While everyone was going crazy for his latest album at the Wyoming listening party, Kanye West took some time out to sit with radio host Big Boy for an intimate interview.
In the interview, which you can watch in its entirety above, Kanye talks about many of the topics his eighth studio album, ye, also touches upon, such as mental illness, being bi-polar, and why the album was called ye.
Talking to Big Boy, the rapper reveals that he was diagnosed with what he calls a “mental condition” at the age of 39. West has rapped a lot about depression and medication in the past but this interview is the most candid he’s been about the subject off the mic in quite some time.
Read his full response below, where he touches on the viral moment when he went to the TMZ offices and said slavery was a choice.
“I’m so blessed and so privileged because think about people that have mental issues that are not Kanye West, that can’t go and make that [album] and make it feel like it’s all good. Think about somebody that does exactly what I did at TMZ and they just do that at work, right? But Tuesday morning, they come in and they lost their job and they can’t go back and make that. That’s why God put that on me at age 40. I never been diagnosed until I was 39 years old […] diagnosed with a mental condition. [...] But like I said on the album, it’s not a disability, it’s a superpower.”
On why ye was called ye, he had the following to say:
“I believe ye is the most commonly used word in the Bible, and in the Bible it means ‘you,’ so I’m you, I’m us, it’s us. It went from Kanye, which means the only one, to being ye—just being a reflection of our good, our bad, our confused, everything. The album is a reflection of who we are.”
Interestingly, ’Ye also spends some time talking about scrapping his original album after TMZ Live came out and how he uses music as an outlet.
Check out the full 10-minute interview above and leave your thoughts in the comments.
In other news, you can now make your own version of the ye album artwork. Check it out here.
