Arnaud Massartic Kanye West American Idol
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/11/30/kanye-west-american-idol-final-season-teaser
Kanye West: The Transformer
With limitless ambition, Kanye West is out to remake the world in his image. Christopher Bagley meets the man who would be god.
Over the past few months, the habitués of a central
Paris neighborhood, one that’s home to many upscale law offices and
accounting firms, have been noticing some unusual activity. A
chauffeur-driven Porsche Panamera Turbo, painted matte black and
resembling a late-model Batmobile, frequently zooms up to an elegant
19th-century building and disgorges various nonlawyer and nonaccountant
types, including
Kim Kardashian
and the rapper Nas. Late at night, thumping hip-hop beats have been
emanating from a loftlike apartment within the building, occasionally
provoking complaints from the neighbors. If the voice in the songs
sounds familiar, it’s because it belongs to the notorious man of the
house, who’s been working on his
latest album
in a studio he’s had installed in the middle of his living room.
“There’s leaders, and there’s followers,” he raps on one track. “I’d
rather be a dick than a swallower.”
Yes,
Kanye West
is in town. The rapper–producer–designer–scandal magnet, now a
part-time Parisian, is bringing his trademark raw-nerved swagger to one
of Europe’s most discreet and tradition-bound capitals. But anyone who
makes it inside West’s apartment will quickly realize that his impact on
Paris has been far less consequential than Paris’s impact on him.
Visits with the Kardashians have been punctuated by the arrivals of
people like the haute-minimalist architect Joseph Dirand and the Belgian
interior designer and antiques guru Axel Vervoordt, along with
deliverymen hauling in West’s latest purchases: rare Le Corbusier lamps,
Pierre Jeanneret chairs, and obscure body-art journals from
Switzerland. For West, it’s all part of a crash course in the rarefied
upper reaches of design, architecture, and overall good taste. The goal?
“To make Kanye West as dope as possible,” he says, sitting in a
midcentury swivel chair and wearing a plain dark hoodie and black cotton
pants by a label he declines to identify, since he no longer believes
in dropping brand names, except for his own.
When it comes to personal dopeness, of course, West is not known for
admitting that there’s much room for improvement. Even by hip-hop
standards, his boastful self-regard is so extreme that it has inspired
several analytical essays and countless jokes, not to mention an entire
South Park
episode. Addressing the crowds at his concerts this year, West has
likened himself to such fellow creative geniuses as Pablo Picasso,
Steve Jobs,
and Michelangelo. And in the course of our interviews, which take place
over several days in March and April, West goes even further, favorably
comparing himself to Le Corbusier, the Beatles, Marlon Brando, Tiger
Woods, Azzedine Alaïa,
Kate Moss, and the Soup Nazi, among others.
But for all his brazen posturing, West, 36, is one of the rare top
artists in any field who’ll eagerly embrace the role of subordinate when
he knows he’s got something to learn. This is the guy who moved to Rome
for four months to work as an intern for Fendi before launching his own
fashion line. His current exile in Paris—a town famously lacking in
yes-men, where even a star like West is just another outsider who can’t
get a table at his favorite restaurant if it happens to be full—seems
like his latest exercise in self-abnegation, in the name of
self-improvement. “In Paris, you’re as far as possible from the land of
pleasant smiles,” West says. “You can just trip on inspiration—there are
so many people here who dedicate their lives to excellence.” And
inspiration is particularly crucial to West these days, given his
ultimate ambition, which goes way beyond making hit records or
developing a discerning eye for console tables. He’s plotting to create
operas, stores, films, product packaging, amusement parks, and,
possibly, entire cities. West is essentially out to redesign the world,
if the world will let him do it.
“How do you spell Mies van der Rohe?” West has logged on to his
MacBook Pro laptop—custom-finished in matte black, just like the
Porsche—and is Googling modernist architects while playing around with
new beats for his album. As usual, there are several collaborators,
friends, and minions milling around his living room studio, including
the producer No I.D. and the Canadian rapper the Weeknd. When West is at
the microphone, alternately freestyle rapping and bouncing up and down,
it’s clear why his bona fides are unquestioned, at least in the realm
of music. He blasts a new track at top volume, and its wailing Deep
Purple–esque guitar riffs have the Weeknd holding his head in disbelief.
“That shit is awesome,” the Weeknd says. “Just fucking reckless. A lot
of people who hate you are just going to hate you so much more.” West
says he wants the record—whose title,
Yeezus,
is a mashup of “Jesus” and West’s nickname, Yeezy—to be like a “one-man
gangbang.” He plays one intensely dark, primal track that he worked on
with the French electro duo Daft Punk: the defiant anthem “I Am a God,”
which he debuted live at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s
Costume Institute Gala in New York in May.
It turns out this song was inspired by a serious diss—not from
another rapper but from a major fashion designer. Last fall, a few days
before Paris Fashion Week, West was informed that he’d be invited to a
widely anticipated runway show only on the condition that he agree not
to attend any other shows. “So the next day I went to the studio with
Daft Punk, and I wrote ‘I Am a God,’ ” West says. “Cause it’s like, Yo!
Nobody can tell me where I can and can’t go. Man, I’m the No. 1 living
and breathing rock star. I am Axl Rose; I am Jim Morrison; I am Jimi
Hendrix.” West is not smiling as he says this, and his voice is getting
louder with each sentence. “You can’t say that you love music and then
say that Kanye West can’t come to your show! To even think they could
tell me where I could and couldn’t go is just ludicrous. It’s
blasphemous—to rock ’n’ roll, and to music.”
Later, West gives a more measured take on the incident, explaining
that he was “just very hurt” by the designer’s attempt to control him.
“How can someone stop my opportunity to see something that he can teach
me, that I can help teach the world?” West asks. But it’s precisely
those types of outbursts, as well as the tortured semi-apologies that
often follow them, that have come to define West’s public image. Whether
it was his onstage ambush of Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music
Awards (a fiasco that prompted President Obama to call West a jackass)
or his declaration during a live telethon for Hurricane Katrina victims
that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” (a moment that Bush
called the low point of his presidency), West’s eruptions have made it
all too easy for people to forget that he’s spent the past decade
creating some of the most brilliantly original music of any genre.
Rolling Stone, in its rhapsodic five-star review of 2010’s Twisted Fantasy review”
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,
lauded him for “blowing past all the rules of hip-hop and pop, even
though…he’s been the one inventing the rules.” (The reviewer added:
“Nobody halfway sane could have made this album.”) Last year in
The Atlantic, David Samuels hailed West as
“the first true genius of the iPhone era, the Mozart of contemporary American music.” (He also called him “a narcissistic monster.”)
Of course, West’s bright and dark sides are fully interdependent, and
they’re equally essential to his art. Both are very much on display
during our conversations in Paris. It’s a big deal for West to invite a
journalist into his house: He hasn’t given many interviews in the past
few years. This is due in part to a string of PR disasters, the last of
which was an on-air clash with Matt Lauer about the George Bush
accusation, which led West to cancel a live performance on the
Today
show. West is especially wary of print interviews, since the writer
retains the power to choose which of his quotes are relevant (though at
one point he asks me to streamline his more rambling comments or, as he
puts it, “to turn my flea market of information into a beautiful living
space”). Another issue: West’s opinions evolve so quickly that by the
time a profile comes out, he might have totally changed his mind. And
finally, there’s his self-acknowledged deficiency in the eloquence
department. “God’s little practical joke on me—as an intellect who
doesn’t like to read a lot—is like, I’ll say some superphilosophical
shit, but I’ll say it the wrong way,” he says, laughing. “I’ll use the
wrong word, so it goes from being really special to completely
retarded.”
For a while, West’s communications strategy involved pouring his heart out on
Twitter,
where his droll one-liners and 80-tweets-in-160-minutes rants earned
him almost 10 million followers. But a few months ago, West deleted all
his posts. He agreed to do this interview because he feels like he’s
reaching peak creative potential—“bubbling at the highest level of
output”—and he’s ready to talk publicly about his thoughts and theories
and plans, in entertainment and beyond.
West knows the risks of extending himself beyond the music world; he
learned that the hard way in 2011, when he debuted his women’s fashion
line in Paris. Many reviewers panned the collection, deeming it sloppily
overwrought and marred by unfortunately placed zippers, but they were
kinder about the second, which showed more focus and discipline. West is
convinced that the critics got it backward. “The first collection was
way better than the second,” he says. “It was more artful. It was 30
collections in one. It just takes time for me to slow down and think
like a normal person.” Established designers, West notes, are already
“in a position to go crazy. I tried to come out of the gate going crazy.
And it didn’t work. So now I have to somehow put out something that
says, ‘I look sensible!’” That might be accomplished by his new men’s
capsule collection for A.P.C. It includes jeans, T-shirts, and hoodies
that combine West’s fashion-forward silhouettes with the cool minimalism
for which the French brand is known.
Lately, however, West’s biggest impact on the fashion world has come
not through his designs but through his personal wardrobe choices and
those of his equally camera-ready girlfriend,
Kim Kardashian.
Having evolved beyond his earlier signature looks—the pink polos, the
shutter shades—West now favors streetwear crossed with Parisian edge,
confidently pairing the right Air Jordans with tuxedo jackets or
Givenchy
leather pants. And when Kardashian began surprising everyone last
winter by stepping out in high-end European labels, she made it known
she was dressing to please her man. For some people, that would mean
more Victoria’s Secret, but pleasing Kanye West these days means more
monochromatic and structured looks, more
Dries Van Noten.
West tells me he hasn’t been masterminding Kardashian’s makeover to the
degree that everyone assumes. “Nobody can tell my girl what to do,” he
says. “She just needed to be given some platforms of information to work
from.” Since virtually everything Kardashian wears is instantly
broadcast around the globe, West adds, “one beautiful thing is that as
she discovers it, the world discovers it.” This includes Kardashian’s
inevitable stumbles. “For her to take that risk in front of the world,
it just shows you how much she loves me. And how much she actually loves
the opportunity to learn. You got, like, a million companies saying,
‘This is impacting your brand! This is impacting your fans! And blah
blah blah.’ But she still sees this light of beauty.”
One night when I’m scheduled to meet West at his apartment around 10
p.m., I walk in to find some Kardashians in the house. Kim has just
headed back to Los Angeles after one of her brief Paris visits, but her
brother, Rob, is sprawled on West’s gigantic Living Divani sofa with his
girlfriend, the English model Naza Jafarian. They both offer friendly
handshakes, then return to their smartphones. Next, Kim’s mother, Kris
Jenner, drops by and looks around the apartment, which she’s seeing for
the first time. “This is amazing!” she says as West shows her some of
his favorite objects, including a new set of ceramic cups by Frances
Palmer. Jenner’s rapport with West evinces equal parts jokey affection
and in-law awkwardness. He plays her some of his unfinished songs,
including “Awesome,” which is clearly about Kim. When she exclaims,
“Great job!” West doesn’t find it as flattering as Jenner evidently
intended. He raises his eyebrows. “Great job?” he says and sets off on a
comic riff that cracks up everyone in the room. Toasting with his
champagne glass, he says, “Great job, Baccarat, for making a glass that
can hold liquid!” He looks down at his waist. “Great job, belt loops,
for keeping my pants up!” Jenner laughs off the mockery but soon is
ready to leave. Hugging West goodbye, she tells him, “I love you. You
know where to find us, at the George V. Call us tomorrow, if you want.”
It seems apparent to everyone, including Jenner, that West will not
call.
Visiting my mind is like visiting the Hermès factory.
Shit is real. You’re not going to find a chink. It’s 100,000 percent
Jimi Hendrix.
Much has been written about the celeb mega merger known as Kimye and
about whether the match was made in heaven, or hell, or some unknown
strange place. Undoubtedly, the West-Kardashian union further validates
and indulges both stars’ unerring knack for making headlines. But given
West’s current thirst for refined Euro cool, one might expect him to
fall for some chicly cerebral French artist rather than a trash-TV queen
who epitomizes the kind of branded mass culture he’s rebelling against.
West dodges several of my questions about Kardashian and their future
child. But when I ask him if he has any qualms about making appearances
on shows like
Keeping Up With the Kardashians, he says, “Oh,
that’s just all for love. It’s simply that. At a certain point, or
always, love is more important than any branding, or any set of cool
people, or attempting to impress anyone. Because true love is just the
way you feel.” Some intellectual ambivalence clearly remains, however.
“Thoughts and feelings can disagree sometimes,” West says.
In recent months, West has been dutifully making his homes more
baby-friendly, working closely with the architect Oana Stanescu, a tall,
coolheaded Romanian from the New York firm Family. In Los Angeles, he
and Kardashian are redoing their recently purchased 9,000-square-foot
manse in a gated community. The house is very L.A., a
faux-French-Italian-whatever style that West admits does not quite meet
his newly elevated aesthetic standards. Stanescu puts it bluntly: “It’s
so bad, seriously—it couldn’t be any worse.” Both West and Stanescu have
much higher hopes for the pared-down Paris loft, where they are
streamlining the surfaces and spaces and adding a baby room. West’s
hunger for expert opinions has led him to simultaneously consult with
several competing designers and architects for the project. This is a
huge no-no in the design world, but West is not the type to let
etiquette get in his way; so far he’s been meeting with Dirand,
Vervoordt, Tristan Auer, and a few others, sometimes on the sly. “I
mean, it’s uncomfortable for every single person,” acknowledges
Stanescu. “But it’s supposed to be—that’s what I think is the cool
thing. Right now Kanye is just sponging things up, observing how these
people work. He’s going to take an idea from Joseph and one from Tristan
and make it his own.”
One afternoon I join West and Stanescu on one of their many
educational field trips—a visit to Le Corbusier’s iconic Villa Savoye,
the 1929 house turned museum outside Paris. We weave through highway
traffic as West makes calls about an upcoming
Jetsons movie on
which, he tells me, he is creative director. Giving West a tour of the
Villa Savoye, Stanescu explains why the reinforced-concrete structure,
with its open plan, ribbon windows, and flat roof, was so radical for
its time. West, fascinated, begins ruminating about how visionaries like
Le Corbusier and himself can be misunderstood by their unenlightened
peers. (Stanescu listens attentively, though she ignores a few of West’s
comments, such as, “I love banquettes and shit.”) “Someone else’s
negative opinion, it just doesn’t matter,” West says. “I bet there were
people at the time who said to the owners of this house, ‘Why would you
spend your money on this?’ And those people, I bet you that today nobody
is visiting their house.”
