At this point we will have to make do with the presidential candidates we already have. But in a new BBC Radio 1 interview, Kanye West doubled-down on his promise to make a White House run in 2020. “We are numb, we’re numb to 500 kids getting killed in Chicago a year, we’re numb to the fact that it was seven police shootings in the beginning of July,” he told host Annie Mac in the Sunday chat. “We’re numb to places on the Earth that we don’t live – like our life is okay but it’s okay for other people’s lives to not be okay.”
Fact posted excerpts of the interview, which will air in full at 2 p.m. ET on Monday (Aug. 1). What ‘Ye stressed, though, is that he’s not talking about running for president for the usual reasons. “When I talk about the idea of being president, I’m not saying I have any political views, I don’t have views on politics,” he said. “I just have a view on humanity, on people, on the truth. If there is anything that I can do with my time and my day, to somehow make a difference while I’m alive I’m going to try to do it.”
Glastonbury 2015: Kanye West’s Set Interrupted by Stage Crasher
In another confessional moment, West broke down why a misfire at the top of his 2015 Glastonbury headlining set threw him into a bit of an emotional tailspin. West described starting the show and how he “completely messed up the music.” Being a perfectionist, he told Mac that he couldn’t stop thinking about that glitch and how it took him back to his earlier musical struggles in high school.
“So it really put me into a slightly depressed state and it put me back in the position of when I was in high school and I got fired from my job, or when I played my music for R. Kelly and he told me he was going to sign me and then three months later I didn’t have any money I couldn’t afford a haircut, I couldn’t take my girlfriend to the movies and I’m still in my momma’s bedroom, working on beats and I was that close to being signed by R. Kelly,” he said. “I don’t usually get nervous, I prepare, I get fully prepared.”
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Before taking the Glastonbury stage — where he was briefly interrupted by comedian Simon Brodkin — West was the subject of a petition signed by more than 134,000 people demanding that festival runners cancel his appearance at the traditionally rock-focused fest. But when the track didn’t cue up as expected and he was forced to re-boot, West said it hit him in an emotional place. “When that music messed up in the beginning it tapped into my nerves and when you’re nervous or vulnerable something special and something different can happen,” he said.