Kanye’s Latest ‘Ellen’ Rant Reveals A Similarity Between Him And Barack Obama
Barack Obama and Kanye West are two Chicago natives who also happen to be two of world’s most powerful African-American men, but Kanye’s recent rant on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show highlights another similarity between the two icons. They both don’t care about how people view what they do on a day-to-day basis, because they’re too busy thinking about what changes they’ll have made for people centuries from now.
During his on-air conversation with Ellen, Kanye started out talking about how he doesn’t regret anything he’s tweeted in the past, and ended up talking about the kind of world we live in today, and how he envisions his legacy.
“I have ideas that can make the human race existence within our 100 years better,” he said, paused, stared off into space, then went on. “We got 100 years here. We’re one race — the human race — one civilization. We’re a blip in the existence in the universe and we’re constantly trying to pull each other down,” he said. “I feel I can make a difference while I’m here.”
He mentioned how television networks wouldn’t air Michael Jackson videos in the ’80s, because they were considered “urban,” and cited this as one of the ways the public responds negatively to their icons.
“Isn’t that funny that people point fingers at the people who have influenced us the most?” he asked. “They talk the most shit about the people that cared the most?”
This reminded me of a Complex interview I’d recently watched with Chance the Rapper and Lin-Manuel, writer of the buzzing new play, “Hamilton.” They actually talk about both Kanye West and Barack Obama, but Lin-Manuel’s mention of a specific conversation with the president felt relevant:
“I got to sit down with the president, and I asked him, like, ‘you’re graded on a much longer curve than us,’ we’ll come and we’ll go, but you’re going to be in history books, years from now,'” he said. “I would think that would weigh on you heavily, but I was surprised because he said, ‘that’s actually really freeing.’ Because you don’t think about, oh, I’m really unpopular right now, you think about what [you] did, that people don’t see, I have my eye on the long haul. I’m thinking about my work and how it will be measured a long time from now…it’s actually a liberating thing when you take a bird’s eye view of your own life.”
Regardless of your opinion on either of these dudes, they’re both doing pretty well for themselves, so maybe a bird’s eye view on life is the key to success. Now I’ll spend the rest of the day lying in bed and eating ice cream, because centuries from now, I’ll have at least contributed to statistics about what lazy millennials do in their spare time. Yay!
Watch Kanye’s rant below:
And see the full Complex interview here:
