Kanye on Kanye: The W interview

To be a fan of Kanye West in this post-"Yeezus" era is to be fully engaged with the complexities of his music, his art, his process and his personality. I suppose you could enjoy his music and ignore his public persona, but you'd be missing out: Kanye is one of the rare celebrities who is unapologetically himself at every turn. He contradicts himself, he boasts, he speaks almost completely off the top of his head, as though all of his ideas are completely new in the instant before he expresses them, whether in his fashion designs, his interviews or his music. There's something incredibly vital about him and I don't want to sound like a celebrity sycophant because, in every other case, the cult of personality surrounding celebrities (including his girlfriend Kim Kardashian) is pretty repulsive to me.

I don't care what Katie Holmes is doing, I don't care what John Travolta is doing, I don't care what Kris Jenner is doing. I kinda really like hearing what Kanye is doing because what Kanye does in his life is so directly and immediately tied to his artistic expression, which is ultimately what I'm interested in. There's an urgency to what he does that is lacking in so many other artists, actors, musicians and others I see in the celebrity machine.

What I'm getting at is Kanye West has another interview out today and it's fantastic. Last week it was a great interview with The New York Times, and this week it's one conducted over a series of visits to his Paris apartment by W Magazine. Both are fascinating looks at this guy who's at once fully convinced of his own greatness and, at the same time, clearly concerned with staying as active as possible creatively to ensure he reaches the upper limits of his potential.