all the information in the open and people could figure out, they could figure it out and open source?

So I'm open sourcing this idea right now so that, you know, engineers and anointed people, beings, anointed beings can collectively contribute to this to push our species forward.

So where I've got to with my research is that there will be a hole at the top that allows natural light, natural air, and there's a constant water system, so it becomes like a water city, where it's a constant flow that's not, it's regenerative, it's not wasting the water, and it's just a constant flow.

So I put the toilet really close to where this, I don't wanna call it a wave pool, but in the pool, the

Well, the living room is that you have 2 rooms.

You have the dry room, which people would call the living room before, and then you have the wet room.

What is broken about our world today that that gives you in terms of the pursuit of happiness, which is 1 of the things-

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Kanye 'Ye' West Interview | Lex Fridman Podcast #332