Kanye West's 10 Most "Kanye" On-Camera Moments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge33hrlN2Uc

When given the chance to elucidate the reasoning behind his seemingly outrageous statements, Kanye West shows that behind the oversized ego is a man who is expertly conscious of racism, classism, and the inherent societal biases that attempt to keep him in check.

"Would it have been better if I had a song that said, 'I am a n*gger?'" he asks Zane Lowe. "Or if I had a song that said, 'I am a gangsta?' Or if I had a song that said, 'I am a pimp?'" Rappers who say these types of things, Kanye argues, aren't glorying in their status--they're degrading themselves and reinforcing the stereotypes that many white Americans hold against blacks. The most important aspect of Kanye calling himself a god is not the fact that this is his true opinion of himself (and even if it is, what objective reason do we have to hold it against him?). It's that he refuses to accept public limitations on how he can classify himself.

In this respect, the thesis statement of Kanye's body of work is freedom: how Kanye has struggled for it over the course of his career, and how that struggle relates to his audience and the world. His hypocritical stances on materialism, his malignant reliance on public approval, his powerful invective against institutional racism--all of Kanye's self-contradiction is just an internal manifestation of his ego's battle against external pressures. Because his ego happens to be massive, the battle is vaster for him than it is for most of us.