Misspell

Ye (01:28:34):

It was in the drums. It was something that Timbaland had in those drums. Like, now watch this. I said, I’m going Def Con 3, right? And the actual, I spelled it wrong. I have a tendency to do that. I’m not quite John Legend, tight sweater level, spelling bee level. So I feel a parallel to me going to Timbaland to when I said, hey, you as an engineer, I need to work with you as an engineer that is Jewish to look at these contracts and what my people, not just black people, let’s say artists, are dealing with in our contracts. These contracts need to be fixed. Everyone could be so mad at the messenger, right? Yay, you said it the wrong way. You’re offensive. You’re like Hitler now because you said it. You said this out loud, but it does not, you weren’t getting enough sleep. All this shit does not negate the fact that we do have Houston. We have a problem.

Military tank— Pullover hoodie?

ultimate look would be military tank pullover hoodie. And if you get a little hot, you take off the hoodie, but you’re crazy in shape.

14, 20 kids get killed in Chicago every week

Ye (01:45:24):

You know what was the prejudice towards a group that led to hate? BLM. BLM took a black person, showed his death on camera, because, okay, there are examples of us being killed and being killed on camera, but if it was spread on camera, it was done on purpose by the media, because 14, 20 kids get killed in Chicago every week, and it’s not spread that much. They, like you said, singled out a person, directed everything on that person as the martyr, and raised the people that hadn’t had any. We didn’t have our 40 acres and a mule. We didn’t have a lot of things, right, that black people have not ever been given. So once we’re given just a little bit, like your life matters, right, then we literally like, oh, okay, now we’re being heard, right? But actually the death toll is up. The city where this happened has completely been turned to a war zone. They actually, it’s actually something like Candace Owens can actually specify this better, but it’s like its own city or something. Like they made it not be a part of the actual state or something. It’s like D.C. and stuff. It’s like Washington, D.C. now and stuff. And that has to be from a government, that’s got higher level agenda written all over it.

Sorry?

(01:53:09):

It’s exactly what Ari Emanuel was saying. No one is looking to change the problem that led so many people to that same level of frustration. And I just so happen to be the one that’s not going to back up on it. Until this changes. Because you know what? I’m sorry I had a sleepy text. I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry that I put that I was 512 or 511 on Tinder. My cock is not 14 inches. I lied, okay? It’s only 13. So I’m sorry, right? So the…

(01:57:50):

When Kim was pulled really far to the left, our agendas no longer aligned, so that made the marriage impossible. In a line where it’s like, oh, I could wear a red hat that can help her to get Alice Johnson out of jail because Trump’s willing to do that for my wife because I was the only person in my position that stood up and said, wait a sec, I like you. You know, because…

Ye (02:00:56):

Don’t tell me what I should do. I’m not one of your BLM marchers.

50% abortion?

Ye (02:01:27):

And even if that was the case, there’s still 50% of Black deaths is actually abortion. So let’s get into engineering. Let’s just go… How do you fix that? Population control is social engineering. In its most literal form. The Blacks are under population control. That’s something that… I mean, that’s just what it is.

“Body goals”

So if the media picks an overweight black woman and says this is body goals, then the media are influencing my people to stay sick.

let’s make an all black company. But that would have been antisemitic.

We are *made* sick?

Ye (02:07:07):

Well, what I’m saying is that’s what I feel may need to happen for my people to have power again, because when my people have been left under the media’s control, we’ve been made sick. We’ve been allowed to be sick, and we’re promoting sickness.

Kanye is so wise!!!

Forgotten

Lex Fridman (02:09:44):

What do you hope your legacy is?

Ye (02:09:46):

To be forgotten.

Lex Fridman (02:09:48):

Do you think you’d be forgotten?

Ye (02:09:50):

Because the memory, there’s ego in memory, in the memories. Who designed the sidewalk? Who designed the water fountain? Who designed the stop sign? Who designed the stoplight? These things are so ubiquitous that the person that designed them is forgotten. If it’s a good idea, it’s a God idea, and no VCs can own it.

Ye (02:10:48):

Don’t tweet while you’re sleepy.

Twitter and TikTok and Instagram porn

(02:18:00):

That means TikTok has amazing features. Twitter has amazing things about it. I know this girl that’s like, I like Instagram better than Twitter. She likes it. Twitter has porn. But other than that, Instagram. But I was like, well, Instagram is porn also. It’s like soft. It’s more subtle. It’s not telling you. It’s not conservative by any means.

Torture porn

Ye (02:20:59):

I think that, you know, porn is not just sexual. That term actually relates to torture. Like, you know what I’m saying? Like watching people beat each other up on Worldstar or something, you know, it’s like, that’s called torture porn.

Thoughts—

First, yes … African American (“black”) people can be racist and antisemetic.

Conversely … it is very mainstream to be anti-black, anti African American in America and globally.

Oh, I can be a racist black person also.

---

332 – Kanye ‘Ye’ West Interview | Lex Fridman Podcast

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Transcript

Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present.

You can click the timestamp to jump to that time.

Lex Fridman (00:00):

The following is a conversation with Ye, the legendary artist, producer, and designer, formerly known as Kanye West. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It’s the best way to support this podcast. We got Shopify for e-commerce, Insight Tracker for biomonitoring, ExpressVPN for privacy, and Athletic Greens for nutrition. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, onto the full ad reads.

(00:29):

As always, no ads in the middle. I hate those. They interrupt the conversation, and I hate it when long-form conversations interrupted. Still, if you happen to want to listen to these, I try to make them interesting, but go ahead and skip them if you must. But still, check out the sponsors in the description. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, with a great-looking online store that brings your ideas to life, and tools to manage day-to-day operation. So, since this conversation is with Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, I should mention that I got a chance to hang out with him all day, and discuss many things, but one of the things we talked about is design, fashion design.

(01:23):

I got a chance to try out some of the things he’s working on, sort of early ideas, middle ideas, and it’s cool to just explore the way he thinks about design, how detail-oriented he is, how he can spend minutes, if not hours, on a very specific detail. And even with people like me, who are not deeply knowledgeable about fashion, at least like the behind-the-scenes of fashion, he’s still able to make it clear to me, and have a brainstorm with me, and just talk. I mean, the creative fire is there.

(01:59):

No matter what he’s going on through his personal life, the creative fire is burning bright, and that’s really beautiful to see. Anyway, if the creative fire burns for you, and you create something, and you wanna sell it, use Shopify. Get a free trial and full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features when you sign up at Shopify.lex. That’s all lowercase.

(02:23):

This show’s also brought to you by our longtime friends, Insight Tracker, a service I use to track biological data, basically using signals that come from your body, and then take those signals, and use machine learning algorithms to give you advice on diet and lifestyle changes. The amount of data that comes from your body is fascinating, and the fact that we’re not capturing that data. We don’t have devices or systems that, while respecting the privacy, are able to collect that data to give you, just you, not somebody else, just you, advice on all kinds of things. On what to read next, what to eat, to maximize your wellbeing, your productivity, your everything, long-term happiness and growth, and all that kind of stuff. It’s just obvious to me that that’s where the world is moving, it should be moving. There’s a lot of different trajectories that you can hurt people through doing that by being not transparent, being opaque about how the data is used, who it’s sold to, all that kind of stuff, but as long as you respect the privacy and the value, the power of that data, I think you could do some magical things that help a lot of people, especially in health and medicine. I mean, it’s obvious, and Insight Tracker is one of the great companies that represents that. Get special savings for a limited time when you go to insighttracker.com slash Lex. This show is also brought to you by ExpressVPN.

(03:57):

I use them to protect my privacy on the internet. I’m actually talking to the creator of Tor on the podcast soon, which is a fascinating technology. There’s so many interesting technologies that explore the way which you achieve privacy and the levels of privacy you’re comfortable with. I think the first line of defense that everybody should be using when privacy’s needed, especially, is a VPN, and ExpressVPN has been the one I’ve used for many, many years. It’s the one I love the most. I think it’s the best. It’s, most importantly, it’s super fast, works on any device, including whatever operating system you use. Linux, yes.

(04:43):

Yes, the greatest operating system, Linux, it works on. It works on beautifully, with a big button, big sexy button that you press, and it all just works. Super easy, super fun, life is simple. You know, the best security is easy security, like making sure you do the low-hanging fruit stuff. Also, make sure you’re using password manager, or don’t use the same password every, whatever you do. Just stop using password one, two, three, four, five, six, that doesn’t make it more secure if you keep adding numbers after the password. Or it does a little bit, but not much. Anyway, go to expressvpn.com slash legspod for an extra three months free.

(05:24):

Last, but certainly not least, the legend, the greatest sponsor of all time. This show is brought to you by Athletic Greens, and it’s AG One Drink. I actually noticed that they sponsor a lot of podcasts, which, in some weird way, makes me feel like, it makes me feel both joyful, that a lot of people are spreading the word, but also, it makes me feel like it’s less of a secret that somehow I discovered. You know, it’s like when you were a fan of Green Day, before they were cool.

(06:00):

Oh man, you’re like Pearl Jam, or whatever. Whatever the band, when they were not as popular as they are today, they loved them. That’s how I feel about Athletic Greens. But probably I wasn’t even the first wave of people that discovered and enjoyed Athletic Greens. I’m probably like the fifth wave, the 10th wave, and now it’s like the 15th wave. And so I’m incorrectly, from a historical perspective, making myself feel like I’m the OG of Athletic Greens.

(06:32):

The OG of AG, but probably not. Anyway, I love them, and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter where I am in the waves. I hope you love them too. It’s a great way to support your nutritional health. I drink one twice a day now. It’s refreshing. Even when I’m traveling, their travel packs are great. They’ll give you one month supply of fish oil, which I also take, when you sign up at athleticgreens.com slash Lex. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Ye.

Ye (07:27):

Based off of our connection, and just you being a friend, I need to show you my two tech companies and get your perspective on it. Because now I have friends that can give a perspective. Like when I would work on albums, I had other friends that worked on albums and they would give me their perspectives on it. You wanna do this? We are doing it. This is part of it. This is part of it? Absolutely.

(07:50):

All right, beautiful. Oh, well, I wanted to finish. The thing is, okay, you’re gonna ask me different questions, but I’m about growing and building and bringing the idea to life. So when I see you, I say, oh, this guy understands how to hire engineers. Where I’m coming from, coming from Hollywood, coming from press, coming from media, all of the guys that, so many of the guys that have been like voices and faces and talking heads, whatever, have not understood how to engineer product. And that’s the reason why I was able to jump past everyone in the entertainment field and become, whatever the net worth is, 11 billion. I’m gonna stop putting the whole black thing on my worth. Like, let’s just see where I am on the scale of life, because that’s a cop out for me to say, British black guy of all time, because that’s feeding into the same trauma economy that Black Lives Matter feeds into. That’s why I love and respect engineers.

(08:49):

That’s the only thing that we really need to teach in school is engineering. We don’t need to teach history. We don’t need to teach anything that is subjective. It needs to only be engineering taught in school and everything else needs to be recessed. Nothing at all, any force subjective information is just to weaken and indoctrinate our species. And that’s what schools do now.

Lex Fridman (09:16):

As an engineer, I love hearing you say that, but to push back, history is not, the interpretation of history might be subjective, but history has some facts and they’re useful to give a grounding to the way you do engineering.

Ye (09:29):

I don’t 100% believe in anything, any concept of the future or any concept of history, because history was just written by the victors. Yeah, that’s right. So if I see stuff happen on the day that later that day is reported wrong, so how wrong is something reported a thousand years ago? And why would we argue about something that’s not in the now? Because that’s the only thing that everyone can agree upon is that it is now, right now.

Lex Fridman (09:59):

Yeah, well, you try not to make the mistakes of the past. That’s the usefulness of history. The limited usefulness of history.

Ye (10:04):

The biggest mistake from the past that we keep making is looking at the past.

Lex Fridman (10:09):

Too much, giving too much value to the past.

Ye (10:12):

Too much value to the past. We are now. We are now, we are here. We are one species. We are one race. We’re here and the leadership is changing because you have Elon as a leader, Ye as a leader, and we are the top leaders. We’re more influential than the presidents.

Lex Fridman (10:33):

So you’re a human being with engineering challenges before you, with a stem player, with parlor. What’s the hardest thing in front of you on the engineering front?

Ye (10:43):

That’s the first sentence that any of our species needs to hear when they’re born. You are a human being with engineering challenges and I consider challenges to be opportunities in front of you. Literally, like, let me see a piece for you. I need to write that down. That’s the beginning of our new species constitution. I’m gonna do the paper like this wide. I’ll put it in widescreen. This for Ridley. You are, no, let me like, you are a being being with engineering opportunities or challenges.

(11:41):

Opportunities. I’m sorry, I don’t spell as good as John Legend. Opportunities and before you.

(11:59):

I like the before because it can mean, actually it can mean forward or before you. This right here, I’ve always said I’m the top five writer in human existence, but this right here is pushing me to like number four or number three. It’s a good line. Because who would you say is the top? It’s top writer in human existence. We know who it is. That’s subjective. Who’s that? It’s factual though. It’s like, okay, who’s the top person in tech history? It’s not subjective. Wow. There’s a non-subjective answer to both of those. Both of those people have influenced 30% of our existence.

Lex Fridman (12:40):

So the influence is the main metric of greatness.

Ye (12:43):

Okay, one person, 30% of our language was, the English language was written by them. The other person, 30% of the products we use was led by them. So it’s obvious. 30% of our language was written by them.

Lex Fridman (12:54):

Oh, Shakespeare. And then the product, product, product, product. Look, look. Steve Jobs. Yeah. You put Steve above like Elon’s of the world. Cause Steve was a designer, not, he’s a designer engineer, but he’s a designer. He’s a visionary in the design space.

Ye (13:11):

Well, I would lean to him because I’m not an engineer. Right?

Lex Fridman (13:15):

So I’m more like- Then you’re an engineer. If Steve is an engineer, you’re an engineer, essentially.

Ye (13:19):

He’s a cultural engineer. Like the people who run the emotions of the world and run the world off of people’s emotions right now are social engineers. And social engineering is so important, like city design. There’s a fancier word for that. But I was in Oxnard last night to see Anthony Jeselnik. And I gotta find out what his opening joke was because I’m doing interviews and I’m thinking I’m funny.

(13:49):

And I like that he said, he just kept on saying, 20 year anniversary, I’ve been doing this for 20 years. And his opening joke was so high level, I realized that I wasn’t funny. I realized that this dude is a professional at what he does. And so many things are subjective. I always talk about this. It’s like, you know, people are arguing like, is Emily Ratajkowski the hottest, you know, person? And I’m like, that’s such a subjective thing.

(14:17):

But like, if you go and shoot three pointers with Steph Curry, it’s not subjective, right? Or if you go and compare bank accounts with Elon, it’s not subjective. And another thing that’s not subjective, porn. What about it? Dick size, it’s not subjective. You can measure.

Lex Fridman (14:40):

But porn is more about more than just dick size and greatness is more than the size of the bank account, right? So there’s a subjective on- But greatness is subjective though. Right. So do you care about the stuff that’s objective or subjective more? Because greatness to me is what matters. The bank account comes and goes. The impact on our society, like you said, social engineering, the impact on the collective intelligence of our species, that what permeates throughout the rest of time.

Ye (15:16):

I like what you said, the impact. I’m taking notes. How did you, what’d you say?

Lex Fridman (15:23):

The impact- On the collective intelligence of our species.

Ye (15:26):

The impact on the collective intelligence of our species.

Lex Fridman (15:38):

When Ye is writing down the words that came out of my dumb mouth, I have made it in life.

Ye (15:47):

There’s a lot of people that have kind of like sat through, I wanted to wear a different color hoodie because I was just tired of seeing this hoodie in all the interviews. And there’s a lot of kids that are with me, they see what I’m saying. And they had to sit through all of the muck of all the previous interviews to get to this. Every interview has been just an emotional, it’s just like been an argument up to this point. This is the first of, this is the next frontier of where our species is going to head. It starts here. It starts with you, Lex.

Lex Fridman (16:28):

So this is the first time I heard you say the word engineering at least so many times, which I love hearing. So this is where you’re at. You’re like that newborn. You’re a being with engineering opportunities. Yeah.

Ye (16:42):

And we’re all a newborn because in Christianity we say born again, we’re all newborns. And everyone can, everyone shall, I don’t like the word can. Shall, my only thing about shall is like, it kind of dictates and can kind of lets people off the hook. So I haven’t found the perfect post Shakespeare and post Steve Jobs and post Elon and post Ye and post Drake way to communicate this. But we update and we do and what the current media structure, no, it’s not actually nothing that’s holding us. There’s nothing actually holding us back because I’m still alive. I’m still alive. Like they could have killed me at, you know, George Bush don’t care about black people. They could have killed me at Beyonce had the best video, but we’re here now. So we just keep it going. We’re here now, so we just keep on leaning and leaning and leaning. And there’s these things where I just think about, you know, there’ll be times when I’m at war and every now and then when the bomb stopped going off and all the headlines and the smearing and all that stuff going off, I think about my family and I’ll think about Kim and I’ll think about how, you know, King Koopa has her in the castle right now. And just on Mario Brothers, you know how it is. Just go for the princess and you get to this level and it’s like, I’m like, I sung the song wrong, right? And then they take the princess again.

Lex Fridman (18:18):

Which one are you, Mario? Yeah. What’s your favorite thing, the thing you love the most about Kim from a Mario perspective and the princess, looking back? Was there a moment?

Ye (18:35):

She’s definitely my favorite of all time.

Lex Fridman (18:37):

Yeah. Was there a moment that, you know, like that catches you off guard and you say, I love this human being?

Ye (18:52):

Yeah, I mean, it’s just the DNA is like, the DNA is like, she’s a mix of Rob and Chris. Can you explain? I mean, that’s like a really high pool right there. Those are like two geniuses.

Lex Fridman (19:15):

So, okay, so like the entire history of evolution of the human species created this DNA that created this being, there’s a life there. There’s a set of memories in the history that brought you together. And you’re like, damn, I like this DNA.

Ye (19:32):

Yeah, and certain people have just like high DNA. Ivanka Trump has high DNA.

Lex Fridman (19:39):

You know, it’s like, how’s your DNA? Pretty good?

Ye (19:42):

I think we’ve seen that, it’s been proven. I mean, but look at my mom and look at my dad. You know, me and my dad have a water purification center in the DR right now. And my dad is the original Steve Jobs and he was blocked by people around him and people were using him and taking advantage and not believing in his vision. My dad’s the educated version of Ye.

Lex Fridman (20:09):

What’d you learn about life from your dad?

Ye (20:12):

I got girls too. But those are small details. That’s a big detail being that I found my dad’s, you know, Playboy when I was five years old, it greatly affected my motivation.

Lex Fridman (20:25):

Yeah. All right, so that’s part of the engine that drives DA.

Ye (20:28):

Absolutely, I remember when Pharrell was first in all the videos and my girl was like, girls like Pharrell. And I was like, I want girls to like me too.

Lex Fridman (20:40):

Funny that that’s behind all the ambition, all the drive.

Ye (20:44):

It’s how we make people. It’s how people are made.

Lex Fridman (20:49):

The desire to be loved. Is that at the individual level just being noticed and also at the societal level of scale?

Ye (20:57):

Well, now I’ve gone past, I’m like at that place where Nikolai Tesla was later into his career where it wasn’t about being loved. It wasn’t about sitting at the dinner parties next to Anna Wintour and stuff. It was about getting the idea across. So I have these cells, that are very, and I just keep on saying Ridley Scott, but Ridley Scott has a special anointing.

(21:32):

It isn’t just sci-fi what he’s doing. There’s something in there, just like George Lucas. There’s something different that’s there. So.

Lex Fridman (21:47):

What are you drawing?

Ye (21:48):

I’m drawing these new living cells that we will exist in. And this is over, okay, let’s do like, I don’t like talking about money because like man made money up anyways, like four quadrillion respected dollars. And then you have other forms of currency. Of course, social currency is super important right now, but this is a drawing and it’s at a pretty good place.

(22:21):

Now, this will be 40,000 square feet. I want to start just talking in meters. I just think we should go to anything to restore the Tower of Basil. Like they said, when the, I’m just draw a person here for scale. Yeah, that would help. What do you think of that? Look at my purse and see the scale in this room. All right, so.

Lex Fridman (22:47):

Wait, the dot is the person?

Ye (22:50):

Yeah, I’m saying it’s 40,000 square feet, but that would be like- What are the other parts of the cell? Okay, so it’s a screen. It doesn’t go all the way to the top and it’s one hole for light, but the water and the light and air all come in from the top so that’s like the mouth. And then this is the belly button. We’re God’s iPhone. We’re his greatest creation.

Lex Fridman (23:17):

So this is all connected? These are all connected?

Ye (23:19):

Yeah, so I’m drawing how these other cells go next to each other. What’s the vision here? Happiness. Then we talk about like, what’s the motivation? Like, yeah, there’s a motivation somewhere in the back of my mind of my family. And if it’s like where Moses smithed the rock and God didn’t allow him to get to the promised land, because the promised land is family. That is the promise. That is earth. I mean, that is heaven on earth is family.

(23:54):

Family is heaven. That’s the promised land. And for your family to be together. So say I smite the rock and God doesn’t let me have my family back. My mission in life is still to promote families at all costs and make family’s existence easier. So you take this thing, you put localized, a localized farm, say if it’s in community, that we do localized growing and then we partner with big pharma and all and say, hey, you’re actually gonna make more money by making better food.

(24:33):

Because at the end of the day, you want money right now. It’s like, everyone knows that between the pesticides and between the medical industry and especially America that we’re keeping people sick. And we know that McDonald’s makes food that kills people and Coca-Cola selling sugar water and all this like, just in case I haven’t pissed off enough people in power.

Lex Fridman (24:53):

Yeah. Okay, so. You’re gonna piss off the sugar, anybody that’s powered on sugar.

Ye (24:58):

Sugar, what’s the health, was actually a documentary on sugar. It wasn’t about how bad meat was. It was like a reverse documentary on sugar. I don’t know if you call it a reverse, like a sub, but if you watch it again, when they show sugar and it’s just, the sugar looks super clean. Yeah. So as I state these things, I know that, I know I have protection. If I have God’s protection, that’s why I’m here to this date, right? So it’s for me to have this platform and express exactly what I feel because it’s kids out there, right? That it’s kids that are gonna save the world through engineering and through facts.

(25:45):

And I’ve got to get download as much of the information and as much of the, don’t be afraid to state your facts is the biggest thing because the world is being ran by fear. And that is, no, actually God runs the world, but there’s just like little cloud, this patina of our ego that deals with the money and the car and the girl we’re dating and all this in the clothes you wear and spending too much on clothes. And a lot of stuff that I’ve been involved with promoting. So now what I’m promoting is you have the idea, you say it out loud. Like you, like if you had Tourette’s, say your truth out loud.

(26:22):

If you hate, Ye, you hate me, say that out loud. Say whatever you feel out loud. Like you say it non-violently, non-violent. Non-violent, I have to say that as a shout out to Alex Jones and Trump, where they try to say that when they say their truths out loud that it’s inciting violence. So let’s be like really clear. I’m saying that they have criminalized free thought. I hate when people use they, like they gets to blame for everything, right? It’s always they. But who the, who the fuck is they?

Lex Fridman (26:58):

Exactly. The problem is they is us.

Ye (27:02):

Yeah. Well, I love that. What we needed to do is turn I to we. So we take the responsibility and turn they to us. So we take accountability to us. They, I to we and they to us. And that relates, it’s a language at the same time. You’re seeing the language of our surroundings. You’re seeing the language of, one of the things, okay, let’s go back to the sale explanation because I’m also doing it. What’s that thing when Elon just put all the information in the open and people could figure out if they could figure it out and open source. Yeah, open source. So I’m open sourcing this idea right now so that engineers and anointed people, beings, anointed beings can collectively contribute to this to push our species forward.

(27:57):

So where I’ve got to with my research is that there will be a hole at the top that allows natural light, natural air, and there’s a constant water system. So it becomes like a water city where it’s a constant flow that’s not, it’s regenerative, it’s not wasting the water and it’s just a constant flow. So I put the toilet really close to where this, this, I don’t want to call it a wave pool, but in the pool, the water is not still.

Lex Fridman (28:31):

So that exists in water, surrounded by water.

Ye (28:35):

Well, the living room, you have two rooms. You have the dry room, which people would call the living room before, and then you have the wet room.

Lex Fridman (28:47):

How is that a source of happiness? What is broken about our world today that that gives you in terms of the pursuit of happiness, which is one of the things in the previous declaration of…

Ye (28:59):

All of our buildings are based on just the industry and the economy, and then people lean into what people are used to seeing, like what we think is attractive, because then you go back to the women who give life. So everyone wants to be attractive to the attractive.

(29:26):

And that’s the reason why the media goes and gets, you know, Bella Hadid, Kim Kardashian, Emily Ratajkowski. Those are the only ones I’m gonna… There’s more? There’s more, but I’m thinking of the ones that I think are attractive. It is subjective. Yeah, because it’s subjective. So to my subjective, which I think, I think the only guys that could argue with me on my opinion on girls would be Brad and Leo, because we’re the only ones with the track record, you know, everything else. So for everybody else, it’s subjective. We’ve got history. So… Are you happy?

(30:17):

Absolutely. I’m just here. It’s actually… It’s difficult to make me unhappy. Now, I can deal with frustrations. But when those frustrations are, it’s like, when you’ve allowed people to be in your life that shouldn’t be there, and then they do the thing you knew they were gonna do, and you’re screaming at them, but you really need to scream at yourself.

Lex Fridman (30:48):

Yeah, so you realize anything that’s anger or frustration, that’s something that’s wrong with you that needs to be dealt with.

Ye (30:57):

Yes. Like right now, okay, say I got this pattern cutter that I wanted to remove, because I felt like she was copying our patterns into the computer, and I didn’t know why. And I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t know what to do with it. Copying our patterns into the computer, and I didn’t know why she wanted to do that, and I just wanted to do the patterns by hand. And then, you know… You mean like automating the patterns? Does that make sense? Am I ahead of it? Because they just, that’s the whole thing. It’s like, it’s a war of human beings and robots.

Lex Fridman (31:28):

Yeah, but that makes it more efficient, right? You don’t like the efficiency. You like the creativity of the singular nature of the pattern.

Ye (31:34):

I believe that the human beings, and I’m saying this to you as a person who makes robots and a person who’s friends with…

Lex Fridman (31:40):

I’m deeply offended right now. Yeah. But I’ll, you know, I’ll let it go.

Ye (31:44):

Okay, so yeah, I believe that the…

Lex Fridman (31:46):

Ye hates robots. I’m not gonna put that out there.

Ye (31:50):

It’s a joke. Robots have feelings too.

Lex Fridman (31:52):

Yeah, yeah, that’s right. That was also a joke. We need to clarify that for future robots. But the pattern cutter, the pattern cutter, you don’t like that. It had to be that you can’t have that part of your life.

Ye (32:08):

That’s not what I’m, my… Everything that I’m doing is for the sake of the human race. There’s things in capitalism, there’s things in technology. Well, technology and original human species can exist in a peaceful way. As long as the people that know how to make robots aren’t using their robots to control the humans. Lex?

Lex Fridman (32:46):

Definitely something you have to be concerned about as we become more technologically savvy. That, my friend, is why engineering isn’t everything. That you have to desperately study the lessons of history. In Nazi Germany, science was used to create atrocities. Engineering, the same. Engineering could be a tool of war.

Ye (33:11):

We’re still in the Holocaust. A friend, a Jewish friend of mine said, come, go visit the Holocaust Museum. And my response was, let’s visit our Holocaust Museum, Planned Parenthood.

Lex Fridman (33:27):

With all due respect, I grew up in the Soviet Union. I’m Jewish. Mm. Parts of my family perished in the Holocaust of Nazi Germany. I have to push back that there is a difference of the atrocities at that scale, at that time, on an entire people.

Ye (33:49):

I was gonna say the number, that’s the difference.

Lex Fridman (33:52):

It’s not the number.

Ye (33:52):

Because six million, well also, African Americans are actually Jew also. The lost tribe of Israel. I can push back on that too. Okay, so.

Lex Fridman (34:02):

Well, everyone came from Africa. I am African. I’m basically African American. We’re brothers. And we’re both Jew. And we’re brothers.

Ye (34:10):

So. We’re human. Six million people died in the Holocaust. Over 20 million have died by the hands of abortion. And the media promotes the My Body, My Choice, which is actually still a promotion for Planned Parenthood. 50% of black deaths a year is actually abortion. It’s not the cop with the knee. It’s not black on black violence and gang violence. It’s not heart attacks. It’s actually abortion. The most dangerous place for a black person in America is in their mother’s stomach.

Lex Fridman (34:48):

900 to a million abortions in the United States a year. I hear you. But there’s something about the rape, the torture, the murder of children, women, men, the complete humiliation and just the suffering that was endured during World War II.

Ye (35:10):

That’s what we deal with on our TVs right now with black people. Soros would use black trauma economy to win an election. What I love is having a healthy conversation and as opposed to, there’s certain things, you know, boom, this drops, people are gonna have pussy hats on. Boom. This drops, it’s gonna be black people and white people with signs. Boom, this drops. So, hey, China, hey, left agenda, hey. What we’re gonna do is say that our species can have a healthy conversation.

Lex Fridman (35:45):

Can I just linger on this? Because when you say Jewish media, there’s a echo of a pain that people feel that reminds an entire- You’re saying it, you’re saying it. No, I’m not saying it’s redundant. I’m saying- I’m saying it’s redundant. It’s redundant. It’s a redundant thing. I’m saying it’s something that, I’m saying that it’s something that Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Nazi Germany said. I’m saying it’s been said so many times in order to murder and torture Jewish people that it just rings wrong. And that’s the thing- Just like the N word when spoken by people that have the same skin color as me, it reminds people of a very dark time.

Ye (36:32):

I know. If Jewish people would accept that I’m Jew, then they would see what I’m saying in a different way. They would hear it in a different way. But see, the people, you saying you’re Jewish, that- No, I’m Jew, not Jewish. Jewish means like that of a Jew. I’m saying I’m Jew. You’re a Jew. Blood of Christ, Orthodox Christian.

Lex Fridman (36:51):

Right. But are you a follower of the philosophy of the black Hebrew Israelites? Because that’s where the idea comes from. Not all of those folks are extremists, but some are extremists.

Ye (37:08):

I’m a follower of the idea. I have a vague idea that all people came from Africa. But what I wanted to do- Okay, now I could Andy Kaufman this about seven more minutes and then tell you what it is.

Lex Fridman (37:27):

Should I count? Let’s count, seven minutes.

Ye (37:29):

No, I did this to do a spoiler alert. Sure, spoiler. What’s the first thing I said at the beginning?

Lex Fridman (37:37):

We’re talking about engineering and humans. We’re all human.

Ye (37:40):

And then what did I say we shouldn’t focus on? Race. Not just that. I said they shouldn’t teach this in school. History. The history because what they do, what schools are doing is exactly what the CIA does with Pixar films and Disney films. They make Bambi’s mom die in the beginning, right? And off that pain comes a purchase of ice cream. Off that pain comes, I need some more toys. Off that pain comes, I need a bigger house. Off that pain comes, I need more girls than my wife. Off that pain comes, so they put that pain in to make us, now we’re the orphans of capitalism, to make us be consumers. And we need to be a community, not just consumers. So I could have went another seven minutes by being a person who presents himself in a way that says, well, I don’t have to feel your pain because I also have pain too that’s not being recognized. And in every interview, when I say, well, why did I get to the point of putting up the tweet?

(38:48):

No one wants to understand why I got to that point, right? You had pain, you had pain. Yeah, but no one- You had pain in your heart. But let’s say this. Undoubtedly, Jewish people have a lot of movies about that pain and black people have a lot of movies about the pain of slavery, right? It’s almost impossible to find a movie about Mansa Munsa. When you go to the African History Museum in Washington, DC, it doesn’t start with the idea of Africans being kings. It starts with the idea of Africans being slaves. But here’s another interesting point about this. This was said to me one time and it stuck with me as a family member of mine.

(39:37):

With Africans, how many times have you heard like a rapper or talk about, we were kings? That’s incorrect if we’re Jew. If we’re Jew, and since we are, we weren’t the kings. We were the slaves that Moses freed. Africans have always said, we’ve heard, you’ve listened to rap music and hear black people say, we kings, we blood of the pharaohs. And if we are Jew, then we weren’t.

(40:13):

We were the people that Moses freed. And when we talk about, have you heard black people talk about 400 years of slavery? Mm-hmm. All right. That is, and we’re having this history lesson, right?

Lex Fridman (40:26):

I thought history doesn’t matter. You’re exploring ancient history and drawing deep wisdom from it. And at the same time saying, we need to forget all of it. We need to put that behind us.

Ye (40:40):

We need to forget it and we need to move forward.

Lex Fridman (40:42):

There’s so much wisdom to draw from history. Even the 20th century. Look at this, communism. Without the lessons of history of the 20th century, communism sounds like a great idea.

(40:56):

Except that some of the worst atrocities conducted by Stalin and Mao that killed 50, 100 plus million people. Not just killed, tortured, starvation. Where people, cannibalism, they ate each other. They ate their children. There’s just dark, people should read some books on this, on the Hollin’ Amor in the 1930s. But I disagree. With that lesson, we would, and now it’s becoming more popular, Marxism and communism.

Ye (41:26):

I’m not disagreeing that that happened. I’m disagreeing that we need to harp on the things that happened because the truth is, I’m giving a fact, 50% today of let’s say you don’t call black people Jew, right? Black people’s deaths today is abortion today right now. Like that, it’s not racism.

(41:54):

That’s too wide of a term. It’s genocide and population control that black people are in today in America that is promoted by the music and the media that black people make that Jewish record labels get paid off of or media companies, record labels and media company also. So let’s give it a wider.

Lex Fridman (42:17):

I agree with Martin Luther King. I have a dream too, that one day you would not be judged by the color of your skin or your race, black or Jew, but by the content of your character. All the assholes that fucked you over in the music industry, fuck artists over in the music industry are individuals. They’re not Jews. Can you say it? They are Jewish. They’re human with opportunities and they took those opportunities. I don’t care if they’re-

Ye (42:53):

Do you feel like I should release that pain and separate it? Yes. Okay, so if that, okay. So if you’re saying I should release that pain and separate it, then I’m telling you, you should release your pain and separate it. And we could get to this, the list of how you are being with engineering opportunities.

Lex Fridman (43:15):

That’s 100%. I see what you’re doing. That’s exactly what you’re doing. The pain, I’m gonna let it go. Engineering challenges, I get it. One of the problems you highlight is people get fucked over in the music industry and get fucked over in the media, get fucked over all over the place.

Ye (43:33):

They created, there was a Jewish trainer brought me to the hospital and put in press that I went to the hospital. I know friends that off of exhaustion, a Jewish doctor, they diagnosed me- Why do you keep saying Jewish? Because they were, right? Diagnosed me with bipolar disorder and shot me with medication and put me on medication, then put it in the press. And every time, even if I wore the wrong color hat that a nigger is not supposed to wear, right?

(44:05):

Then they immediately say, he’s off of his shit, he’s off his meds, he’s off of his rocker. And it’s literally used as a scarlet letter control mechanism for the- People understand, the kids, the colleges, the high schools, what do you think they put me right now? They put me as the prophet, not the leader. It doesn’t have to be the leader, right? Cause we need a more intelligent person to be the leader, but at least, right? They put me as the prophet. They put me as the only person that would say this. And I’m just saying that was four Jewish members that controlled my voice because for the fact that 90% of black people in entertainment from sports to music to acting are in some way tied into Jewish business people. Meaning that in some way, just like if Rom is sitting next to Obama or Jared sitting next to Trump, there’s a Jewish person right there controlling the country, the Jewish controlling that, who gets the best video or not, controlling what the media says about me.

Lex Fridman (45:17):

It’s a person, not Jewish. Let me just say one thing.

Ye (45:20):

But they are. That’s the only thing. It just so happens that they are. It just so happens that they are. That doesn’t mean that I hate them. That just means that they are.

Lex Fridman (45:29):

But it’s a dog whistle to, let me just say, as I would love to add more love to the world, I would love you to do that as a person with a big voice, with a big powerful voice that a lot of people look up to. And when you say Jewish media, it’s funny how this world works that way. When you say Jewish media or Jews are controlling the voice of black artists, black people, black artists, when you say that,

Ye (45:58):

Am I not allowed to say it out loud?

Lex Fridman (45:59):

You can say it. There’s a large number of people that are hurting and have anger and even have hate in their heart when they hear Jewish media, they start, that hate starts being directed towards the Jewish people. Do you acknowledge that, that’s, do you understand? Can you feel the hate in the world that comes to the surface when you say stuff like that?

Ye (46:27):

Okay, I feel that when we go into therapy, my dad was a therapist and obviously I’ve got some therapy skills myself. A lot of people, my music is healing. These type of spa-like existences are healing. The color palettes I use are healing and we can use healing words, right?

(46:50):

What I really feel there, I feel that there’s no accountability and no responsibility on Jewish people in media to at least start with owning up with the facts of what’s dealt with and tell me, if I say the facts out loud, to the point of Ari Emanuel writing a letter in the Financial Times, trying to take food out of my children’s mouth, telling people that they’re not allowed to work with me. Even Chris Cuomo or Piers Morgan, getting me to apologize and separate Jewish business people to from the families of the Jewish business people, which I did, update, I did that, that already happened. And the,

Lex Fridman (47:35):

That was a shitty apology. That wasn’t really an apology. But shout out for that conversation. Great conversation.

Ye (47:38):

I need to get on my knees and kiss the dick of Howard Stern and… But that’s what you guys are acting like.

Lex Fridman (47:45):

You don’t need to kiss anyone’s dick. You guys, look at that.

Ye (47:47):

Because you’re talking about it as a, as a shitty opinion, apology, but where’s our fucking apology? Watch this. Sorry. We don’t get… Thank you. Now let’s move on. Sorry. Oh, do I need to get on my knees or no? And kiss my dick. Oh shit.

Lex Fridman (48:09):

This escalated quickly.

Ye (48:10):

So that’s escalated quickly. So the, no I’m saying, where’s our apology? But right, we can’t get to apology because you’re telling me there’s no right way for me to word it. So tell me, for me, a person who’s been fucked on my deals and a person that has friends that never figured out how to make shoes with a German company that couldn’t tell me to wear a BLM shirt and take off my red hat. Like what would have happened if I was at Nike? Right.

(48:45):

Tell me exactly how to engineer the situation I’m in. I’ll tell you exactly how.

Lex Fridman (48:51):

You got a big voice. Have the balls as a man to call out the individuals. Don’t call them Jews, call them by their name and start a war against those individuals. They’re not Jewish.

Ye (49:04):

But if that’s the case, will you help me with that?

Lex Fridman (49:07):

Sure. 100%. Assholes are assholes. Well, let me like flip that too. I don’t understand the industry well. I see that people are fucking people over for sure. But how do you solve that? If you run, if you right now run the world’s, you’re doing a million things, but say you ran also a record label.

Ye (49:26):

I have ran a record label. Well, I’ve been ran by a record label where I was the face of a record label and had Big Sean and different people complaining to me. And I knew fuck about running a record label. I was simply just a talented producer and an influencer that then started good music. But I wasn’t the one running good music. How would you do it differently? This is something I propose. I would look at the top 10 execs and three fields in sports, film and music. And I would look at the top 10 clients participant, talent.

(49:59):

I would look at the top talent in each of those fields, the top 10 of them. And some of them are going to be Tom Brady. Some of them are going to be Taylor Swift. Some of them, they’re not all going to be black, right? Some of them, so some of them would be Adele, right? And we’ll look at all their clients. And we’ll look at all their contracts transparently.

(50:26):

And we’ll compare the notes and re-engineer like it’s a new constitution. Because when I told my dad when I was 19 that I was going to get into the music industry, he begged me not to. He said, I heard it’s treacherous.

(50:42):

Now I’m in a position where I’ve been through it. I saw it. I went out, made some money somewhere else. I saw my name get smeared. I saw my family get destroyed. I saw my reputation get destroyed. And I’m back here to have this kind of, I’m back here as a being with engineering opportunities. So, wait a second, if you say as a shitty apology, what is the version of the apology short of kissing Howard Stern’s dick?

Lex Fridman (51:10):

I don’t think anyone wants to kiss Howard Stern’s dick.

Ye (51:12):

That’s the whole point Howard Stern. Nobody wants to kiss your dick, so shut the fuck up. I said, and by the way, I’m antagonizing you Howard Stern. I used to be a fan of you.

Lex Fridman (51:21):

Yeah, me too. Yeah. I’m still a fan sometimes.

Ye (51:22):

Now you’re just doing clickbait like everybody else. Now you’re just a sad old man, Howard. Now Howard Stern, this is the first time anyone’s said your name in years. Your own family doesn’t say your name unless they’re calling to get their bills paid.

Lex Fridman (51:43):

You’re going hard. See, that’s beautiful right there. That’s much better than calling Jewish media. Go after individuals. Okay, so. Go after individuals. If you don’t talk shit about me, talk shit about me. This is great.

Ye (51:58):

And you know what that is?

Lex Fridman (52:02):

Yeah, what’s that? Engineering.

Ye (52:02):

That’s an engineer’s approach.

Lex Fridman (52:04):

Yeah, engineers. Yeah, yeah, you should learn some of that.

Ye (52:08):

We all can use our pain against each other or we can say we’re being with engineering opportunities and we can know about history. So let me change something. We can have a, just to be judgmental, people say thou should not judge. I was talking to Camille Vasquez. She says, I’m very judgmental. That’s what we’re doing. I believe, now you could go to Bible and one thing’s gonna say one thing, another thing may be contradicted in a way and then the pastor has to unpack it. I believe that we are to judge. If you look at some food and it’s got a fly coming out of it, you can then judge at that point. You’re supposed to use your better judgment. But whenever someone doesn’t want to change something they’re doing, they’ll say, don’t judge me. But as a species, you call for me, you got the breakthrough. And by the way, it’s only an engineer that I would respect to tell me of how to update how I’m communicating. Because this started off, right? I’ve been through all these interviews.

(53:19):

Let me go to this. You said this was a sorry apology. I was very specific. I said the Jewish, because by the way, it’s a barrage. It’s a thing where I don’t even remember the names at a certain point. It’s like, if a girl was getting raped by men, if that person’s not 18, and she was getting raped since 14, and she still got this face, this super like Irena-shaped level face. She might say, I hate men. That woman may say, I hate men. She might get to that point because she was raped.

(54:01):

All my contracts, and no one can say this is ramped up. Howard Stern can’t say this is ramped up. Ari Emanuel can’t say this is ramped up. George Soros knows damn well that I’m not ramped up. George Soros knows like, wow, this guy’s like a younger guy that’s looking at what I did and looking at how I control the world silently. And he’s calling it out. And he’s not using any of the fear tactics.

(54:27):

I can’t send his homeboys around him. I can’t send his wife to him. This guy, that’s what George Soros sees when he’s dealing with me. So what you guys are actually asking me to do, I’m comparing myself to that 18-year-old beautiful woman that had been mistreated by men for four years of her life. And you’re saying, as a man, you can’t blame all men. And I’m saying, as a responsible forward philosopher leader, okay, I’ll drop the pain and I will specify because I’m a peer.

(55:08):

I lost my fucking family. I lost my kids. I lost my best friend in fashion. I lost the black community. I lost, you know, people said I lost my mind. All of these things, lost my reputation. And I’m a peer just like, I just want my family, but I don’t want my family to have to say what the left wants us to say, to have to say what China wants us to say. I want to be an American and protect my kids and protect my wife and raise my kids as Christians and have my wife be a Christian and innovate. And America made rock and roll. I want to innovate as a creative person and be a successful American. But all of that had been taken away from me. So I’m coming back and I’m removing the PSTD right now. I’m standing up and saying the only way that we’re going to be able to get past this and the way God is going to use me right now is for me to stop talking about the pain, stop talking about what happened and do something about it. And that’s where I’m at right now in this moment. Like, yeah, people agree. At least there was something where you could say, he has a reason of why he got to that tweet. And what you’re doing for me today is saying, yo, that was a sorry apology and let’s specify. I’m not asking for anyone out here to empathize or sympathize for a dude worth $11 billion that can make money disappear, I mean, appear out of thin air in five different industries. You know, I’m not asking for anybody to sympathize with someone who’s married to Kim Kardashian, dated Irene, but like, I feel like I’m just not going to get the sympathy vote in this situation, right? So- I feel your pain. I feel your pain. I feel your pain. I feel your pain. I feel your pain.

Lex Fridman (57:03):

I feel your pain. I feel your pain, I feel your pain.

Ye (57:04):

Yeah, I feel like no one’s going to feel my pain. Only Brad and Leo can feel my pain, right? So the, so- But still. But here today, when you said it’s a sorry apology, what’s the apology that you’re looking for as a Jewish engineer? Or no, no, say, as Lex, let’s not talk about you being Jewish as Lex, what’s the apology that you want me to say to, am I allowed to say Jewish? Tell me, is it antisemitic for you to say Jewish out loud?

Lex Fridman (57:40):

No, there’s a, I don’t like the allowed that presumes censorship. I think you choose, you have a powerful voice.

Ye (57:47):

Did I prove? Did I prove that there was censorship over the past two weeks? I proved it.

Lex Fridman (57:52):

Who censored you? Oh, Drink Champs. Who, oh my Lord. Oh, like Twitter and so on? Twitter. That has less to do- Drink- That hurt you, that Drink Champs, that Nora took it down? Took down your conversation? No. It didn’t hurt you? Man, you got to be honest about the-

Ye (58:12):

I’m free, we’re still the kids we used to be. I put my hand on the stove to see if I still bleed and nothing hurts anymore. I feel kind, free. Noah, do you think, you know, I went to Japan for two to three months, right?

(58:35):

The day I had Sunday service, my kids are supposed to be there and my kids would know where to be found. And I text Kim and said, where are my kids? We get into an argument and then I get a text from a number I don’t know. And it’s Pete Davidson bragging about being in bed with my wife. Then..

Lex Fridman (59:08):

Just fucking with you?

Ye (59:10):

Well, at that point, it’s like, they’re trying to put me in jail or put a friend of mine in jail because then I’m going to go surround the hotel and do all, you know, do something which would have me not be able to be here. And instead I walked away from that situation. I went to Japan for two months. And instead I walked away from that situation. I went to Japan, like the samurai that I am, and went to the top of the mountain. And, because I knew that, I mean, I knew there was no way she could love this dude. Not just because he’s ugly, he’s not black. She likes black guys. Every guy that she, you know, is with looks exactly the same. Ray J, Reggie Bush, at that time Kanye West, she has a type. Just like how I have a type. Like a lot of my girls look kind of similar to her because in a video game character, people have their type, right? So I knew that this was like…

Lex Fridman (01:00:05):

The princess has a type and she likes Mario. There you go. As somebody who cares for you and hopefully can be a friend, yay, I got to say these words and the words about Jews is not the words of a samurai, of a great man. I would say, you know, you said something that inspired, that resonated with a lot of people when you said George Bush doesn’t care about black people. I have to say, as somebody who cares for you, that yay, artists formerly known as Kanye West doesn’t care about Jewish people. In the same way you spoke about George Bush being a politician and not giving a fuck about the poor people that suffered after Katrina, you’re not giving a fuck about the suffering of the Jewish people across the world. Why am I not? Because you’re feeding, you’re giving strength, motivation to hate groups.

Ye (01:01:05):

But we already updated. I gave an apology. You said it wasn’t good enough.

Lex Fridman (01:01:09):

Yeah, that’s right.

Ye (01:01:10):

And now you’re telling me, no, I’m not gonna-

Lex Fridman (01:01:11):

You don’t need to kiss anyone’s dick. What you have to do is to say what’s wrong to say. There is no Jewish media. There’s no Jewish- There isn’t? There’s no control of the media by Jewish people.

Ye (01:01:24):

You’re an engineer, brother. If you’re an engineer and you’re not holding to the truth, that’s not engineering.

Lex Fridman (01:01:30):

Engineering is not, that doesn’t, that’s hate. That’s not engineering. Engineering costs- I’m gonna build a better record label. It’s called stereotypes. And I’m going to respect our- Stereotypes exist for a reason. Engineers don’t do stereotypes. I do. Stereotypes are dumb. They allow you to channel hate towards the other.

Ye (01:01:49):

You know what the biggest thing is? Yeah. With something, a veteran that was sitting next to me at Cheesecake Factory last night, he said, you know, the general justice, he serves for whoever is the president, right? And he said, what’s happening in politics is we’re forgetting we’re on the same side. We’re forgetting we’re on the- This is someone is practically- Now he’s a nurse. So he’s still, you know, fighting for humanity in a way. He went from holding, you know, guns in battle to being a nurse and when people are battling for their lives. And he said, we’re forgetting we’re on the same side.

(01:02:35):

This is a person that no matter who becomes president, he can still be told to go to war. And the chaos that’s created by the media has split the country in half. And what we, what us as beings with an engineer opportunity need to do right now is find the blue water. Where do we, where are places that we agree on? And I want you to finish everything. Hey, I’m gonna let you finish.

(01:03:12):

Everything that you- I’ve heard that before. Want to express to me, get off all, I’m your scarecrow today. I’m your punching bag today for everything I did. And I want you to stand up for all of the hate that I’m your Al Gore when he lost the election. Remember, he almost became a punching bag for the lady that had voted on him. And she just said all this stuff. And he’s like, I know, I agree with you, right? But there’s nothing that he could do about it.

(01:03:40):

With this, it’s like things that you’re saying, I agree with you. It’s like if you sit some kids in the principal’s office and I punch somebody, right? I took my hand as what it really means. Even Ari Emanuel had to say, this is a pop icon, right? And I went and just punched an entire people at one time or said that I was about to, I went like this, right? And I got blacked out, black mirrored, done, right? And it’s like, what were you even gonna do? And why did you go like this? I went like this because I can’t even do, I would look insane to physically show you a metaphor, a physical representation of my last 20 years of what I’ve been through as a musician, as a father, and as a black person with a political opinion.

Lex Fridman (01:04:48):

Great man still through the pain does the right thing. And I think the right thing is to not say that there’s Jewish control of the media.

Ye (01:04:58):

That’s incorrect though, that’s a fucking lie, there is. And they did come and bully me, it proved the point.

Lex Fridman (01:05:04):

No, the reason you don’t say it is because the world is much bigger than the, forgive me, the narrow little world you exist in. Your impact stretches way past those little boardroom meetings over contracts. So what should I have done? What should I have done? Not say that you should be a strong man that doesn’t mention religion or people. And then, do you wanna win this fight? How do I win? How do we win? Call out individual people built, that’s one way because they have a big voice. The other voice that I prefer is to build another label.

Ye (01:05:38):

I feel like you’re controlling my creative narrative. Because just like how you’re telling me I shouldn’t have said that, do you think there were people telling me I shouldn’t have wore a red hat?

Lex Fridman (01:05:50):

No, because you asked me, what should I have done? You’re supposed to be a scarecrow, so I thought I’m gonna beat the shit out of the scarecrow with my words, right? You let me, it was consensual.

Ye (01:06:01):

Punching bag is a bad, because scarecrow actually has a different

Lex Fridman (01:06:04):

Yeah, that’s right. So let’s say a punching bag, I shouldn’t say a scarecrow.

Ye (01:06:08):

Yeah. But every single person that I’ve sat with from the point when I wore the red hat till now has done the same thing. Sit in the principal’s office and don’t do what you’re doing.

Lex Fridman (01:06:19):

We’re in the general’s closet right now together. And I’m not, the red hat is very different. The red hat is, you have a set of beliefs, you represent half the country that has a hope, a vision for the future of America that’s very different than, without any purpose whatsoever, saying Jewish media. Jewish control of the media.

Ye (01:06:40):

You said that there’s no purpose, so you’re taking away my history and my reason of what my purpose was.

Lex Fridman (01:06:49):

Saying it was dumb. Also, also, also it can- I’m speaking my voice vocalizing it.

Ye (01:06:56):

Also.. It’s God’s plan. There’s a lot of things that open up. Let me tell you something that opened up. There’s a guy, like I told you, that was running stem player, who I’ve had issues with, we hadn’t got paid on time, certain things, right? And he took his IQ, his know-how, his engineering know-how to, he basically was trying to Adidas me with, even though I was the bigger money in the situation, that was fun, and we funded together. And he hired these engineers, and he said, well, because of your comments, we’re not gonna be able to hire anybody else. And I was like, well, how many Jewish people do we have in our company? He said, I don’t know. He didn’t say exactly, right? I said, do we have black people? He said, yes.

(01:07:39):

I said, how many? He said, two. So we have like 60 full-time employees, like 40 half-time and part-time. And I took as a responsibility, let’s take a step back from us being one species and say, hey, you’re Jewish, I’m black, right? Why step back? For this example, for the sake of this example. And I said, wow, I’m sure I can hire more than two black engineers. And what happens is, because there are so many businessmen that just so happen to be Jewish, that it’s good business, right? Just to monopolize. That’s what people are looking. Everybody wants to be Elon, right? So, the- I disagree with that. Okay, well, let me finish this point. I’m gonna let you finish, I’m gonna let you finish. A lot of businessmen want to be as successful as Elon and as popular as Elon, a lot. I could just word it like that, which I hate the term a lot, actually. I want to be more specific, but I haven’t done the math on it. Let’s say some.

(01:08:49):

Factually, for sure, there are some business people of all different walks and backgrounds that would like to be as rich and as popular as Elon Musk. So, let me just take a step back from the we’re one species into the we’re separated by race, gender, socioeconomic class conversation and say, as a black owner of two tech platforms, hardware and software, I need to take action. Let’s not call it affirmative. Let’s just say, I need to take action and I need to take accountability and ensuring that black engineers are hired black engineers are hired and guess what, hired together.

(01:09:31):

Because when the black people that are brilliant are separated from our culture, we forget who we are. And we’ll get to a point where, you know, OJ is saying, I’m not black, I’m OJ. Because just to be on the golf course, we put on the golf shirt, but the golf shirt might not be something that our culture would have done. And now our culture and poor communities is, oh, everybody’s got Draco on them. Everybody’s got a gun on them. Oh, if you run up on me on the gas station, I’m gonna kill you. Hey, you ain’t got to talk to me like a man if I haven’t killed at least five people. But you know what happens is we can kill five people. We could kill 10 people and still be in the media as long as we play by the rules, right? Because what will happen is any of these guys that have talked about killing people and different things, unless Trump had pardoned them, right? But let’s say even if Trump had pardoned them, they could still go to someone like a Lil Boozy or Meek Mills or Puff Daddy, anybody and say, hey, we need you to talk shit about yay right now. And also, you’re not allowed, if you do want to vote for Trump or vote outside of what this arrangement is, then we’re gonna put you in jail.

(01:10:56):

It ain’t, no, we’re not gonna bring you down. We have this on you. You get what I’m saying? If I had ever killed someone, if I wasn’t the bitch with the pink polo on, I wouldn’t be able to be the vocal man that I am today. You understand what I’m saying? This is the reason why I’m happy that my gangster disciple brothers kept me from the initiations, which made me feel like a pussy my whole life, right? But now I am someone who legally can say this. Other people in my position, they legally cannot speak.

(01:11:36):

They legally cannot speak, or they will go to prison. I am in a bit of a glass prison because I don’t have say-so of where my children go to school, but I’m in a freedom place where I can have this conversation with you right now. And that is, I don’t like the word breakthrough, you know, that’s God’s hand on this situation. That’s God’s hand on this situation. But you get what I’m saying about, if I hadn’t said the tweet, I wouldn’t have had to take the accountability myself to hire black engineers into my two tech platforms.

Lex Fridman (01:12:12):

Yeah, and you get what I’m saying? That’s a beautiful personal journey you’re on, but you get what I’m saying?

Ye (01:12:17):

It’s not personal, it’s for my people as a whole. As a tribal person-

Lex Fridman (01:12:21):

That’s a small company.

Ye (01:12:25):

As a tribal person, I believe that I am my people. And the thing that businessmen have done to my people have pulled the brightest out of our tribes and siloed them and made us lose our culture and lose who they were. All the only thing I wanted to say at Virgil’s funeral, which I wasn’t allowed to, is that I’m not allowed to say that I’m not allowed to. Which I wasn’t allowed to, right? It was a white pastor that talked the majority of the funeral. Half the funeral was pissed, pissed, right? And this pastor actually married me and Kim, right? He looks like Justin Timberlake a little bit.

(01:13:06):

He talked half the funeral. He knew Virgil was passing, did a collaboration with him before he passed, by the way, right? A clothing collaboration. I didn’t know Virgil was passing, but the thing I wanted to say, I saw A$AP Rocky and I saw some other members of his gang in the audience at the funeral. And all I wanted to tell him is, don’t let them split the gang up. Don’t let them split the gang up. When I did the first Yeezy, because I did Kanye West two fashion shows before as a high-end luxury, all leather kind of designer, not all leather, but high-end materials, mink, this kind of thing.

(01:13:60):

And then I came back with Yeezy, with Adidas. And this fashion show was so popular that Justin Bieber had to sit in the second row, right? This thing had every name you could think of. It had Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Kendall Jenner.

(01:14:13):

It was Kylie’s first fashion show she’d been in. And in the second fashion show, I put Kylie and Bella Hadid next to each other in the fashion show. You had Puff Daddy. At that time, Puff Daddy had beef with Drake. Drake still came to the show and Jay-Z had to break up the fight backstage. The designers, you had Jerry Lorenzo, that’s head of Fear God. You had Kim Schrab, head of Skims. You have Virgil Abloh, head of Louis Vuitton. You had Demna, head of Balenciaga, all working for Yee, for the leader, for the philosopher, right? For the person that put, who put this together? Me, that’s who, right? You had these people working for the king of New York, basically the boss, Yee, right? You had Jay-Z in the audience, Rihanna in the audience, Beyonce in the audience, sitting next to Anna Wintour in this audience. And guess who heard wind of this?

(01:15:15):

One of the richest men in the world, Bernard Arnault, caught wind of this. What’s going on? They’re building up something and we need to stop it. So then he met with me and politely offered me backing for my clothing line. It would be Kanye West, they would get 49%, 51%, I would get 49%. They’d have control. And they were going to give me all of the support from Louis Vuitton. So I had to go to Adidas and I told Adidas, Hey, let’s indemnify the apparel.

(01:15:48):

So Adidas, you’re not going to do the apparel anymore. Hey, we had a good time, but we’re going to run off with Gisele now, right? So that’s like, you told your girl that and she’s like, Oh no, we’re supposed to, we had the proudest moment of our career and stuff. So then he offers me the deal. And Alexander Arnault, who’s went to gone on and raped and pillaged from all of the talent that I had afterwards said, I say, before I tell Adidas to indemnify the apparel, can I get a written contract from your dad, Bernard Arnault? And he says, my dad will never go back on his word. So you already know what this thing is going, right? You can, spoiler alert, right? He went back on his word. So three months into the deal, I get Anna Wintour, I say, who should I use for my lawyer? She picks my lawyer for me, right? I just found out even a couple of days that the lawyer demanded an airplane during negotiations. Had nothing to do with me, right? They said the Bernard Arnault got freaked out. And then Alexander Arnault calls me and says, the deal got dropped at the board.

(01:16:54):

I went back and told my high maintenance wife, I was supposed to become this designer at Louis Vuitton or the Louis Vuitton group was going to back the Kanye West line. Cause that’s how good I’ve done in fashion, babe. And now the deal has dropped. Now the deal has dropped. So then I did a second collection and we didn’t have any support to be able to build the collection. Then I went and found a third collection. We did it. We took over MSG. Fourth collection went and the show started an hour late.

(01:17:26):

Then a week later, Kim got robbed. Then I told Scooter Braun, my manager at that time, I say, I’m looking, you know, I need to go to Japan. I’m tired. I’m tired. He says, no, you need to make more money. Do four more shows on a second leg of the tour. And I suffer from exhaustion and go to the hospital and then get diagnosed with a disorder. This is the first time I ever suffered from exhaustion. By the way, I haven’t been to the hospital since.

(01:18:02):

I haven’t been to the hospital since and haven’t taken, you know, medication in two years. And I’m sure there’ll be people in the media we won’t say, where phone will say, well, that’s obvious. So right now I’m talking to you, right? I’m not on medication. I just go to sleep, right? I have sleep. Have you been able to sleep? This, that’s too low hanging fruit for you. You’re more, I expect more.

Lex Fridman (01:18:32):

I agree. I agree. I agree. That was dumb. I regret it.

Ye (01:18:36):

That’s like, that’s like Piers Morgan trying to grab ratings. You got a whole life ahead of you. You got a whole life ahead of you. These guys are at the end of their life.

Lex Fridman (01:18:46):

Oh, good, good. Cuphead. Calling me out on my shit. I love it.

Ye (01:18:48):

But then amidst that, the same guy that dropped my deal, Bernard Arnault, goes and hires my best friend. Goes and hires my main engineer, right? It would have been like them hiring, you know, Elon from Peter before they figured out Paul. Before they figured out PayPal. But you know, Paul sounds like Paul. I just say it cause I’m a Christian. I thought it was cool. But it would have been like, what if someone could have went in and took Elon away from Peter before they paid Paul? Before they, I just, cause they paid Paul.

Lex Fridman (01:19:27):

Yeah, before they paid Paul.

Ye (01:19:30):

It’s just too close. Yeah, too close. It just sounds so fresh, the fact that it’s so close, right? And that’s, that’s what happened, right? They broke the gang up. And I’m telling you right now, that hadn’t happened. Virgil’s alive. I’m still married. You know what I’m saying? The power structure was broken then, right? Because we were building something. Kylie wasn’t a billionaire. You know what I mean? We were building something together that a French colonizer came in and caught it early and tried to destroy it.

(01:19:60):

But the only thing is God is alive and I’m anointed. And even with those drawbacks, losing my wife, losing my friend, exhaustion, all of these late night tweets that piss off an entire group, you know, like this. The frustration still there. I work for God and God runs the world. And we’ll see what happens.

Lex Fridman (01:20:30):

But in those words, don’t you feel that being split up, don’t you feel you’re doing the thing that you stand against, which is playing victim? Aren’t you playing victim to the forces in the world?

Ye (01:20:45):

I didn’t play victim. I didn’t even get a chance to play. I just said I was about to. I said like this, like.

Lex Fridman (01:20:50):

No, you played pretty damn well. What do you mean? What do you mean about to? You’re like one of the greatest designers in history, fashion designers. You’re playing. You are playing. What does that even mean?

Ye (01:21:03):

I thought you were referring to the tweet.

Lex Fridman (01:21:06):

Yeah, all of them there. There’s a full set of things that you’re under attack for. The tweet and everything beyond that. But you’re blaming, not blaming, but you’re saying that the Jewish media, the Jewish record label, the Jewish people, forget Jewish or not, it doesn’t matter, is playing victim.

Ye (01:21:31):

Ultimately, I am fighting a battle in the spiritual form. And anyone that believes in God and is looking at this interview would agree with that. And I just so happen to be a bright part of God’s army. I’m fighting for us to live. The greatest gift is life itself. I am pro-life. I am pro-God. I believe that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior and died for our sins.

Lex Fridman (01:22:04):

What do you feel about another attack, another painful thing? I imagine super painful is Balenciaga pulling, you had a really close relationship and friendship with their creative director. How do you feel about all of it?

Ye (01:22:25):

I told you I sang the song. I sing another song from one of my mentors’ future. I never feel pain. I done felt too much pain. Like, there was a day where I was headed to Nashville to meet with George Farmer, who is the CEO of Parla, the day when we made the announcement. At that same day, Balenciaga was taking my imagery off of their site, and the drink champs was being taken down. And I said, this is the happiest day of my life.

(01:23:03):

I love cutting the grass low. People wasn’t really with you. They was part-time. People switch up when it’s wartime. I’d rather have people who are really with me and not people who are just trying to use me.

Lex Fridman (01:23:17):

Listen, as a friend, if somebody cares for you, you have to be really careful by the people, by all people, always. The people that are going to try to be close to you now, you don’t know if you can trust them.

Ye (01:23:30):

Even more. With the Balenciaga, I have more to say about it, though. Yeah. Let’s do this. Dimna will still work for Ye someday. And this is just speeding the process up.

Lex Fridman (01:23:47):

Have you talked? Can you share if you’ve talked?

Ye (01:23:49):

Yes, I talked to Dimna. We’re Kendrick spirits. None of this can keep us away from each other. I brought Dimna to Gap to be able to bring the best product in the world. At that time, I wanted to go under $100. Now I’m like, okay, we’re going to go $20 a product. I brought Dimna in to engineer. That’s why I said engineer by Balenciaga, Yeezy Gap engineer by Balenciaga. To engineer the best product for the people. The people that they say are at the bottom of the Maslow hierarchy of need chart.

(01:24:24):

They’re at the bottom of the pyramid. Gap didn’t want that. Balenciaga didn’t want that. Our agendas were not aligned. I was brought in to the Gap for political reasons and influence. Like a Virgil, like a George Floyd. When popular celebrities are brought into Fortune 500 companies, it’s not to raise the stock. It’s to strengthen the position and influence.

(01:25:03):

And it’s definitely not to be out here letting a nigga think he Steve Jobs.

Lex Fridman (01:25:12):

Yeah, there’s people like that. But you as a great man, a visionary, your job is to understand that game and be one step ahead.

Ye (01:25:26):

Well, that’s what I’m telling them. That relationship, you know, some relationships only last for a summer. Some last for a year. The relationship ran its course. In that relationship, I invested a lot of my social capital and actual capital. I spent somewhere between five to ten million dollars personally on Balenciaga. How much money do you think Balenciaga had paid me in the past two years? Just take a really wild guess, a really wild guess. Less than that? Just take a super wild one. Just go to the furthest extent of your imagination.

Lex Fridman (01:26:08):

One point two million. Lower. Five hundred thousand. Lower.

Ye (01:26:16):

Zero. Zero. And actually, two weeks ago, I paid at a Saints account eight hundred and sixty two thousand dollars. Not in clothes for me from Balenciaga, from the store. In royalties to Balenciaga, where the deal had been engineered, where I was coming out of my pocket. So I paid, last year I paid Demna three million dollars to design the collection.

(01:26:43):

Right. And we got it out of the Gap marketing fund. And he was going to deliver a hundred sixty SKUs or a hundred twenty SKUs. A hundred SKUs are separate items of clothing. So, styles of clothing. So he ended up delivering about sixty. I feel like we’re on the people’s court because we actually are right in the court of public opinion. So he delivered about sixty. There were all kinds of people that were working. Part of the reason why I had to get Demna, like I didn’t want to have to, I wanted to compete with him.

(01:27:22):

I didn’t want to have to like get him. You know, when I made Stronger, I did it to compete with Timbaland and Justin Timberlake. Because my fiancé at that time liked Justin Timberlake just a little bit too much. So I made it to compete. And then we had the song out. It’s number one on Apple. It’s blowing up. I play it in a club and it sounds muddy. It doesn’t sound the way Sexyback sounded in the club. So I go to Pharrell Williams to do the drums.

(01:27:51):

And it doesn’t, it sounds like a different record. And so it can’t be a different record because I’m like, I’m going to swap it out on radio, right? Then I go to Swiss Beats. It sounds like a different record. I go to Timbaland, the person who did Sexyback. And he did it in five minutes. And then spent the rest of the hour talking about how nobody could have done it except for him. Running around the studio. I’m the best. No one could have did it. That’s why he had to go to me. He had to go to the king. Well, he had a point, right? He had a point, right?

Lex Fridman (01:28:30):

What makes the song muddy? Is it the beat? It was in the drums.

Ye (01:28:34):

It was in the drums. It was something that Timbaland had in those drums. Like, now watch this. I said, I’m going Def Con 3, right? And the actual, I spelled it wrong. I have a tendency to do that. I’m not quite John Legend, tight sweater level, spelling bee level. So I feel a parallel to me going to Timbaland to when I said, hey, you as an engineer, I need to work with you as an engineer that is Jewish to look at these contracts and what my people, not just black people, let’s say artists, are dealing with in our contracts. These contracts need to be fixed. Everyone could be so mad at the messenger, right? Yay, you said it the wrong way. You’re offensive. You’re like Hitler now because you said it. You said this out loud, but it does not, you weren’t getting enough sleep. All this shit does not negate the fact that we do have Houston. We have a problem.

Lex Fridman (01:29:40):

Yeah, but we is just the music industry. Like there’s a lot of hate that was created by just saying that, you know?

Ye (01:29:46):

But you’re saying what is just is everything to me, right? One person can mean everything to me, right?

Lex Fridman (01:29:54):

And for George Bush, winning an election was everything. And then when you said George Bush doesn’t care about black people, that you woke him up. You woke the people up to the fact that he was narrowly being selfish. There’s a sense to which you’re being corrupted by your own greatness. You’re focusing too much on the industry that you’ve made great, that you’ve rose to the very top. One of the richest artists in history. One of the greatest designers.

Ye (01:30:21):

I’m not, I am the richest artist in history.

Lex Fridman (01:30:25):

Probably the richest artist in history.

Ye (01:30:29):

Yeah. The funny thing is they’re like, oh, rich is black person. Like, oh, also rich is actor. Rich is musician. Rich is fashion designer. Like it’s a bunch of riches in that one, you know what I’m saying? It’s like richer than Ralph Lauren, like richer than Amani, like richest like of that, but still low. Because where do you put that? You know, like on the totem, because I don’t even want to.

Lex Fridman (01:30:53):

Man’s bank account isn’t everything. I would say you and I are equal in a certain deep sense. No matter what the bank account says.

Ye (01:31:05):

Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom. So I wanted to give you some theme music for your moments. It sounds a little muddy. Let me give you the Timberland version. Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom. Thank you. Play that at the club. So the other thing about like, say like Balenciaga is Demna will work with Ye someday and for Cedric and for Francois Pinot and Selma is a beautiful human being. Five years from now, you’ll hear and know the name Ye and know things that we did. And Balenciaga is not going to make it onto your questions. Would you, as a gambling man, would you bet on that? I would bet on that.

Lex Fridman (01:32:02):

I can see it in your eyes.

Ye (01:32:03):

So it was sad. It was actually a sad day for me, not for me, but more for Balenciaga. I just, when I heard that I was just like, oh, shame.

Lex Fridman (01:32:17):

Let me ask you a silly question just about Demna. I read something that you two talked about, like buttons for a few hours.

Ye (01:32:26):

Damn, I gumdrop buttons?

Lex Fridman (01:32:29):

Just in that accent.

Ye (01:32:31):

Me and Demn only speak in Shrek.

Lex Fridman (01:32:33):

What’s your philosophy with which you approach design? You are one of the great fashion designers of our time. How do you think about it? Do you have a philosophy?

Ye (01:32:44):

You know what I like about the zipper is, the zipper hoodie replaces the dress shirt because you could get on your douchebag shit and unzip it and give it a little bit of that type of look.

Lex Fridman (01:32:60):

Which is the douchebag?

Ye (01:33:01):

You know, like when the douchebags would go to Vegas and unbutton their dress shirt? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the problem with the pullover hoodie is you can’t do the douchebag thing where you unbutton it, but then still get the stomach. Because the thing is, the ultimate look would be military tank pullover hoodie. And if you get a little hot, you take off the hoodie, but you’re crazy in shape.

Lex Fridman (01:33:30):

So it gives you that flexibility.

Ye (01:33:31):

Yeah, the zipper’s given some flexibility, and it’s like maybe you want to keep your jacket on. Let’s consider a hoodie to be like a jacket. If you want to keep your jacket on, then you might want to do this, as opposed to pulling it all the way off. And it’s just comfort, but then you get, okay, can I do a jogging pant on this with elasticity?

(01:33:55):

Now, people argue about climate, where we are with the climate. I take responsibility as being the most influential designer of all time to say we’re going to use biodegradable clothing. Now, the issue there is the elastic is not biodegradable. So that means it’s actually better to use jeans and a belt than to have an elastic waistband, because elastic waistband is not biodegradable. So I use the planet as a big, the future of the planet is a big piece of the way I engineer and the way we talk about where designs are going.

Lex Fridman (01:34:56):

The constraints on your design and engineering is given by the planet, by the future of the planet.

Ye (01:35:03):

That could almost make Jewish people like me again.

Lex Fridman (01:35:08):

Every time you say Jewish people, I think, I’ve been maybe reading a little too much about World War II, but man, I’d recommend you listen to some audiobooks or read some books on the Holocaust, because it’s heavy. It’s heavy. It will put into context the impact of your words.

Ye (01:35:32):

Would you read books on the current Holocaust that black people are in?

Lex Fridman (01:35:36):

No, I mean, I read.

Ye (01:35:38):

What have you read about abortion?

Lex Fridman (01:35:41):

I’ve read a lot of short form writing and I’ve listened to a lot of debates, because it’s really humbling that the question of when does life begin is a really difficult question for me as an engineer and scientist. It’s a philosophical question.

Ye (01:36:02):

I mean, we could just go on population control, not like if abortion is right or wrong. We could say factually the clinics were made by eugenics for population control and it is controlling the population, as is the never being given a 40 acres and a mule, so you don’t have the opportunity. And when the people that do have the opportunity are separated from our people, our tribe, and placed in suburban communities next to us, Chris Rocco put it, the dentist, and whitewashed and made to shut the fuck up and vote left or whatever niggers are supposed to do when we make it, as opposed to saying, okay, we’re building schools. We’re building up choirs. We’re building up our own leagues, basketball teams, our own factories. We started the first sportswear factory in America since World War II was actually this factory I put in Cody. So I’m 45 years old. We’re on this journey right now. It’s the other thing about this is people just in general, they love me so much. I’m actually a hard guy to really hate for a long period of time just because of my huge cock.

Lex Fridman (01:37:26):

That’s what I noticed. I didn’t understand why you showed it to me when we first met, but now I understand. It’s very nice. Congratulations. I know you don’t talk about it, but your hat does say 24. If you run for president, what kind of ideas would you represent?

Ye (01:37:50):

That we’re beings with engineering opportunities. I would represent just as you served a platform here, there’s something that happened on my last run that I thought, I feel I know was brilliant. It was noisy, but it was brilliant. I had one rally and in the rally I just let people come up and I gave them a platform.

(01:38:38):

It’s our responsibility to listen to the pain and hear the pain and understand even when we’re the ones that cause the pain, like with my tweet. It’s my responsibility to hear you and understand why you feel like that, but it’s our responsibility as a people to understand each other.

Lex Fridman (01:39:06):

To give people a voice.

Ye (01:39:06):

People need the voice and even right now, what I’m doing or how God is using me, I’m showing where our voices are being muted. There’s professors that are actually intelligent, actually have multiple degrees that have been canceled from their schools. They don’t have a music industry or a fan base or shoe design or a smoking hot ex-wife to complain about. They’ve just got the truth of what they saw and what they dedicated to this country and to education that has been muted by schools that have been taken over with an agenda. You want the brightest minds to be these professors and then you mute them. They have nowhere to go. You might get a guy now that went from being someone’s favorite professor to he’s working at Starbucks like he was back in school or like he was back in high school.

Lex Fridman (01:40:13):

So even if that voice is about anger and hate, it still deserves to be heard.

Ye (01:40:20):

Yeah, it deserves to be heard and we deserve to ask why. You have to ask why I just feel like that is sympathizing Mr. Hugecock. I’m just saying that it just needs to be.

Lex Fridman (01:40:37):

You should change that to your name on Twitter while you’re still allowed on there.

Ye (01:40:43):

Yeah. Do you think that would get censored? I feel like they definitely cut it down some inches. I’m pointing out this truth. No, I’m serious. This is not a Christian thing. I wonder right there when I say these jokes, because I do feel like laughter is the key. Engineering and laughter is the key to peace. When I go get my teeth clean and I have the nitrous, there’s something that I want to go and hug Chris Jenner.

(01:41:25):

I want to go and hug Corey Gamble. I want to go and hug Howard Stern. No one wants to hug Howard Stern.

Lex Fridman (01:41:34):

No, no, no. I would love to see you two hug it out and make up, even though all the shit talking back and forth.

Ye (01:41:43):

What about talking it out or is he going to be screaming at me?

Lex Fridman (01:41:47):

Yeah, judgmental and that kind of stuff. No, I hope there’s love there.

Ye (01:41:50):

You know, the thing is, I think Howard’s just jealous. Not just jealous of my cock. He’s also jealous that I started my campaign earlier than him. You got to let go of that jealousy. You got to let go of that jealousy, Howard.

Lex Fridman (01:42:13):

Howard and everybody else. Jealousy is a natural human thing, man.

Ye (01:42:17):

I wonder just as a Christian, when I joke and say this stuff, it’s like, am I being disobedient to God? Because as a boss, right, I’ll talk to an employee and I’ll be like, why didn’t you just listen? Because I’ve got the bigger plan, right? So it’s like me talking to God were the things that I did in this interview that were disobedient to God. And for those things, I pray and I repent for anything that I’ve said that was disobedient to God.

Lex Fridman (01:42:57):

Humor is not one of them. Joking is. I feel like humor is the way we avoid so much suffering in the world. It’s like a catalyst for love. People that have gone through some of the darkest trauma that I’ve ever met, through war, I just came back from Ukraine, they’re laughing. They’re making jokes. What’s the best way to deal with dark times? I don’t know what it is about humans. I feel like humor, that’s the best way to socially engineer a good future, I think, is humor. Not taking shit too seriously. That’s the problem with censorship. One of the things that really suffer is humor. Jokes. Maybe going too far in the jokes. You mentioned Anthony Jeselnik. That guy goes hard. That guy goes really hard, and it’s great. He crosses all the lines, and that’s why he’s a genius. That’s why he’s a genius. That’s what people feel is refreshing when he does it.

Ye (01:43:53):

I don’t know what it is. But then it’s hurtful when I do it. But I’ll tell you something that was interesting. I’m pretty sure Anthony doesn’t like, sorry for the assumption, but just most comedians I know didn’t vote for Trump.

Lex Fridman (01:44:10):

That’s interesting.

Ye (01:44:12):

Not saying there aren’t comedians that did, but just the ones I know, because I live in California, right?

Lex Fridman (01:44:16):

But they have an appreciation for Trump because of the sense of humor. I’ve got to ask you about parlor and engineering, because I’m interested about that. Doom, doom, doom, doom. Hey, man, I’m actually trying to hold it together. You’re pretty offensive towards a lot.

Ye (01:44:33):

I’m not looking to be offensive. I really want to bring people together and get these sales done.

Lex Fridman (01:44:37):

I know, but 100%, I see your vision. How do we do that? As somebody who cares, well, don’t say Jewish media and Jewish controlled media. JM. Man, you sound like, it sounds too much like 1930s Nazi Germany that was leading up to the atrocities. Oh, he would say JM?

(01:45:03):

Yeah, he was branded JM, that’s right. No, it’s just the implied, like this meme-ified prejudice towards a group in a way that’s going to lead to hate. I know you don’t mean that. I know you have love in your heart.

Ye (01:45:24):

You know what was the prejudice towards a group that led to hate? BLM. BLM took a black person, showed his death on camera, because, okay, there are examples of us being killed and being killed on camera, but if it was spread on camera, it was done on purpose by the media, because 14, 20 kids get killed in Chicago every week, and it’s not spread that much. They, like you said, singled out a person, directed everything on that person as the martyr, and raised the people that hadn’t had any. We didn’t have our 40 acres and a mule. We didn’t have a lot of things, right, that black people have not ever been given. So once we’re given just a little bit, like your life matters, right, then we literally like, oh, okay, now we’re being heard, right? But actually the death toll is up. The city where this happened has completely been turned to a war zone. They actually, it’s actually something like Candace Owens can actually specify this better, but it’s like its own city or something. Like they made it not be a part of the actual state or something. It’s like D.C. and stuff. It’s like Washington, D.C. now and stuff. And that has to be from a government, that’s got higher level agenda written all over it.

Lex Fridman (01:47:13):

Yeah, they’re using the death of an individual, yeah. Sure, the media are. Not the Jewish media, the media. And the media is fucked up. That machine takes whatever tragedy and pushes it towards whatever narrative that gets more clicks and views and so on. Sure, and then politicians do the same. They use the media, they influence the media to tell a story.

Ye (01:47:40):

This is a simple thing I put. I believe that the idea of anti-Semitism and the closeness of the Holocaust is used by certain individuals in media to not take accountability for the bad things that are happening. And what’s happening is there’s a new frontier, right? Meaning like it used to be okay for somebody to be a billionaire. We thought about a billionaire, right?

(01:48:21):

A lot of times you think I’m actually kind of being out of shape. And 20 years ago, 30 years ago, like Onassis or something, you thought about it a different way. Now you think about it, you think about Elon, you think Kim, you think Ye. You think it’s a new kind of billionaire. It’s not just Soros is a billionaire. It’s a new form of billionaire. So right now what I’m calling for the industry is I’m calling the industry out and saying like, hey, it just so happens that there’s been times where I had, my lawyer was Jewish, my regulator was Jewish, but like eight people that basically would collude and talk without me were in groups saying, okay, this is what the tour is going to be.

(01:49:04):

This is the next house. And they were making all these decisions and they’re making all this money. And at the end, I was like, I ended my tour and I don’t have the money. And it just so happens that that’s the case that what they were. But what I’m saying is if everyone can say, hey, you can’t point out this fact, or we’re going to say you’re antisemitic and we’re going to call you Hitler. I feel that there has to be at least 1% of safeguarding the ability to screw the artists based on saying it’s antisemitic by pointing out that they just so happen to all be Jewish.

(01:49:44):

And I don’t think that’s antisemitism. I just think that’s, hey, this is another thing. Like, okay, the Kardashians, when you hear that, do you think male or do you think female? You think female. You get what I’m saying? You think this is the realities. This is why rap works. They’re going to make an anti women thing in a second.

(01:50:04):

And it’s going to say, well, if you point out that these five women, six women are having a meeting on where the Christmas party is, and none of the ballplayers or rappers that they have babies with have any say so, so that Christmas happened at Courtney’s house all eight years when I was there. And it never happened at anyone else’s black family house. Like if I’m the one that pointed it out, they just don’t have, they don’t have their, oh, your antisemitic word to say, shut the fuck up. Because this is the way it runs and this is the way we want to do it.

Lex Fridman (01:50:41):

If you say that though that women are silencing the black voice, yes, you’re going to get the same response, but especially if it historically resonates. True. When you talk in groups, that breeds hate. When you talk about individuals, it solves problems. You’re in engineering.

Ye (01:51:04):

Okay, but this is something I pointed out on Pierce. I said, if a black person gets pulled over with a car and it’s three other people in the car, they’re also going to jail. They’re not going to single them out. They’re going to say, you guys are all in collusion. I just described collusion five times in this interview. And you keep on going back to this is like 1930, this is like this, this is like that. What I’m saying is, look, I want to work with you as an engineer to free my people. Can we start as a being with engineer opportunities right here? I am sorry to the people who had to be hurt and affected by that. Now we are here and I’m looking to solve it.

(01:51:54):

But what happens is every time if I talk to any of these business people one by one, because mind you, I didn’t get to the tweet by not having a conversation. I had the conversations beforehand before I got to the tweet. Now we’re going to take it to the stage. Now we’re on the world stage, right? And you saw Ari Emanuel do exactly the kind of thing that I was saying had been done behind closed doors. Now he’s doing it in open doors. They told Candace Owens, I couldn’t be on the daily wire. Like you can’t even explain yourself.

(01:52:32):

And we don’t care how you got to that point either. And that’s fucked up.

Lex Fridman (01:52:38):

They told Candace you can’t be on the daily wire?

Ye (01:52:40):

Yes, she did. That’s what they said. And you know what? And you can have my voice raised or lower. I’m going to do it lower, right? Because what’s happening to me by, I put in your words, the media is saying, not only can you not explain yourself, we don’t care how you got to that point. You need to apologize and you can’t explain. And that’s the end of the story. So just apologize so we can have Mel Gibson do some more films.

(01:53:09):

It’s exactly what Ari Emanuel was saying. No one is looking to change the problem that led so many people to that same level of frustration. And I just so happen to be the one that’s not going to back up on it. Until this changes. Because you know what? I’m sorry I had a sleepy text. I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry that I put that I was 512 or 511 on Tinder. My cock is not 14 inches. I lied, okay? It’s only 13. So I’m sorry, right? So the…

Lex Fridman (01:53:48):

He’s dropping so many facts today.

Ye (01:53:50):

So what I’m saying is, but where do we get to this? Because even you, as engineering, as intelligent as you are, you, just like everyone else that I was saying was colluding, won’t let us get to the point of fixing it.

Lex Fridman (01:54:04):

Yeah, but I’m not, I think you’re more powerful than the media. I’m not saying you need to apologize because of the media. I’m saying everything we’ve been talking about, just because I care for you and I want you to be the best possible man you can be. To me, a definition of a great man, I’m with Martin Luther King on this. You don’t talk about Jews or black people. You talk about engineering. You talk about humanity. You solve problems. You identify the problems in the world and you don’t come from a place of resentment. This group did this, this, fuck all that.

(01:54:35):

That is in the past. You just build solutions. I’m going to create a new record label. I’m going to create a new design firm. I’m going to create a new social network and I’m going to do it better. I’m going to do it right. I’m going to do it right by the people that I know don’t have a voice. I’m going to give them a voice and talk about that.

Ye (01:54:50):

Is it okay to call out collusion? Do people collude in your business under you? Like the engineers, they come together and like say, they collude against the bosses, right? You know why Bernard Arnault offered the deal and took it away from me? Collusion, because I was too powerful with the collective that I had right there. He had to stop that at all costs. They said, for whatever reason, this kid, yay, it has the ability to have all of the Kardashians, Jay-Z and Beyonce, Justin Bieber, Demna, Virgil, all these people in the same room working towards the same goal. I’ve been that person since preschool. That’s called a leader, right? And right now, what I’m saying is, hey, for the people in business, whatever their background is, whether they turn their cell phones off on Friday or not, there’s been some bad business done. There’s some bad business practices and we have to change that because this game is like boxing. More people end up retarded than rich.

(01:55:55):

And I’m saying beat to a pope, driven crazy, beat by the media to a pope. Right now, the media has done everything they could to make me apologize and to make me look crazy. And that one person has done anything to find out why I was frustrated enough to do that tweet and that’s facts and that’s fucked up.

Lex Fridman (01:56:16):

Well, I was hoping to. I am finding out. We found out. But I want solutions. See, there’s something about human nature where if you focus too much on resentment…

Ye (01:56:26):

We’re not focusing on anymore. Fuck the resentment. We’re moving forward.

Lex Fridman (01:56:30):

Right. So there’s two things I think that are required for… I mean, this is how I’ve lived my life, for great engineering. You surround yourself in your personal life by people you trust. And then in your professional life from the engineering perspective with a team, with an incredible team, and everything else doesn’t matter. That allows you not to focus on other groups, how they’re fucking you over, how they’re trying to manipulate or collude and all that kind of stuff. You focus on solutions and you find a way around all the difficult shit.

(01:57:01):

That’s it. If you have people in your life you can trust. That’s lifelong. You said some people you’re with for the summer, for a year. Find people you can be with for your whole life. Do you have people in your life that you trust, like really trust?

Ye (01:57:19):

No, I trust God. At any point, a human being can… I could… If I go and really treat this guy like a piece of shit or do this, that, that, that, am I supposed to trust him to be loyal and stay in the situation? No, I trust people to be people, and people are flawed. And people can have the right intentions, but it only makes sense for us to work together when our agendas align.

(01:57:50):

When Kim was pulled really far to the left, our agendas no longer aligned, so that made the marriage impossible. In a line where it’s like, oh, I could wear a red hat that can help her to get Alice Johnson out of jail because Trump’s willing to do that for my wife because I was the only person in my position that stood up and said, wait a sec, I like you. You know, because…

Lex Fridman (01:58:16):

But isn’t there a deeper agenda, the human agenda of just being in love? Like, that’s just politics. What you’re talking about, red hat is just politics, right?

Ye (01:58:23):

I mean, the world is becoming more and more transactional every day, and actually marriages are actually originally based on transactions, and that’s why they’re less needed, the more autonomous as we come, or the world makes it less needed. I feel like we do need each other. I feel like we do need someone we can always count on.

(01:58:43):

It’s like I’m, yay, pulled away by King Koopa, which is the media, the politics, the promise, oh, we’re going to keep you safe. So the reason why I get really frustrated with Kris Jenner is she says losing Rob Kardashian was the greatest mistake of her life, but she never gave Kim’s hand over in marriage because this is the bottom line.

(01:59:08):

When me and Kim met, we were millionaires or whatever, right? You’re telling me you just hand her hand over in marriage that your daughter’s not successful? Handing your hand over in marriage too, but no, she had to still be the husband to all of her daughters, and we see what the results are consistently. So that’s where I get frustrated. It’s like, let that go. Let this person do what you made mistakes on. Don’t make this person relive those same mistakes and then put that agenda into my daughters too.

Lex Fridman (01:59:45):

Is there somebody in your life close to you that you trust enough to call you out on your bullshit? We’re all full of shit sometimes.

Ye (01:59:54):

What’s my bullshit?

Lex Fridman (01:59:57):

Well, some of it I pointed out today, but I don’t know you deeply enough. What was the bullshit? Jewish media, Jewish…

Ye (02:00:02):

That’s not bullshit. The bullshit is that the Jewish media won’t admit…

Lex Fridman (02:00:07):

Your dad was right. Your dad was right. The words you used, you weren’t…

Ye (02:00:13):

And I said it. You’re not going to make me say it 800 more times.

Lex Fridman (02:00:17):

I don’t know if it resonated because you keep saying the words…

Ye (02:00:21):

Did it resonate to y’all that y’all didn’t do nothing about it and that all y’all want to do is have somebody apologize and sweep under the rug your bullshit that you’ve been doing the whole time? You own the same bullshit as the other people. So you’re doing the same thing that the other, let’s say media, because I’m not allowed to say, has done. So until somebody stands up…

Lex Fridman (02:00:43):

Which is what, man? Which is what? I’m trying to call you out on your bullshit because I hope I’m somebody you can trust. I don’t fucking trust you. Well, you should find people in your life you can trust.

Ye (02:00:56):

Don’t tell me what I should do. I’m not one of your BLM marchers.

Lex Fridman (02:01:01):

Listen, I’m with you on the BLM. A lot of organizations use tragedy. And I watched the Candace Owens documentary.

Ye (02:01:11):

And what was your take on it?

Lex Fridman (02:01:14):

I think it’s important to question the mainstream narratives, but I don’t agree with it. I still believe that George Floyd died from the knee of the cop, not from fentanyl.

Ye (02:01:27):

And even if that was the case, there’s still 50% of Black deaths is actually abortion. So let’s get into engineering. Let’s just go… How do you fix that? Population control is social engineering. In its most literal form. The Blacks are under population control. That’s something that… I mean, that’s just what it is.

Lex Fridman (02:01:55):

African Americans are not choosing to get the abortion. I mean, it’s a choice. It’s an individual choice.

Ye (02:01:60):

But we’re being influenced here.

Lex Fridman (02:02:03):

Well, then speak to the community and help. I mean, I don’t know what the engineering solutions there are. It could be you’re doing that in part by speaking to the value and the power of family.

Ye (02:02:13):

Well, watch this. I was building shelters. I bought land in Calabasas. I bought two ranches in Wyoming. 300 acres in Calabasas, 12,000 acres in total in Wyoming. And I started building ideas for shelters. And God set it on my heart to make monasteries, which would be modern day facilities that don’t turn people down. That have farms.

(02:02:45):

That have shelter, clothing. But first of all, water. First of all, knowledge. Because knowledge is the most important resource to our species. Above water. Knowledge itself. Because then you can go get water. I mean, you can argue, like, if you’re a baby, how do you get water? But the baby doesn’t have it. So someone with the knowledge then feeds the baby the water. But it’s important that those with the knowledge teach the baby how to find the water themselves. And the business people that I’ve been dealing with have been keeping the baby sick. By not sharing the information and the knowledge with inside of those contracts. My people are sick. If I load up Apple Music right now and I play the top songs in the rap chart, I will tell you my people are sick. If I go to the restaurants in Opportunity Zones and we look at the calorie rating and the cholesterol, I will tell you that my people are sick. If we look at the obesity rate, if you go to just a restaurant somewhere in middle America, Denny’s or something. I went to Denny’s the other day. You will see that my people are sick. And my people meaning all people, right? But black people are very influential to all people. So if the media picks an overweight black woman and says this is body goals, then the media are influencing my people to stay sick.

(02:04:29):

And it just so happens that that night, I was so frustrated after 20 years that I had to call it out in one tweet that now even if I say, hey, okay, I was frustrated for these reasons. Now it’s not good enough. You’ve literally tried to make me re-apologize 10 times in this meeting. Resay this, resay that. But it doesn’t change the fact that my people are sick and I’m the only person in my position that will say that my people are sick.

(02:05:04):

Today, not 30 years ago, not 60 years. My people are sick today. 50% of my peoples of deaths are abortion today. My people don’t have the opportunities today. Even to the point that because if JP Morgan had been nice to me and if Alex Klein, a stem player, had been fair to me, different things, then I wouldn’t even point it out that we don’t have any black, we have two black engineers. So I have to have a responsibility obviously to all people, but specifically to my tribe. Because tribes move.

(02:05:35):

Tribalism is real with black people. To separate the brightest from the tribe or to separate the leaders, it is factual that the CIA removed the leaders from the black community, put crack in the communities, put guns in the communities, and locked up all the leaders and called them gang leaders. Locked up all the leaders, locked up all the fathers. 72% of black mothers are raising children by themselves. This is a gender like a Tuskegee experiment set on my people, right? And what I’m calling out for the black people in entertainment is, what are we doing? We have to collude. And if we don’t collude, because even if I said, hey, I’d like to make a company that’s all black, right? Is that okay for me to say? Or is that antisemitic? See, if I hadn’t crossed the line so far, then that would have sounded antisemitic. Now I’ve stretched a bit, so now we can go to, okay, let’s make an all black company. But that would have been antisemitic.

(02:06:41):

Just that concept, because you could word that in a different way that would sound antisemitic.

Lex Fridman (02:06:46):

I don’t know, man.

Ye (02:06:47):

No, no, listen. If I said I didn’t want to have the Jewish people in the company, would that be antisemitic? It would sound like it, right? You’d say I’m from 1930s, right? But for me as a tribe to say, no, I want an all black company, right?

Lex Fridman (02:07:02):

I’m generally against that kind of thing. But first of all, you have the right to do whatever the hell you want. This is America.

Ye (02:07:07):

Well, what I’m saying is that’s what I feel may need to happen for my people to have power again, because when my people have been left under the media’s control, we’ve been made sick. We’ve been allowed to be sick, and we’re promoting sickness.

Lex Fridman (02:07:23):

I think, at least in the engineering realm, I haven’t met an engineer who happens to be black who would like to be called a black engineer. And when you have a company of all black people that are engineers, I don’t know the creative arts, I apologize, but engineering, they really try to look at each other as humans and look at the problem. And you want to know, you want to have the confidence that everybody on the team is the best possible person for the job.

Ye (02:07:53):

What I can say is the world is sick, and I have slight images of utopia, slight images of happiness, slight images as a visionary and a creator, and I know for a fact the way that business deals have been done for me are keeping the world sick.

Lex Fridman (02:08:22):

I see that’s what you’re trying to do, and you probably, listen, people should not doubt, yay. But I got to tell you, I have to be honest, this is silly because you don’t know me, but it hurt when you say you don’t trust me. You kind of lost me. I don’t think anyone’s ever said that to me. I don’t know, man. Fuck that. I don’t care about views or clickbait or any of that bullshit.

(02:08:49):

I just thought you were one of the greatest artists ever. It’d be cool to talk to you. I feel like you got pain you’re working through. I never had anyone say that to me. I’m just being a mess about it, I guess. That’s fucked up, though. But maybe it’s not. Maybe you shouldn’t trust anybody, but I just haven’t had that experience.

Ye (02:09:11):

Yeah. Do you think I would trust anybody at this point in my life?

Lex Fridman (02:09:15):

Yeah, it’s tough. It’s tough. I hear you, and it’s also kind of good to see how much strength you got. You’re not broken by any of this. You’re under a lot of attack, a lot of attack by a lot of people. You have a vision, and you’re trying to feel your way through it, and you might get destroyed for it. That’s the human… That’s the risk you take.

Ye (02:09:41):

It’s a wonderful life, though.

Lex Fridman (02:09:44):

What do you hope your legacy is?

Ye (02:09:46):

To be forgotten.

Lex Fridman (02:09:48):

Do you think you’d be forgotten?

Ye (02:09:50):

Because the memory, there’s ego in memory, in the memories. Who designed the sidewalk? Who designed the water fountain? Who designed the stop sign? Who designed the stoplight? These things are so ubiquitous that the person that designed them is forgotten. If it’s a good idea, it’s a God idea, and no VCs can own it.

Lex Fridman (02:10:19):

So you want your designs in all realms of life to be so simple that they permeate everything, they take over, and you are forgotten. That’s a successful design, is you’re forgotten. Yes. Do you have advice for people? A lot, a lot, a lot of young people look up to you. Do you have advice for young people of how to live a life they can be proud of?

Ye (02:10:48):

Don’t tweet while you’re sleepy.

Lex Fridman (02:10:54):

Surely there’s other things. I love the humor. Don’t take it seriously, I suppose, is what that means.

Ye (02:11:01):

Don’t send sleepy tweets. Unless you buy your own social platform the very next week, call Parler. But other than that, if you’re not going to buy your own social platform, then…

Lex Fridman (02:11:13):

Is that why you bought Parler’s so you could be sleepy and send messages out into the wild? I actually am really interested in the engineering aspects of Parler. Is there a vision there? Because I’m also super interested in Elon buying Twitter.

Ye (02:11:27):

I like Instagram better than Twitter, and I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg liked Instagram better than Facebook or saw how valuable that was and he bought it.

Lex Fridman (02:11:43):

So you’d like to take Parler or something, whatever is the magic that makes Instagram work, you’ll want to put…

Ye (02:11:48):

Well, I thought it was interesting how it felt like Snapchat made the Kardashians bully Instagram.

Lex Fridman (02:11:54):

What’s the point of Snapchat going to war on Instagram?

Ye (02:11:60):

Yeah, I mean, just everyone wants to say, well, this is our value, Snapchat. No one wants to lose their value to someone else’s value, whatever. And everything is just… What’s the difference between permanent and temporary? Is this a permanent structure? Until God says it’s not, nothing’s permanent. Our life is not permanent.

(02:12:22):

So how do we just let go of those things? Even going from the name Kanye West to Ye was the beginning of just letting go of some things, of these titles. We need to remove the titles like, hey, if I have to leave Adidas and I have to go next computers, that may take me out of the billionaire standing altogether. And I got to get low for however long God says I have to get low and refocus. I’ve been reshaping, refocusing my staff. I had some people that were good and I had some people that weren’t. I had too many people and I’ve got a vision inside of me and I’m like, this is how I make this vision. I have to bring this vision to life.

(02:13:10):

I have to bring these houses to life. I was talking to one of our architects on, you know, we’re actually getting close on it. I’ve like built it a few times. I had like the domes you probably saw and I said, you know, how he transformed Kim’s house and now we’re getting there.

Lex Fridman (02:13:33):

So you want to get into architecture. Like you really want this to become physical reality.

Ye (02:13:38):

Yes. And I’ve got close. Rome wasn’t built to today.

Lex Fridman (02:13:41):

Yeah, but Rome had to start somewhere. I got to call you out on the advice. There really is a lot of people that look up to you and you’ve lived a really difficult life and you made it through all of it. What do you advise them to do?

Ye (02:13:59):

Do everything that you, even if you are told that it’s the wrong thing. No, no, no, no, no, but not anything violent.

Lex Fridman (02:14:07):

So do what you feel, say what you feel, like trust your heart.

Ye (02:14:11):

Yeah, trust your gut, trust your instincts because that instinct is who God made you to be. Not, you know, what lines up with your like frat brothers or what lines up with what your dad wanted or what lines up with your classmates. You know, it’s just God has something inside of you. And when you walk down the street, you’re thinking about it and then you just see it in the window and you go down another street and you see the same thing or you’re thinking about a number and that number pops up or you see it on a license plate. And that’s just, you know, something is trying to say be the maximum yay, you know, be the maximum you and God will give you anything that you can’t handle. So for me, everything is a yes.

(02:15:02):

I think they say be like water. I know Bruce Lee said that or matter of fact, just be because we are beings with engineering opportunities.

Lex Fridman (02:15:18):

Beautifully put. Ye, I have hope, I have faith that however this turns out that you have the skill and the capacity to really add love to the world and I hope you do that. I really, really hope you do that. And we talked about the tension of that, the challenges and the opportunities of that.

Ye (02:15:42):

I mean, I see how we could be of use to each other. You actually have a particular thing for me as I eject from media because even also, you know, I’m really big at like, you know, burning the Phoenix too. All you know as an engineer that your cells completely regenerate every seven years, I think I rush the process a little bit so I run around looking like a burn victim sometimes.

Lex Fridman (02:16:04):

Yeah, but I got to tell you, anyone I am close with, I work with, there has to be trust, there has to be love and I think you’ve been burned quite a bit in your life.

Ye (02:16:15):

Sometimes I did it myself. I put my hand on the stove. So how do we get to engineering? There’s a deal to be done here. Not saying you’re making this money off of that, I’m making that money off, but there’s- I don’t care about money by the way. Same, twins. So there’s dealings here. You got pain, I got pain, but we’re beings with engineering opportunities.

Lex Fridman (02:16:38):

For a long time I thought somebody should create a new social network and it looks like great engineering could do that.

Ye (02:16:47):

You got two at one time from two of your homeboys at one time.

Lex Fridman (02:16:50):

Yeah, and that’s a great way to- I mean, every- you know, it can be done from scratch or it can be done anew with an already established platform. Yeah. I’m very excited by that possibility. Parler is smaller, Twitter is larger. I wonder whether you can do any kind of revolutionary engineering with a large company. If anyone can, I would say it’s Elon.

Ye (02:17:11):

Well, Elon can look at what we do over here. That’s why I like- God does this a lot of times. He creates doppelgangers. There’s a lot of examples where a theory happened two places at one time, a really similar type of personality happens at one time.

Lex Fridman (02:17:31):

It’s weird. It’s weird, it’s beautiful. It’s hilarious actually. It’s kind of humorous.

Ye (02:17:34):

So we should just share every piece of information together. As I go build Parler and as he builds up Twitter and see how to make both those better, but I’ll be like, hey, I’m not going to let Snapchat bully me out of adding something to it that’s best. It should just be the best platform possible.

(02:18:00):

That means TikTok has amazing features. Twitter has amazing things about it. I know this girl that’s like, I like Instagram better than Twitter. She likes it. Twitter has porn. But other than that, Instagram. But I was like, well, Instagram is porn also. It’s like soft. It’s more subtle. It’s not telling you. It’s not conservative by any means.

Lex Fridman (02:18:30):

That’s the thing. You have to please a lot of people with these platforms. And I think the goal of a platform should be to help individuals maximize their long-term happiness and growth intellectually, spiritually, psychologically, all of that. And it’s a tricky thing to figure out how to do that. Of course, you could just have a platform that’s just strictly for fun. I think that’s where TikTok leans. But I think there’s a balance to strike. Like Twitter, there’s a lot of intellectual philosophical stuff going on on Twitter, but it somehow currently makes it too easy to be divisive and hateful towards each other and cancel and all that kind of stuff.

Ye (02:19:12):

I think we need to have these healthy conversations. That’s what it is. Healthy conversations, healthy dialogues. That’s the biggest thing. Like when I first wore the red hat, the conversation is less healthy than it is today. The conversation about George Floyd, it’s like, did I send the tweet the right way? Is Candace Owens’ documentary perfect? Is what Michael Moore, is that documentary is perfect? Is Century Self, is it fully accurate? It’s two to three hours of a transmit of information through a particular, usually one person’s view. And anything you want to research, if you’re interested in it, you got to look at 10 versions of it, 20 versions of it. George Floyd, we’ve looked at one version of that. Now we have a second. Well, by the time we get to the, I know this is like, it’s not my last hoodie, but it’s definitely not my first hoodie that I put on. I think that’s how we got to it. Like even this particular size of zipper, or the fact that, you know, for people who know, they know that it’s like Carhartt.

(02:20:34):

Even though the Carhartt tag isn’t there anymore, you just know by the shape of it, you feel it. So it abstracts, it takes into like this cubist place, like Picasso and Matisse or African cubism or dire straits. You waste money for nothing and your chicks for free.

Lex Fridman (02:20:49):

Look at that. I wouldn’t think you could reference dire straits. Look at you. That video. Yeah, I know. It’s a great video. Your encyclopedic knowledge of music is great.

Ye (02:20:59):

I think that, you know, porn is not just sexual. That term actually relates to torture. Like, you know what I’m saying? Like watching people beat each other up on Worldstar or something, you know, it’s like, that’s called torture porn.

Lex Fridman (02:21:15):

There’s also food porn. I explained that. What’s food porn? Food porn is like looking at really delicious cakes and cookies and steak and so on. And you’re like, holy shit.

Ye (02:21:24):

Exactly. Architecture. Like there’s people who love architecture. When they see architecture, I know, I got friends that’ll be like, oh, that’s porn. Yeah. That’s architecture.

Lex Fridman (02:21:33):

Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, that’s like love. Like dopamine fueled love for a thing. Yeah. We need, that’s beautiful. I think that’s beautiful. Well, I think- As long as nobody’s getting hurt.

Ye (02:21:46):

The intoxication that people have, you know, the worst part is like when one person’s in love and the other person’s in like. That’s us right now.

Lex Fridman (02:21:57):

Well, who’s unlike? No, cause you said you love Bill Maher and you like me.

Ye (02:22:04):

And I love you. So that was- No, I actually love you both. All right. All right. And the funny thing is like, as a visionary, visionaries are more extreme than business people. Because a visionary would do bad business for their vision. A business person will never do bad business. It’s well put.

Lex Fridman (02:22:35):

Yeah. It’s really well put.

Ye (02:22:36):

So when you say I don’t care about money, it’s like, yeah, I feel you. Like I feel that I care in a way that I need that. But I care about the vision that I have to a Steve Jobs level.

(02:22:53):

To the point of putting that above my regular human existence. Meaning having to go and take all the arrows that I become a soldier of the vision. Because someone could say, a wife could say to like, say like in the sixties, their husband’s about to go to war.

(02:23:21):

The wife may not want their husband to go to war because of their children, but he’s going to war because of their children.

Lex Fridman (02:23:37):

Definitely. Do you regret any aspect of just giving everything to your vision? I mean, you’ve spoken about that saying like, I got fucked over in the business side.

Ye (02:23:46):

I promise that I had to stop envying cool people at their current cool time. If anything, if someone’s cool and I say their name a lot, I’m going to flash the light on them so much that it ages their coolness. It’s actually a war technique, showered in compliments. Because to be able to stay at 45 years old, to still be the bad kid in class at 45, I’m still in the principal’s office. Because if you look at like say fashion, right? If you think of something fashionable, it’s probably going to look like the kid in the principal’s office. That’s going to be the fashion. And that’s part of the reason why I’m the most influential person at fashion because I refuse to leave the principal’s office. If the substitute teacher comes in, I’m going to say, and I’m going to get right back to the principal’s office.

(02:25:01):

And people are going to be like, yo. And that’s what you keep on saying, like, who can we talk to? Because no one can talk to me. No, I’m out of control, bro. It’s just God, then me, and then fuck everybody. You know what I mean? That’s really how I live my life.

(02:25:21):

And I just want to say this one thing about the children thing. I wanted to put that point together, put that idea together. I don’t like the word point. I’m really big on words being powerful, says the person with the sleepy tweet. You’re full of contradictions. Yeah, I’m a human being, right? It’s like some days I’m like, I could go 30 days and be celibate. You know, like really like I’m a monk.

(02:25:44):

I’m being like faithful to God. And then I go like working out, no carbs, like my weight will fluctuate. And I’ll have times I’m like, I don’t feel like being told what to do. So I don’t want to work out with a trainer. And I just want to drink this Hennessy. But I want to say this thing that I will text to Kim. Sometimes I’ll say, you know, you may not understand what I’m doing right now, but you will.

(02:26:12):

And that’s what I would say to everyone. You may not understand what I’m doing. And this gives a little bit, maybe we’re like 20% there, but there’s still going to be people. We leave this interview and they’ll be like, I still don’t like the way they apologize. I still don’t want to say what my involvement would have been to make him lead them to that point. And we just want things to be how they are. There’s people in the world who want the world to stay as it is. And there’s people who want to change the world. And that’s happened throughout time. They say that with Da Vinci halfway into a conversation, he could not suffer fools so much that he would walk away halfway into the conversation. And I said, well, that’s why it’s the Da Vinci code and not the Da Vinci world.

(02:27:00):

And every time I go and piss off a group of people or do these things on some end, it’s like, I could be turning my thing from a potential world vision to a code, or I could be opening up conversations with new friends that I may trust someday.

Lex Fridman (02:27:17):

Yeah, that’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. Because the change you will have on the world that you don’t know for sure, but it’ll happen across years, even decades. So you have to think in the future. You’re working in the future. Your actions are working in the future. And a lot of people will judge this conversation and others you’ve done and so on in the present, and that doesn’t matter.

Ye (02:27:40):

You know why I apologize when I say I’m sorry to the Jewish people that I hurt? It’s not about, like I said, I’m not going to hold this apology hostage, right? Obviously it’s about God, but God is everything, right? So what’s the point of having language and being, you can’t engineer if you say God, God, God, right? It’s like, God asks us to be judgmental so that you become, if you’re a doctor, right? It’s your judgment that saves grandma, right? And God puts that in this, like we have God inside us. We’re a piece of God also, right? So I’m going to go specific to a person. That story about DaVinci alone is enough of a reason for me to give a sincere apology to the Jewish people because I do believe that there’s a DaVinci code inside of all of my misspellings and scribbles right here that God wants me to get to the world.

(02:28:40):

And when I’m in my way, if God has set something on me, when I’m in my way, I’m in God’s way. Now I can point at other people and say, hey, you guys are in God’s way because you’re not listening to me. But if I’m in my way, I’m not listening to God. And for me to be a philosopher and a leader, whatever other language, I have to listen to God. So before God, what I will do is start off as a samurai and say, I’m sorry for hurting you as a Jewish person. I’m sorry for the way that made you feel. And I’m sorry for the entire population of a race that I feel is actually my brothers because I classify and feel that I’m also connected with Christ in that way, that my people came from Africa in that way. And I can’t say it’s this exact teaching or that exact teaching, but I feel that there’s an important, you know, the sons of Abraham, however we want to word it, right, for us to come together and bring our different talents together to serve God collectively. And he, as much of an alien as I am, he does not cause me, he did not call for me to alienate. And that’s what the problem has been, especially in politics and in America. He plays America as the TV, as the radio to the world. We invented rock and roll, right? We are the influencers of the rest of the planet. We’re the youngest startup in history, right? We’re the youngest country.

(02:30:10):

We’re the youngest superpower, right? So for me in my position, the fact that I can talk to Trump one day and be at a game with Kim Kardashian the next day and then be at Paris Fashion Week, they don’t want me to be involved with language of decisive, divisive language, you know, proving that I can be just as racist as a racist white person. Oh, I can be a racist black person also. That’s not what God has called me to do. So how do I simplify and say, hey, to you as a visionary, as an engineer, as a person that’s given me a platform, that as my brother, I want to apologize to you for how that made you feel and to the rest of the people that carry specifically that pain, not the pain that I talk about. That doesn’t seem to be as much of a pain for people when I talk about the abortion clinics and stuff.

(02:31:08):

That’s the argued pain even in my own community. Not everyone thinks that’s a pain. But for the Jewish community, it’s collectively, this was a pain and I’ve gone so far just psychologically on this journey since that statement had happened where I didn’t want to like give up the candy in my pocket. I didn’t want to say, hey, I stuck my hand in the candy jar. I wanted to defend my freedom of speech. I wanted this. But even with freedom of speech, pain is pain. Causing people to hurt is not helping. Causing people to hurt is not helping. So that means I have to take a more sophisticated approach to engineering this problem. This problem is the opportunity. And yes, that what could some people may deem as a mistake. Would it be more genuine if I called it a mistake?

(02:32:08):

I think I would be hypocritical by calling it a mistake with the idea I’m going to say out loud. I don’t try to be a hypocrite on purpose. But I will call it a mistake to be genuine about the feeling. With that mistake, with me as a human being, not to justify, but I have to state that God makes no mistakes because if I hadn’t made that mistake, I wouldn’t be in front of you today. And that’s not to justify this sleepy text.

Lex Fridman (02:32:48):

But I can tell you’re a man that has love in his heart. And I hear that. I hear it through the words explicitly and implicitly. And I think if we’re to engineer a better future, the way to do that is with love. So as one human to another, I love you, brother. Thank you for talking today. This was great.

Ye (02:33:10):

I like you too. Son of a bitch.

Lex Fridman (02:33:16):

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ye. Formerly known as Kanye West. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Ye himself. Nothing in life is promised except death. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

Episode Info

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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(07:26) – Engineering
(18:21) – Kim Kardashian
(20:07) – Sex and the future of humanity
(30:12) – Happiness
(32:49) – The Holocaust
(1:21:58) – Fashion
(1:37:31) – 2024 US election
(1:42:10) – Humor
(1:44:20) – Media and antisemitism
(1:56:23) – Trusting people
(1:59:37) – Accountability
(2:09:36) – Legacy
(2:10:28) – Advice for young people
(2:23:29) – Regret