Brett Easton Ellis has a podcast. His first guest is Kanye West. The episode is an hour long, and it claims to be part one of two. These are the things that make commutes endurable.
The hook of the show is simple: two of pop culture’s most outspoken icons speaking out about pop culture. You’ve probably already predicted that Ellis’s first question meanders on for about five minutes and he mostly talks about himself. You’ve probably already heard that Kanye responds by quickly describing himself as a “Creative Genius,” the title he’d put for his occupation on his customs and immigrations forms if he knew how to spell the word “genius.”
The rest of what transpires throughout the conversation is not quite a clash of egos as much as a genuinely entertaining conversation about movies, fine art, music, and clothing. Kanye’s “Creative Assistant,” who may or may not have “Assistant Creative Genius” printed on his business cards, sits close by and chimes in occasionally, but mostly lets Yeezy have free reign.
Kanye describes his ambition to be the Steve Jobs of clothing, to break down the barriers of entry and make high fashion accessible to all. He explains how he took two days off of work to binge-watch all of Breaking Bad in a hotel room with Kim Kardashian just to feel like a “normal human being.” He’s seen There Will Be Blood upwards of 40 times, and knows it’s a cliché that Menace II Society is the most important movie in his life.
There are certainly jabs embedded in the interview — Kanye calling out the CEO of Zappos for putting out a “shit product,” for instance — but for the most part the discussion is loose and sincere.
At times ‘Ye muses like an Art History professor, describing the rigid formalism of 12 Years A Slave as Steve McQueen’s bold choice to reject the outside influence of commercially-minded producers. All while relating that praise back to the creative genuiss that was his own Runaway, of course. He mostly sounds like a dude that likes art and making art, but his Kanyeness is inescapable.
Kanye rarely gives interviews these days, but when he does, he doesn’t play games. “I don’t do publicity stunts ever, period,” he said during his Jimmy Kimmel Live interview, although I distinctly remember him and 50 Cent squaring off at the MTV Awards a few weeks prior to their shared album release date, culminating in a beef so contrived it made Hulk Hogan vs. Andre The Giant look like reality. One of those feuds ending with the body slam heard round the world, the other ended with 691,000 purchased copies of Curtis. Both remain culturally important, of course.
Ellis talks a lot throughout the interview about how movies and other forms of entertainment have lost some of their value because there are so many of them readily available, which the younger West and his Assistant smartly deflect as a generational shift that has mostly positive consequences. While few rushed to theaters to view the Ellis-pennedThe Canyons and only 327k bought hard copies of Yeezus in its first week (compared to 957k after the Graduation marketing scheme), hearing B.E.E.‘s thoughts in more than 140 characters and Kanye’s reaction to them is more than enough reason to be dutifully refreshing your podcast app every morning.
