Kanye West

I promise you, you’re going to see a new Ye. You’re going to feel the impact of the new relationships and the new ideas and the exposure that I’ve gathered. It’s about to be applied now.

Come on now! How could you be me and want to be someone else?

[on Glastonbury] I started off the show and I completely messed up the music. And me, as you can imagine by this phone call, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. So it really put me into a slightly depressed state.

There’s nothing I really wanted to do in life that I wasn’t able to get good at. That’s my skill. I’m not really specifically talented at anything except for the ability to learn. That’s what I do. That’s what I’m here for.

I feel that [Trump] cares about the way black people feel about him, and he would like for black people to like him like they did when he was cool in the rap songs and all this.

I love Obama. I’m sure we’ll hang out, go to Richard Branson’s island. It’ll be cool.

For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a recording is, I know that I couldn’t live with it–even of my own music–with the same nuances forever.

My role as a drummer is as a team player to enhance what is going on around me.

If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all.

Jazz goes into my coffee in the morning, in my wine at night.

The truth is I never gave it much thought. I just played what I had to play.

Miles’ sessions were not typical of anybody else’s sessions. They were totally unique.

Jazz is a sideways glance at music. It’s like being an architect, knowing the basis of design but understanding that the façade can be whatever you dream. I’m a free person. I don’t want to be tied down.

I don’t have to lay on the couch and see a therapist because my therapy is in art.

I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I’m contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don’t come in with lyrics… I just go in and let it happen.

What we play is life.

So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.

I had a really good time in New Orleans, although I had some very tragic times in Baton Rouge. Some guys beat me up and threw my horn away. ‘Cause I had a beard, then, and long hair like the Beatles.

It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

We open our minds, stretch forth, take chances and venture out musically to arrive at something new and different.