At the end of last week, GQ magazine revealed that Kanye West takes the cover of their new issue. 'Ye hasn't done an interview in a minute and so you can guarantee we're soaking in every word from his latest piece with GQ, which was published on their website today, along with several new flicks from Yeezy's photo shoot.
The interview is pretty informative, as Kanye reveals plans for his new album, contemplating between a September, October and November release. The rapper reveals a new single, "All Day", is on the way, in which he raps like Jay Z, he contemplates "taking back" the top spot in the game rap (current placeholder: Drake), speaks on the importance of his family, and much more.
We've gathered a few choice quotes from the interview below.
On Drake:
"Currently that spot is taken. Let's be honest—he got last summer. Yeah. He got last summer. And I'd never given it up till last summer." [Now he's thinking about taking it back.] "It's a real question for me. Do I want to?"
On paparazzi:
Yeah. I'm a blowfish. I'm not a shark, I'm a blowfish. So that perfect example about me hitting my head, it's like a blowfish. I wasn't coming out of my house going to a paparazzi's house to attack them. I'm defending my family in front of my own house. I'm defending my name as someone's screaming something negative at me. That's a blowfish. People have me pinned as a shark or a predator in some way, and in no way am I that. I wouldn't want to hurt anyone. I want to defend people. I want to help people.
On why he chose to marry Kim:
Saying "Hey, I like Kim" isn't as inspiring to people as us getting married. And anyone that's in a relationship knows that in order to get to the point to get married and then to be married and to then carry on, it needs that work put into it. Right now, people look at it and it's like, "Wow, that's inspiring." Meaning that love is infectious. You know, God is infectious—God flowing through us and us being little-baby creators and shit. But His energy and His love and what He wants us to have as people and the way He wants us to love each other, that is infectious. Like they said in Step Brothers: Never lose your dinosaur. This is the ultimate example of a person never losing his dinosaur. Meaning that even as I grew in cultural awareness and respect and was put higher in the class system in some way for being this musician, I never lost my dinosaur.
Kim is this girl who fucking turns me on. I love her. This is who I want to be next to and be around. And then people would try to say, "Well, you know, if you're a musician, you should be with a musician, and if you want to design, you need to be with a girl from the design world." I don't give a fuck about people's opinions. Because when a kid falls in love with an airplane or a bike or a dinosaur—especially if you're an only child and it's not because of the book that the sibling was reading—it's like, fuck, you mean to tell me that the dinosaurs walked the earth and stuff like that?! That's amazing! You mean to tell me that these giant multi-ton crafts can fly that fast and that loud, and they can flip, and there's danger, the possibility of them exploding? That's fucking cool! You mean to tell me that this girl with this fucking body and this face is also into style, and she's a nice person, and she has her own money and is family-oriented? That's just as cool as a fucking fighter jet or dinosaur! And just as rarely seen.
On the direction of his new music, and the single "All Day":
I think just my usual pattern is like that. It's like a pendulum. The pendulum gains momentum by swinging in the other direction. Even lyrically, I think about certain lines that I say on my new single, which is called "All Day," that usually Jay would say, but Jay's not on there. So I say, "All day, nigga, it's Ye, nigga. Shopping for the winter, it's just May, nigga. Ball so hard, man, this shit cray, nigga. You ain't getting money unless you got eight figures." Right? Jay would have said that. And then eventually I would have came in with, like, whatever I come in with. But the balance of a meal is that when people walk in, they want water first. People definitely weren't getting water first on Yeezus. I do fight with myself to say, "Keep fighting." But also, you know, you can't win every single fight. It's a long war, and if you're out there trying to, like, blow up every single building, you won't win the war.
On an expected release:
I don't know, man. I hope I can get one of these songs out in the next couple of weeks, just to have something up and running. But I think most likely September. I go back and forth. Like, should it be September or should it be October? Should it be November? When Beyoncé was working on her last album, she took a while. I was thinking it could somehow come out in June, like Yeezus, and just kill it for the summer. But then I'm like, I have to work on Adidas and be with my child.
This time three years ago, here at the Mercer, working on "Niggas in Paris," at this time in early June, it was apparent it was still not finished. I had the "married at the mall" line, we had "that shit cray," Jay had his verse… Jay finished his verse. He always finishes, and my shit is always kind of open. Like, "Okay, now I've got the Will Ferrell sample, so I need to say something that finishes the verse. But people have to not know what it means." [laughs] So it's like problem-solving to get to the point where you're saying, "going gorillas." It's difficult sometimes.
But now, for the new album, one new thing could change everything. I had an idea of the way I wanted to do the album. And then I got a new song that's so good that the album has to be balanced against it. This song is a song that can be in the club like "Don't Like" or "Niggas in Paris." Whereas before I was working on the album and I had these beautiful songs, they were just more songs. They weren't saying, "Okay, tuck your whole summer in." They were just saying, "Hey, I'm a great musician, I make these beautiful songs, and they have all this meaning, and nobody can make anything that means this much."
On falling back from Twitter/social media (compared to his 2010 activity):
Both me and Kim had to learn how to communicate as a team. These are two LeBrons, you know? Meaning she could do shit that a girlfriend in a relationship could never do. Obviously. And I could do stuff that a guy in a relationship could never do. So if you look at half my tweets back then, they were always, like, funny tweets that I wouldn't be able to say now. It wouldn't be respectful to my relationship. It's interesting, as I'm delving into being married: Like, what is my verbal creative communication? That's another thing I really like about clothing and film—you could still communicate with a film, because it's not you. But when you're a reality star or a rapper, you are the film.