Ye is a legendary artist, producer, and designer. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Shopify: https://shopify.com/lex to get free trial - InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off - ExpressVPN: https://expressvpn.com/lexpod to get 3 months free - Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex to get 1 month of fish oil EPISODE LINKS: Ye's Twitter: https://twitter.com/kanyewest Ye's Instagram: https://instagram.com/kanyewest Ye's Website: https://kanyewest.com PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (07:26) - Engineering (18:21) - Kim Kardashian (20:07) - Sex and the future of humanity (30:12) - Happiness (32:49) - The Holocaust (1:21:58) - Fashion (1:37:31) - 2024 US election (1:42:10) - Humor (1:44:20) - Media and antisemitism (1:56:23) - Trusting people (1:59:37) - Accountability (2:09:36) - Legacy (2:10:28) - Advice for young people (2:23:29) - Regret
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
The following is a conversation with Ye, the legendary artist, producer, and designer formerly known as Kanye West. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got Shopify for e-commerce, Insight Tracker for biomonitoring, ExpressVPN for privacy, and Athletic Greens for nutrition. Choose wisely, my friends.
And now, on to the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I hate those. They interrupt the conversation. And I hate it when long-form conversations interrupted. Still, if you happen to want to listen to these, I try to make them interesting. But go ahead and skip them if you must. But still, check out the sponsors in the description. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too.
This show is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, with a great-looking online store that brings your ideas to life and tools to manage day-to-day operation. So since this conversation is with Ye, The artist formerly known as Kanye West.
I should mention that I got a chance to hang out with him all day and discuss many things, but one of the things we talked about is design, fashion design. I got a chance to try out some of the things he's working on, sort of early ideas, middle ideas, and it's cool to just explore the way he thinks about design.
how detail-oriented he is, how he can spend minutes, if not hours, on a very specific detail. And even with people like me who are not deeply knowledgeable about fashion, at least like the behind the scenes of fashion, he's still able to make it clear to me and have a brainstorm with me and just talk. I mean, the creative fire is there.
No matter what he's going on through his personal life, the creative fire is burning bright. And that's really beautiful to see. Anyway, if the creative fire burns for you and you create something and you want to sell it, use Shopify. Get a free trial and full access to Shopify's entire suite of features when you sign up at shopify.lex. That's all lowercase.
This show is also brought to you by our longtime friends, Insight Tracker, a service I use to track biological data, basically using signals that come from your body and then take those signals and use machine learning algorithms to give you advice on diet and lifestyle changes. The amount of data that comes from your body is fascinating, and the fact that we're not capturing that data.
We don't have devices or systems that, while respecting the privacy, are able to collect that data to give you, just you, not somebody else, just you, advice on all kinds of things, on what to read next, what to eat, to maximize your well-being, your productivity, your everything, long-term happiness and growth and all that kind of stuff.
It's just obvious to me that that's where the world is moving and should be moving. There's a lot of different trajectories that you can hurt people through doing that by being not transparent, being opaque about how the data is used, who it's sold to, all that kind of stuff. But as long as you respect the privacy and the value, the power of that data,
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Chapter 2: How does Ye describe his approach to design and creativity?
But probably I wasn't even the first wave of people that discovered and enjoyed Athletic Greens. I'm probably like the fifth wave, the 10th wave. And now it's like the 15th wave. And so like... I'm incorrectly, from a historical perspective, making myself feel like I'm the OG of athletic greens. The OG of AG. But probably not. Anyway, I love them. And it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter where I am in the waves. I hope you love them too. It's a great way to support your nutritional health. I drink one twice a day now. It's refreshing. Even when I'm traveling, their travel packs are great. They'll give you one month supply of fish oil, which I also take, when you sign up at athleticgreens.com slash Lex. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's yay.
based off of our connection and just you being a friend, I need to show you my two tech companies and get your perspective on it. Because now I have friends that can give a perspective. Like when I would work on albums, I had other friends that worked on albums and they would give me their perspectives on it. You want to do this? We are doing it. This is part of it. This is part of it?
Absolutely. All right. Beautiful. Oh, well, I wanted to finish. The thing is, okay, you're going to ask me different questions, but I'm about growing and building and bringing the idea to life. So when I see you, I say, oh, this guy understands how to hire engineers. Where I'm coming from, coming from Hollywood, coming from press, coming from media, I'm
All of the guys, you know, that... So many of the guys that have been, like, voices and faces and talking heads, whatever, have not understood how to engineer product. And that's the reason why I was able to jump past everyone in the entertainment field and become... Whatever the net worth is, $11 billion. I'm going to stop putting the whole Black thing on my worth.
Let's just see where I am on the scale of life, because that's a cop-out for me to say, richest Black guy of all time, because that's feeding into the same trauma economy that Black Lives Matter feeds into. That's why I love and respect engineers. That's the only thing that we really need to teach in school is engineering. We don't need to teach history.
We don't need to teach anything that is subjective. It needs to only be engineering taught in school, and everything else needs to be recessed. Nothing at all, any forced subjective information is just to weaken and indoctrinate our species, and that's what schools do now.
As an engineer, I love hearing you say that, but to push back, history is not, the interpretation of history might be subjective, but history has some facts, and they're useful to give a grounding to the way you do engineering.
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Chapter 3: What insights does Ye share about engineering and accountability?
No, I'm Jew, not Jewish. Jewish means like that of a Jew. I'm saying I'm Jew. You're Jew. Blood of Christ. Orthodox Christian. Right.
But that, are you... Are you a follower of the philosophy of the Black Hebrew Israelites? Because that's where the idea comes from. Not all of those folks are extremists, but some are extremists.
I'm a follower of the idea. I have a vague idea that all people came from Africa. But what I wanted to do, okay, now I could Andy Kaufman this about seven more minutes and then tell you what it is, what the whole point is.
Let's count, seven minutes.
No, I did this to do a spoiler alert. Sure, spoiler. What's the first thing I said at the beginning?
We're talking about engineering and humans.
And then what did I say we shouldn't focus on? Race. Not just that. I said they shouldn't teach this in school. History. The history because what they do, what schools are doing is exactly what the CIA does with Pixar films and Disney films. They make Bambi's mom die in the beginning, right? And off that pain comes... a purchase of ice cream off that pain comes.
I need some more toys off that pain comes. I need a bigger house off that pain comes. I need more girls than my wife off that pain comes. So they put that pain and to make us, uh, now we're the orphans of capitalism to make us be consumers and we need to be a community, not just consumers. So I could have went another seven minutes by being a person that,
Who presents himself in a way that says, well, I don't have to feel your pain because I also have pain, too, that's not being recognized. And in every interview, when I say, well, why did I get to the point of putting up the tweet? No one wants to understand why I got to that point.
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Chapter 4: How does Ye relate personal experiences to broader societal issues?
We're in the general's closet right now together. And I'm not, the red hat is very different. The red hat is, you have a set of beliefs. You represent half the country that has a hope for, A vision for the future of America that's very different than without any purpose whatsoever saying Jewish media, Jewish control of the media.
You said there's no purpose. So you're taking away my history and my reason of what my purpose was.
I'm saying it was dumb. Also, also, also.
I'm speaking my voice, vocalizing it. Also. Yeah. It's God's plan. There's a lot of things that open up. Let me tell you something that opened up. There's a guy, like I told you, that was running STEM player who I've had issues with. We hadn't got paid on time. Certain things, right? And he took his... His IQ, his know-how, his engineering know-how too.
He basically was trying to Adidas me with, even though I was the bigger money in the situation. That was fun and we funded together. And he hired these engineers and he said, well, because of your comments, we're not going to be able to hire anybody else. And I was like, well, how many Jewish people do we have in our company? He said, I don't know. He didn't say exactly, right?
I said, do we have black people? He said, yes. I said, how many? He said, two. So we have like 60 full-time employees, like 40 half-time and part-time. And I took as a responsibility, let's take a step back from us being one species and say, hey, you're Jewish, I'm black, right? Why step back? For this example, for the sake of this example.
And I said, wow, I'm sure I can hire more than two black engineers. And what happens is because there are so many businessmen that just so happen to be Jewish that it's good business, right, just to monopolize. That's what people are looking. Everybody wants to be Elon, right? So the— I disagree with that. Okay, but let me finish this point. I'm going to let you finish.
I'm going to let you finish. A lot of businessmen want to be as successful as Elon and as popular as Elon. A lot. I could just word it like that, which I hate the term a lot, actually. I want to be more specific, but I haven't done the math on it. Let's say some.
Factually, for sure, there are some business people of all different walks and backgrounds that would like to be as rich and as popular as Elon Musk. So let me just take a step back from the we're one species into the we're separated by race, gender, socioeconomic class conversation and say, as a Black owner of two tech platforms, hardware and software, I need to take action.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Ye face with his deal with Bernard Arnault?
So then he offers me to deal with Alexander Arnault, who's went to gone on and rape and pillage from all of the talent that I had afterwards, said, I say, before I tell Adidas to indemnify the apparel, can I get a written... contract from your dad, Bernard Arnault, and he says, my dad will never go back on his word. So you already know where this thing is going, right?
You can, spoiler alert, right? He went back on his word. So three months into the deal, I get Anna Wintour I say, who should I use for my lawyer? She picks my lawyer for me, right? I just found out even a couple of days that the lawyer demanded an airplane during negotiations. Had nothing to do with me, right? They said that Bernard Arnault got freaked out.
And then Alexander Arnault calls me and says, the deal got dropped at the board.
Chapter 6: How does Ye describe his exhaustion and its impact on his health?
I went back and told my high maintenance wife, I was supposed to become this designer at Louis Vuitton or the Louis Vuitton group was going to back the Kanye West line because that's how good I've done in fashion, babe. And now the deal is dropped. Now the deal is dropped. So then I did a second collection and we didn't have any support to be able to build the collection.
Then I went and found a third collection. We did it. We took over MSG. Fourth collection went and the show started an hour late. Then a week later, Kim got robbed. Then I told Scooter Braun, my manager at that time, I say, I'm looking, you know, I need to go to Japan. I'm tired. I'm tired. He says, no, you need to make more money.
Chapter 7: What insights does Ye share about trust and accountability?
I do four more shows on a second leg of the tour. And I suffer from exhaustion and go to the hospital and then get diagnosed with a disorder. This is the first time I ever suffered from exhaustion. By the way, I haven't been to the hospital since. I haven't been to the hospital since and haven't taken medication in two years.
And I'm sure there'll be people in the media, we won't say, where a phone will say, well, that's obvious, right? So... So right now, I'm talking to you, right? I'm not on medication. I just go to sleep, right? I have sleep.
Chapter 8: What is Ye's advice for young people navigating their paths?
Have you been able to sleep? That's too low-hanging fruit for you. I expect more. I agree. I agree. That was dumb. I regret it. That's like Pierce Morgan trying to grab ratings. You got a whole life ahead of you. You got a whole life ahead of you. These guys are at the end of their life.
Oh, good. Call me out on my shit. I love it.
But then amidst that, the same guy that dropped my deal, Bernard Arnault, goes and hires my best friend. goes and hires my main engineer, right? It would have been like them hiring, you know, Elon from Peter before they figured out Paul, before they figured out PayPal. But Paul sounds like Paul. I just say it because I'm a Christian. I thought it was cool.
But it would have been like, what if someone could have went in and took Elon away from Peter before they paid Paul? Because they paid Paul. Yeah, before they paid Paul. It's just too close. Yeah, too close. It just sounds so fresh, the fact that it's so close, right? And that's what happened, right? They broke the gang up. And I'm telling you right now, that hadn't happened. Virgil's alive.
I'm still married. You know what I'm saying? The power structure was broken then, right? Because we were building something. Kylie wasn't a billionaire. You know what I mean? We were building something together that a French colonizer came in and caught it early and tried to destroy it. But the only thing is God is alive and I'm anointed.
And even with those drawbacks, losing my wife, losing my friend, exhaustion, all of these late night tweets that piss off an entire group, you know, like this, the frustration still there. We work, I work for God and God runs the world and we'll see what, we'll see what happens.
But in those words, don't you feel that being split up, don't you feel you're doing the thing that you stand against, which is playing victim? Aren't you playing victim to the forces in the world?
I didn't play victim. I didn't even get a chance to play. I just said I was about to. I said like this.
No, you played pretty damn well. What do you mean? What do you mean about to? You're like one of the greatest designers in history, fashion designers. You were playing. You are playing. What does that even mean?
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