Kanye West

On Jimmy Kimmel we had a great time having a dialogue. I’m reading that I was stumped by a question. Let me clarify the click bait. I wasn’t stumped. I wasn’t given a chance to answer the question.

I don’t think Disney gets enough credit as a director. When people talk about their favourite directors of all time, Disney has some dope movies under his belt too.

I don’t have a sound bite for everything.

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

We will no longer outsource to other countries. We build factories here in America and create jobs. We will provide jobs for all who are free from prisons as we abolish the 13th amendment.

Yes, we are celebrities, but yes, we’re also innovators, we’re also inventors, we’re also thoughtful.

When I was in the country and I was trying to play, nobody seemed to pay too much attention to me. People used to say, ‘That’s just that ole blues singer.’

You explore beautiful songs and create your own interpretation of them.

No, working is what will keep you alive.

I heard Mr. Wild Bill Davis. I heard him play in 1930 and he told me that it would take me fifteen years just to learn the pedals, the pedals of the organ and I got mad.

Gershwin was right in his time, at his time. Everybody else was behind.

I’m trying to make music a sensual expression, not and academic experiment.

The blues was bleeding the same blood as me. The blues didn’t have to explain the mystery of pain that I felt; it was there in the songs and voices of singers like Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, in the cries of their guitars.

[on Django Reinhardt] By far the most astonishing guitar player ever … Django was quite superhuman, there’s nothing normal about him as a person or a player

A Jazz man should be saying what he feels: humor, sadness, joy… all the things that humans have.

When you’re creating your own shit, even the sky ain’t the limit.

You can practice to learn technique, but I’m more interested in conceiving something in the moment.

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It’s our great contribution to the arts.

I’m still searching even today for a sound, like the guy that’s searching for a home. I haven’t been able to find that completely. I’m satisfied at times with the sound of my guitar… but it is a little sound that I hear but I can’t tell anybody about it. I don’t know how. But if I ever get it, I’ll know.

I always make it a point to pick songs on which players really shine.

Jimmy (Wakely) told me, ‘I don’t want you to sound so much like Dinah Washington.’ So, I thought, ‘How can I get around this?’ And one of the people I really dug was Patti Page. So I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to sound like her.’ I actually did with a couple curly-cues thrown in for effect, but, that’s how I started getting away from the predominant Dinah influence, and getting my own style together.