The video of Kanye West’s speech at Oxford Guild Society — a campus devoted to business and networking — at the University of Oxford in England.
The lecture happened back in March this year, but now the footage has been release for our visual consumption.
Below are some quotes from the lecture.
“And I’m sure this will end up online, so I don’t want to diss anyone at the American Academy, I’m sure it’s equal to the Art Institute of Chicago by now, but at the time I was going I would look around at the work of the class and not feel inspired by the teachers, and I kinda, the idea of being a fine artist, that’s a really difficult profession to get into, to be respected in, to make money at. Maybe the goal for some of the people was just to work at an advertising agency or at a record label.”
“What I notice about creatives is that, and one of the reasons why I get into trouble, is, not only do I want to design video games, or make music, or ride bikes, I think one of the most important things to my ability to create so much in the past 30 years is my desire to play sports. I approach creativity like a sport, where if I have a drawing I react just like a jock: LOOK AT THE FUCKING DRAWING RIGHT THERE YEAH!
We’re all creatives here, we’re all born artists. Some people are artists of business, some people are artists of composition.
We were taught to hide our black fingernail polish and put our head down in the back of the class and not notice out of fear that someone might laugh at one of our ideas – that our idea could become a mockery or a failure in some way.”
On Nicki Minaj:
“One of the best thing about the album was Nicki Minaj, and that she kicked my ass, on my own song, on the best album of the last 25 years,” he said. “I was exiled from my own country, came back with my magnum opus, and I was beat by a girl.”
On The Matrix:
“the Bible of the post-information age”, and continued to rail against the Grammys. “I was joking with an interviewer earlier today,” he said. “People talk about the number of viewers the Brits get, or the number of viewers the Grammys get. They need to do award shows for the Nobel Peace Prize, but I guess that doesn’t sell as many MasterCard commercials.”
