A: I can’t. I’m a pop enigma. I live and breathe every element in life. I rock a bespoke suit and I go to Harold’s for fried chicken. It’s all these things at once, because, as a tastemaker, I find the best of everything. There’s certain things that black people are the best at and certain things that white people are the best at. Whatever we as black people are the best at, I’ma go get that. Like, on Christmas I don’t want any food that tastes white. And when I go to purchase a house, I don’t want my credit to look black. [Laughs]
Obviously I’m a pretty big Kanye (to the) apologist/defender, but I think that this particular quote (to SPIN) makes a lot of sense and gives some good insight into the psyche/cognitive processes of Kanye.
For some reason or another, I also find myself really relating with his idea of taking from this and that to create some sort of hodgepodge (eh, amalgamation?) of all different kinds of cultures; obviously that is probably, on some level, tied to the fact that I grew up in Tennessee, was Korean, went to a black middle school, and then fairly WASP-y Southern private schools for high school and college, also while having spent some serious time in London and Seoul and being exposed to a spectrum of things, picking and choosing what I wanted to take along the way (definitely more knowingly as I got older).
Back to his original quote though, it sucks that he makes one of those kind of, for some reason interpreted as inappropriate, very Kanye West-like buzz-y jokes at the end of this answer that undercuts his more positive message of being open to all different cultures’ contributions to life. Although, to be completely fair, Harold’s is pretty f-ing good. (link)
