The Best Quotes From Kanye West’s ‘GQ’ Cover Story

1. On Drake:

 

“Currently that spot is taken. Let’s be honest—he got last summer. Yeah. He got last summer. And I’d never given it up till last summer.”

 

2. On maturity and regaining family:

 

“Not wearing a red leather jacket, and just looking like a dad and shit, is like super cool. Having someone that I can call Mom again. That shit is super cool.”

 

3. On the unjust treatment of celebrity in the fashion industry:

 

“I’m more than 50 percent responsible for every men’s shoe that they sell. Me, the singular person. More than 50 percent responsible for every Balenciaga shoe they sell. And they would say, “You can’t come to the show, because you are a celebrity.””

 

4. On Jay Z being a smooth operator:

 

“He’s the poster child of winning. And I think I was the poster child of, like, fighting and winning. But you always saw the fight. And with Jay, you always saw the win.”

 

5. On remembering your roots:

 

“Like they said in Step Brothers: Never lose your dinosaur. This is the ultimate example of a person never losing his dinosaur. Meaning that even as I grew in cultural awareness and respect and was put higher in the class system in some way for being this musician, I never lost my dinosaur.”

 

6. On connecting artists of differing mediums and backgrounds:

 

“It’s about the people, and the fact that they’re from different walks of life, and that they’re working together and not discriminating against each other. There was a class system, and now there’s a creative class system, and I think that’s what you were talking about a bit—the class system of creativity.”

 

7. On Jay Z and Beyonce’s absence from his wedding:

 

“It doesn’t even matter to me whatsoever, who would show up. Because the most important person to show up there, to me, was Kim. And that’s all that matters to me. I had to fight for that for seven years.”

 

8. On Kim Kardashian:

 

“You mean to tell me that this girl with this fucking body and this face is also into style, and she’s a nice person, and she has her own money and is family-oriented? That’s just as cool as a fucking fighter jet or dinosaur! And just as rarely seen.”

 

9. On Rick Rubin saying that West freestyled much of Yeezus:

 

“I rapped  them. But I worked on them for like eight months! And the thing is, I had to finish the verses in order for the album to come out, and it’s game time. I didn’t freestyle those verses. That shit was worked and processed and Disneyfied and everything.”

 

10. On his past behavior:

 

“I’m a man first. And in establishing that, some interesting things have happened. [Laughs]”