CONCRETELOOP.COM

Whether you hate him or you love him, it’s safe to say that Kanye West has this thing we call ‘Mass Appeal’. From the highly publicized album competition with 50 Cent, to his cross-over status, the producer and rapper is definitely on top of the world right about now.

His 3rd studio album, Graduation is receiving critical acclaim, not to mention commercial success and yet he still tries to keep it real with the fans. It was a real honor to get a chance to speak with one of my favorite artists and get his take on his craft. Make sure you check out this exclusive in-depth interview, Concrete Loop style. Raw & basically unedited.

Angel: What’s up Kanye?
Kanye: What’s good?
Angel: This is Angel from Concrete Loop, thank you for sitting with us.
Kanye: Aww no problem.
Angel: So I just wanted to know how did you find out about the site?
Kanye: I don’t know I think maybe my assistant Ivan or my road manager Don, or my A&R Pat, I don’t remember who but we sit in the studio, like we just in the studio all day so we don’t have anything to do. And they be on their computers, like our crew I think we got the most laptops out of any crew. And we just get on the blogs and start looking at stuff.
Angel: Okay. Well thank you for the shout outs because they really helped out a lot. [laughs] So, I really appreciate that.
Kanye: Yeah, no problem. Gotta get those advertising dollars up.
Angel: Yep!

Kanye & Fiddy at the VMAs (wireimage)

Angel: Okay, the first question everybody wants to know is have you talked to 50 [Cent] ever since you got the number one spot?
Kanye: Naaaw, like I haven’t talked to him but if I could I would just like to thank him. Just for this time that we had to promote the album. All the crazy stuff he said and all the crazy stuff I said, I mean at the end of the day it just sold us more records. Like people ask me, “Was this just a marketing strategy?” I’m like, Yeah! [both of laugh] I mean obviously that’s what it was, it was a marketing strategy and it worked because it got people hyped up. And it wasn’t anything like we were trying to create a beef, I think the press just tried to make it seem like it was a beef, but I really thought it would spark conversation. Like, “what artist do you like better” “Fifty sold more, do you remember when the first album came out.” Like a lot of barbershop talk, you know?

Angel: So what did you do when you found out that you sold like almost a million records [in the first week] I mean right now, it’s 2007 that’s crazy. Nobody is selling that much right now.
Kanye: I knooow. I told the people at the label that I was going to sell a million records and people were looking at me like I was crazy, like always whenever I stunt. I told them, I said, “If I only sell 800 [thousand] I’ll apologize, but if I sell a million, I just gotta thank god for that.” And when we came in like over 9, like 957 [thousand] it just felt overwhelmingly good. It feels the same way I felt when I look at “Stronger” at the number one spot.
Angel: Yeah
Kanye: Because a lot of people didn’t believe in that record when I first dropped it. Or “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” now is like the people’s anthem and radio didn’t want to play it. It’s like a video game or something, it’s no fun if you get the code and it’s easy to beat the game. But when it’s challenging and it’s something that you have to work at, it’s just that much more fulfilling at the end.

Angel: What about this MTV thing. I know you talked about it in numerous interviews, but do you plan on ever making up with them or going back on MTV in the future?
Kanye: Well, I’ve actually spoken to the heads of MTV and some of the people who work in the press room at MTV and you know, everybody has different opinions about the whole situation. For me, you know, I wish I was perfect. Who doesn’t wish they were perfect? You know at that time a lot of the emotions built up not just from particularly that year, but from the previous year. Like “Gold Digger” not even getting nominated and Panic At The Disco! Won for video of the year. And like “Gold Digger” lost to “My Humps” for rap video of the year. And if you look at the pictures from the blogs last year, it saw me just sitting there just looking at them like..
Angel: Yeah that’s true.
Kanye: And for the [MTV] European Awards they told me, you are going to win Video of the year.
Angel: Yeah I read that in another interview. See we don’t know the behind the scenes stuff, so I can see why you jumped on stage like that.
Kanye: I went on stage because, I wasn’t even mad. Like I was mad this year, but I wasn’t even mad I was just joking around if you really look at the clip. I was like, “Aww Hell Naw! I spent a million dollars for this.” Of course, I had a little 50/50 [Barcardi] but I still wasn’t taking it that seriously. And the vibe of the show was real laid back, like if you look at the whole show, Justin [Timberlake] was cursing and then they came to me and was like “Aww the profanity, written tirade” and all these different things. And with the awards, at the end of the day, the awards are just a façade and it’s like a sporting event. You know what I’m saying? I feel like my sport, my championship is the award show. And when I spaz out, I’m just screaming at the refs. I’m not trying to scream at the fans or nothing, I’m just saying the refs. And this year, not only did I not get a chance to really make history, because that’s my thing. I try to make memorable award show performances. And I spent a lot of time coming up with the band for “Gold Digger” at the Grammy’s and the wings with “Jesus Walks” or me and Jamie [Foxx] coming up, you know to “We Major” for “Gold Digger”. And that [MTV] suite, I felt like I wasn’t given the opportunity, they gave Britney the opportunity to make history, they gave all these different people. But I’m like, I got the number one record in the country, so if you listen to the actual spaz, everything I said was accurate. It was just the way I said it that was so offensive to people. And people were saying, well you should have just told MTV that. That’s what I was doing! Somebody had a sneaky camera.

Angel: Yeah!
Kanye: Yeah, so that means y’all just got to see some of the behind the scenes that goes on in the business all the time when situations like that happen. I composed myself, I didn’t do anything like walk on stage, you know? I like Rihanna a lot, she is a friend of mine so I wouldn’t want to do anything to disrespect her or take away from her moment. So if you listen to the spaz, I’m saying, “Tell them I said it.” Like I’m telling MTV, but I’m not trying to tell the world. I was talking to MTV execs backstage and someone put a camera on it and caught it.
Angel: Yeah I feel you, I feel you.
Kanye: For me & MTV, I’ve talked to the people. I guess I made up with them, it probably will never be the same. You know, they don’t play my videos, and they talk about me on the website.
Angel: I was just about to say that, they took you out of rotation.
Kanye: So, it is what it is now, you know?
Angel: What can you do right? They don’t play videos that much anyway, so what’s new.

Angel: Okay, Graduation the album man, that’s a great album. People say I’m jocking you on the site, whatever the album is good. So I don’t care you deserve props, the album is good. So what was your inspiration when you were making it and recording the tracks?
Kanye: I don’t really even listen to rap music like that, all I listen to is like Rock & Roll and I listen to some of Lil Wayne’s stuff. Being that I have my own career, I don’t have them time to listen to all the stuff that Wayne puts out.
Angel: Un huh

Kanye at a CD signing last month (Splash News)

Kanye: Because he puts out so much stuff. So I don’t have time to listen to every single Lil Wayne thing, but the fact that he’s doing all that and when I would hear the raps, the caliber of the raps would inspire me go in more. Like I got in the studio with Wayne and we started working on the Carter III and I was like, “Do you ever go on vacation?” And he was like naw, this is what I do. So I looked at this project more seriously, like this is what I do. So I went, I’m hopping on planes to promote and premiere the “Stronger” video in Germany and then hopping on another plane to go to the Europe GQ Man of the year awards and then come back and go to Atlanta and do club. I’m not gonna put in work, by just doing a verse and putting it on a mixtape everyday. But everyday I’m going to be doing something to try to push and promote this album. So, Wayne was a big inspiration for that. Musically? The Thom Yorke album. Thom Yorke is the lead singer of Radio Head. Eraser [name of the album] there was a track on there that Lupe [Fiasco] put me on to. I listened to the whole album and the vibe and the type of instruments he was using just took me into a certain zone. And after I did “Stronger” Hype Williams heard it and said, “Yoo, I want to shoot this video in the future.” And then I went back to songs like “Champion” and “Good Life” and put these type of chords on them that sounded similar to the type of sense that I put on “Stronger”. That’s why “Flashing Lights”, “Champion” all of them have that certain synthesizer, a real 80s synthesizer type of sound. But I mixed It with my original sample sound, so it didn’t get too far from what people knew me for, but like created a new form of music in rap. And also, I wanted my drums to bang harder in stadiums. One of my inspirations was, I went on tour with U2 and Bono [lead singer of U2] told me that, “No one from your community has ever figured this out.” And if you think about it, nobody from the black community can really sell out stadiums, like 30,000 seaters, there’s not one artist you can think of. I can think of four, you know, white artists. Coldplay, U2, Rolling Stones and Jack Johnson.
Angel: That’s right.
Kanye: This type of record I think connect with people more. A lot of time, I hear records that are super hot for two months, but the records won’t last in people’s minds. I set out not to just make records that could hop off the radio instantly, but stuff that will speak to people. People still bring up “Spaceships” to me. And people compare “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” to “Spaceships” saying that’s a song that inspires them when they going to work. But the chords itself, is like a Led Zepplin, rock melody. [he starts to sing/rap “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” and then I finish the chorus]
Angel: That’s my jam man. [laughs] I blast that song!
Kanye: Yeah, you thinking it’s made for the car and you thinking it’s made for the club, and it works in the arena because DJ Toomp did the drums and all that, but the actual melody is made to rock 50,000 people. That’s why it’s so simple, and I simplified all the lyrics on the album. Because I’ll be performing, like opening up for Mick Jagger and they’ll be a 50 year-old white lady looking at me like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Angel: [laughs]
Kanye: And I’m rapping “Diamonds” and stuff like that trying to over rap, and I was like you know what? I don’t need to over rap and that’s how you get a song like “I Wonder”. [Kanye starts to rap some of “I Wonder”] Like no rappers would really, you know, put it out like that, because people are trying to prove themselves all the time. The thing is, like on this album, I just accepted who I was and stopped tryin to prove myself all the time. Like that’s why I said, “When You Try Hard, That’s when you Die Hard” [sentence from his song “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”]. Really I was referring to the Grammy outfit when I said that line.

Kanye at the ’06 Grammy Awards

Angel: [laughs] You was wrong for that outfit. You know you was wrong for that outfit though.
Kanye: [laughs] Yeah, but hey “You Try Hard, You Die Hard.”
Angel: That’s true.
Kanye: Like on this one, I didn’t even try I just zoned out, I’d go into the studio and vibe to the beat and just [he starts to rap some of “Flashing Lights”] and it came and God gave me the words.
Angel: And what about “I Wonder” and “Flashing Lights” like what inspired those songs. And “Everything I Am” [I quote a part of “Everything I Am”] that’s my jam too. So, what inspires those songs?
Kanye: Well “Everything I’m Not, Made Me Everything I Am” I had an interview with Wendy Williams and it really touched me that, like when she even said the title of the song she started crying. Just saying that that song just touched her in that way. And I really thought about the lyrics and what I was saying and it really would relate to her. [he starts rapping parts of “Everything I Am”] You know, I was picturing, my muse for the song was kinda like, a little girl in High School or in grammar school getting picked on. Like she gets picked on for being too skinny or something and she grows up to be a model. Or she is getting picked on for being too big and grows up to be Oprah Winfrey or a journalist or something like that. So just saying like, all these things that made you not cool when you was growing up, it’s almost like having a handicap. You know what I’m saying? You know if someone is blind, you can end up being Stevie Wonder because your ears are that much better.
Angel: Yeah, that’s true.