Kanye West accepted the “Shoe of the Year Award” for his Adidas Yeezy Boost with a cheesy grin and loads of jokes in a nearly 20-minute speech at Wednesday night’s Footwear News Achievement Awards (Dec. 2).
“If you don’t like 10-minute profanity-ridden speeches that end with a presidential bid, you can go to the bathroom,” he joked.
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The multi-hyphenate shared anecdotes about esteemed designer Phillip Lim, holing up in Tokyo and working for Fendi with his right-hand man Virgil Abloh, and going on a designing spree while recording music for his 2010 My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy LP and the joint Watch The Throne project with Jay Z.
“I remember Jay Z text me, saying ‘Get off the runway.’ It’s kinda rude but we had an album to finish,” he laughed. “And I said, ‘I’m not leaving.’ So we brought all the n—as to Paris and made a song about it.”
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He rambles on about his love for product and nice things (“I want a house equal or better than Calvin Klein’s house in the Hamptons”).
“I care serious about product,” he said. “I don’t care if I have a kid, a wife, hitting hills with the picket fence, I’m serious about product. I’m dead serious to what I create as an artist in this lifetime while I’m here. It’s not a fucking joke.”
Mr. West wraps his speech with a funny quotable, though. “I’m trying to take it full ‘Will Ferrell level drunk brother at the wedding’ level,” he closes. “Have I reached that level yet? Have I fucked it up? Good. Here’s to fucking everything up!”
Watch ‘Ye’s impassioned speech below.