Future Shock

I’m not trying to be overly poetic, but there’s something about Kanye West that puts him on a different plane than almost everyone else making contemporary music. In a day and age where culture and politics are constantly shifting, there remains an immovable truth about him. That is to say, there’s something really sincere about his effort, despite—or perhaps because of—the paradoxes that he’s bundled up in. He blurs the lines between aesthetic and content, confidence and insecurity, and the whole time you never really know if it’s planned or if it was effortless. And at the end of the day it doesn’t matter; the fact that you even question it is testament to the deftness of his skill.

As Kanye enters his thirties and releases his third full-length album, Graduation, his place next to all the great musicians of our time becomes more and more certain. His throwback ethos (without relying on the crutch of nostalgia) and attention to detail make him arguably the most meticulous musician active today. Combine that with his laborious attention to style and you can see that he’s nothing less than a modern (or perhaps post-modern) performance artist. I got a chance to sit down and discuss all of the above with the man of the hour, to get his take on the finer things in life: culture, politics, and, well, porn. Enjoy.

Marc Ecko: So, this is the first time I’ve ever interviewed anyone. I’m a little nervous. I’ve had some whiskey.
Kanye West: OK, great. [Laughs.] I’m honored.

Marc Ecko: I was curious, who was more of an influence on your style, your father or your grandfather?
Kanye West: Definitely my grandfather on my mother’s side. He was just sharp like that.

Marc Ecko: Do you think you’re nostalgic for that look, generationally? Was he more dapper?
Kanye West: Well, yeah, he was dapper—I don’t want to diss my dad’s style, but my dad would wear some JCPenney’s khakis and stuff. He wasn’t really into style like that. I remember one summer, when high-top fades was out, I was like 13 years old, and he told me, “OK, you can get your hair cut once a month.” Which means that an Afro would start growing on the side of my head, so I had like a high-top fade and a high-top side.

Marc Ecko: [Laughs.]
Kanye West: And I remember I started crying, and he was like, “Yo, why you crying? I didn’t know your hair meant that much to you.”

Marc Ecko: When you were growing up in Chicago in those early adolescent years, who’d you look to as an aesthetic role model?
Kanye West: Well, I always was really into clothes and stuff like that. And they used to have a store called Merry-Go-Round in the mall and it was that store I wanted to go to and just stare at stuff. It was all that In Living Color–era stuff with the baggy Hammer slacks and the—

Marc Ecko: You were rocking Hammer slacks?
Kanye West: Yeah, I actually wore some Hammer slacks.

Marc Ecko: See, I had you for polka dots…
Kanye West: Oh yeah, I had both. So, uh, not my finest moment. But, I wore that to school—and this is back in grammar school. It’s like people wore that in videos, but people would never actually really wear that in real life. And that’s when I figured out that I didn’t really dress how people dressed in “real life.” I was like on TV before I was on TV.