Kanye West Wants to Collaborate With Payless
Kanye West believes he was raised to do something and make a difference. “I feel that if I had more resources, I could help more people. I have ideas that could make the human race existence within our 100 years better — period,” the rapper proclaimed during an appearance on The Ellen Show airing Thursday. But given the opportunity to deliver an elevator pitch to President Obama, West decided to talk about fashion instead.
“It’s funny because I was sitting there with Obama, and Leo [DiCaprio] is talking about the environment and I’m talking about clothes,” he explained. “And everyone looks at me like that’s not an important issue or something. But I remember going to school in fifth grade and wanting to have a cool outfit. I called the head of Payless, and I said ‘I want to work with you. I want to take all this information that I’ve learned from sitting at all these fashion shows and knocking down all these doors and buying all these expensive clothes, and I want to take away bullying.’” So to translate, West wants to produce Yeezys at a lower price point so kids don’t get picked on.
While this hasn’t become a reality yet, the shoes are wildly popular. And West actually credits this success to synesthesia, where one sense activates another. “So the exact amount of emotion and color palette and sonics and everything that I put into my music, I put into [my line of] shoes — and they worked!”
But to achieve his more lofty goals, he says, he’ll have to become the “Michael Jackson of apparel in order to break open the doors for everyone that will come after I’m gone, after I’m dead, after they call me wacko Kanye.” Wacko, maybe, but West noted that people talk the most s*** about the people who care the most. At that last thought, he ended his diatribe with an apology: “I’m sorry, daytime television. I’m sorry for the realness.”
Click here to watch the full clip.
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