Kanye West

I was afraid to show you this 300 acres that I just purchased that I’m building my first community on – my first five properties on – because I felt like it would be shut down.

I had plastic surgery because I was trying to look good for y’all.

Yeezus was extremely purposeful. And what came from Yeezus: Paparazzi are nicer to me. The entire fashion industry is nicer to me.

We don’t want to be influenced, just informed.

So I’m you, I’m us, it’s us. It went from Kanye, which means the only one, to just Ye – just being a reflection of our good, our bad, our confused, everything. The album is more of a reflection of who we are.

Carine Roitfeld is the Walt Disney of what Tumblr is today. She is the Kanye West of what Tumblr is today. She’s the single most important person to what street style is today. Carine Roitfeld is the Walt Disney of what Tumblr is today. She is the Kanye West of what Tumblr is today. She’s the single most important person to what street style is today.

[on Django Reinhardt] This was a man who changed my musical life by giving me a whole new perspective on the guitar and, on an even more profound level, on my relationship with sound…During my formative years, as I listened to Django’s records, especially songs like ‘Nuages’ that I would play for the rest of my life, I studied his technique. Even more, I studied his gentleness. I love the human sound he gave his acoustic guitar.

Excessive reverence for the romantic illusion of original thought is the most fraudulent and destructive element in Jazz education.

The first jazz I heard was Duke Ellington. I was learning to play classical music, but my teacher swapped out those lessons for jazz lessons because I had started adding grace notes to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff.

The Blues and Jazz will live forever. So will the Delta and the Big Easy.

[on Ornette Coleman] Man, that cat is nuts!

The violin, the saxophone, the trumpet: Each makes a very different sound but the very same notes. That’s pretty heavy, you know ? Imagine how many different races make up the human race. I’m called colored, you’re called white, he’s called something else. We still got an asshole and a mouth. Pardon me.

Forget about upholding the tradition and just play who you really are.

Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.

As long as you’ve got your horn in your mouth, you’re developing.

I don’t get jazz. It always sounds like a bunch of toddlers let loose in a music room.

You could still improvise but do it with lyrics.

Man, if you gotta ask you’ll never know.

I bought my first electric guitar when I moved to Memphis; a Gibson with a DeArmond pickup which I used with a small Gibson amplifier.

You can have tone and technique but without originality you ain’t really nowhere. Gotta be original.

Never lose the groove to find a note.