Kanye West Talks Flying Cars, The Jetsons, and High Design in Part 2 of Bret Easton Ellis' Podcast

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"I feel like I'm right now in society through this thin line between the inside of the TV and the outside of the TV, or the inside of the Internet and the outside of the Internet, and what is the Matrix, and what's real, and what's authentic. I'm strictly like the Braveheart of dreamers, and I'm not speaking to anyone else. I'm not speaking to advertisers. I'm not speaking to people in their cubicles and stuff like that. I'm speaking to people who want to make their dreams come true. And I have to prove that I can make my dreams come true."

"I'm considered to be a perfectionist. People say that to me, and I know that I've stepped back from being a perfectionist. I'm more of a solution-ist now. And I know that nothing is perfect. The only perfection is death. That's when the journey is done. Until then, just present, let it go, let the universe give back what it likes, learn from that, create again. Let the universe give back; create again."

"In this Instagram world, you can't control things. You can only be a part of the crowd"

"I talk about creativity and what it means to have a successful creative product, and its 50/50, 95/5 percent, whatever it is, it's also the way it's received that defines its success. And it's like, can you weather how long it will be received? Because when you go and try to make super modernist or futurist (instead of post-modernist, but futurist) ideas sometimes they take—I'm gonna say a super obvious statement—it takes a while for people to catch up to it, and can you wait [it] out? How many times have people not been received in their time?

And you have to dumb down your work, or slow it down, or simplify it. I call it dumb down—you have to add patience to your work to make it be accepted. I mean patience meaning, 'I know you want to drop this type of concept on people that's like 10 years ahead, but right now this is all people can take.' And I have to censor myself 'cause I'm so turnt; I'm a wolf. Period. I'm just turnt up at all times. I'm either sleeping or I'm turnt."

"It's like learning to find that dimmer switch. I've had to use alcohol for a dimmer switch, anxiety pills for a dimmer switch, meditation for a dimmer switch, pornography for a dimmer switch, religion, like literally a Bible and a porno mag or a porno mag inside of a Bible."

"What is the true definition of culture? Is it like a certain boundary—that boundary where if I wear a kilt in one city, people will joke about it, and if you had it 200 years ago, it's this [whole other thing].
 

[This is] really, really bad, completely terrible taste in jokes, but you know the R. Kelly situation? I'm gonna say this—someone else thought of this, I didn't think of this—but just to think that if he was in Roman times... You know, it's just like, what is culture exactly?"

"Picture this shot that you have of the future, and you picture all these flying cars. We have it now. It's the Internet. That is the sky. So we say, 'Where's our flying cars?' We were given something better than flying cars."

"Future films, my issue with them is that—and the reason like we're working on the Jetsons now—is it feels like it's so arbitrary. And I think there's something that's especially defined in the culture of the '60s, with drugs and futurism and the Dune backgrounds that eventually became the Star Wars backgrounds and heavy metal comics and all this (and heavy metal means it's a sci-fi comic; its just called heavy metal). And I wanted to create something that was a non-arbitrary future that's based on real life like architecture, like Corbusier and Pierre Paulin and, of course, Eames, and take some Bauhaus theories and mix it in. A lot of design theories that have proven to be true because the truth is, you walk in, and people have Eames chairs, so that's the truth—that everyone bought it.
 

And like I said, creativity is what half of the world, the culture, gives back to you, and [you] apply that. Because right now sci-fi stuff is completely arbitrary. Everyone thinks of a light-up suit: 'That's cool. Lets just roll with that.' No, it's people like Syd Mead, Elon Musk, [and Ray] Kurzweil that truly understand futurism and have real perspective on where we're gonna go, and what could be really interesting about the Jetsons, God willing that it all comes together in the right way, is that it could be a new stamp of our possibilities."

"People thought they wanted the Matrix. Then the Matrix is completely exposed—like you said, it's the WikiLeaks era, Instagram era. Now they want something authentic and real like we said before.
 

These are the first steps of it—albums like Yeezus—and that was authentic to me where it has futurism, and postmodernism, and fun, and sex, and religion, and all this."

"If you are the exceptional, you should be given the opportunity to influence more. That's what I be talking about on Jimmy Kimmel. If you prove that you are exceptional, you should have the opportunity to have a wider influence."

"We're currently led by the least noble, least talented, least respected, least respectful people—politicians. Period. But the world could be saved through art and design. Art is something that in definition I think is a really close thing to love, and love is really close to God, and God is the master creator. If you're creative, therefore, you are God, a god of something."