Everything We Learned From Kanye's Interview With Charlamagne

Charlamagne begins the interview by checking in on Kanye and asking how he’s doing after his “breakdown.” “I think I’m in a stronger place than I ever was,” Ye responds before going into some of the reasons why his “breakthrough,” as he likes to call it, took place. One of those many factors was his wife Kim’s robbery in Paris, which took place back in October 2016. “You’re feeling like, helpless,” he said. “You’re feeling like what can you do.”

Kanye explains he joined Kim on the trip initially to help her plan her outfits. “One of the things she heard is that they were coming to rob her and they had to wait until I left,” Kanye said. “The people had been strategizing and scheming on that for a long time, so probably when she got to Paris by herself, they’re like, ‘Okay, this is our chance.' Next thing you know I’m off the flight the next day and they were like, 'Oh, okay, we gotta fall back.’”

But Kanye had to leave a few days before Kim did, to perform in the U.S. “When I left a few days later I’m onstage and I hear…you know, 'Your wife was robbed.’ At that point I didn’t know the whole story of what was happening.”

Kanye also opened up about his widely criticized Yeezy Season 4 show in 2016 that took place just one month before Kim’s robbery. The show and Kanye were both criticized by fashion sites and the media saying it was a “failure” and “boring.”

"I'd done a fashion show and I was 45 minutes late and they LeBron'd me, bro. Like when Lebron went to Miami and they just killed him and they burned his jersey and all that,” he said, before referring to his packed Yeezy Season 3/Life of Pablo album premiere event at Madison Square Garden six months prior. “I'd just done MSG—Young Thug onstage and go and plug in an iPhone with 16,000 people. Everybody in the audience—whoever you wanna name—streaming live, all this, a breakthrough.”

Ye said the fashion industry took his delay as an opportunity to shut him down. “As soon as I was 45 minutes late, I felt it was the fashion community getting the right to say n***er without saying it,” he said. “To be like, 'Yo we know you're stepping on necks and all that and what you do in your approach, but if you get out of line boy, we gon' roast you. It affected me because I'm an artist, and it affected me emotionally.”

He admits that the criticism over the show, along with his wife’s robbery and stress about The Life of Pablo radio play led to his breakdown. “All these things was almost set up to put me on meds, to break me down,” he said.

According to Kanye, he and Jay Z are still on good terms. “We good. We texting each other as positive energy,” he told Charlamagne.

But he explained that the two don’t see each other very often, because they’re off in their own worlds. “I haven’t seen him but I can feel him. Sometimes also when you have such similar personalities and people are creating their own existence and their own world...you know they need to do it on their own,” he said. “I went off and started focusing on clothes, and building my company and my factory and my office, and focus on my family, and you know that’s what happened.”

Charlamagne asked Ye if he thinks his 2016 onstage rant about Jay and his family went too far. “Well it depends on how you look at it,” Kanye responded. “If we’re family, if we’re brothers, and we are family, then it’s my family. If we’re business associates, then it was too far.”

The prevailing rumor has it that Beyoncé doesn’t like Kim Kardashian and that it's the reason behind the couple’s absence at Kim and Kanye’s wedding in 2014. “You know I gotta say, I was hurt about them not coming to the wedding,” Kanye admitted. “I understand that he’s going through some things, but if it’s family you’re not going to miss a wedding...I’m past it, but at the time I was hurt about it.”

Kanye took a moment of the interview to talk about cryptocurrency, specifically bitcoin. “When I saw Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, that's the moment when I wanted to use bitcoin,” he explained.

“It's like all the slave movies, why you gotta keep reminding us about slavery?” he said. “Why don't you put Michael Jordan on the $20 bill?"

Charlamagne pushed back, reminding Ye that Tubman rebelled against slavery and that her and Nat Turner were “on a different frequency.” “Certain icons are just too far in the past and not relatable,” Kanye replied. “And that’s what makes them safe. Like they’ll let you go on the Grammys and talk about slavery and racism because it’s not talking about buying stock, it’s not talking about property.”

“There is a civil rights element to the ability to create your own industry,” Kanye said. “Basketball and rap are both someone else’s industry, so you’re always a player. It took Michael Jordan a long time to be an owner.”

Kanye had a very public falling out with Nike back in 2013, and promptly moved his Yeezy brand over to Adidas. In “Facts” from The Life of Pablo Kanye raps “Yeezy, Yeezy, Yeezy just jumped over Jumpman” on the hook, and in this interview he restates some of the reasons his relationship with the company collapsed.

“When I was at Nike they weren’t willing to change anything,” he explained. “I loved Nike. It was heartbreaking for me to have to leave Nike, but they refused to allow me to get royalty on my shoe. And I knew I had the hottest shoe in the world. I knew Yeezy was the hottest brand in the world, but I couldn’t get royalties.”

“I’m Yeezy and they wouldn’t give me a royalty? That was like the final straw,” he explained.

Kanye has been catching heat for some of his recent tweets criticizing Obama. In the interview, he breaks down the beginning of his relationship with the former president. "Obama came to me before he ran for office, and he met with me and my mother to let me know that he was going to run for office, because I am his favorite artist of all time, because I am the greatest artist of all time,” Kanye explained. “I’m like, this is dope. A black president. This dude’s mad cool. He’s from Chicago.”

Then Kanye goes on to talk about how much Obama’s infamous comment that Kanye's a “jackass” hurt him. "[Obama] never called me to apologize,” he said. “The same person who sat down with me and my mom, I think should have communicated with me directly and been like, 'Yo, Ye, I was in the room and it was just a joke.'"

“I love Obama,” he clarified. “I just think we were in a period where he had so much stuff to deal with he couldn’t deal with a wild card like me.”