Kanye West
gave a powerful speech at at the Oxford Guild Society at the Oxford
University Museum of Natural History on Monday, March 2. During his
speech, he banned cellphones during his speech in order to stop student
taking pictures of him, but some of them took it and posted it on Twitter. The university student newspaper The Tab Oxford posted the transcript of Kanye's speech.
Kanye opened up about his regrets that he didn't attend college.
"Today was the first time I realized, if I could have done it again I
would have gone to the Art Institute over the American Academy of Art, I
would have researched where I could have got the best and the strongest
education. My goal, if I was going to do art, fine art, would have been
to become Picasso or greater."
"That always sounds so funny to people, comparing yourself to someone in
the past that has done so much, and in your life you're not even
allowed to think that you can do as much. That's a mentality that
suppresses humanity," he continued.
"We have the resources as a civilization to find a
utopia, but we're led by the most greedy and the least noble. What I
notice about creatives is that, and one of the reasons why I get into
trouble, is, not only do I want to design video
games, or make music, or ride bikes, I think one of the most important
things to my ability to create so much in the past 30 years is my desire
to play sports. I approach creativity like a sport, where if I have a
drawing I react just like a jock: LOOK AT THE F***ING DRAWING RIGHT
THERE YEAH!"
Kanye drew a comparison between the Bible and "The Matrix". "There's a
Bible saying, 'No weapon formed against me shall prosper.' Recently I've
been doing interviews and I've had to go back to this verse because I
don't think there's a living celebrity with more weapons formed against
them, but I also don't think there's one more prosperous. So what
weapons have prospered? The smoke and mirrors of other opinions," he
explained.
"What I said [to Steve McQueen] was 'The Matrix' is like the Bible of
the post-information age. I compared it like, when the hundred guys come
at Neo, those are opinions, that's perception, that's tradition," he
added, "Attacking people from every which angle possible. If you have a
focus wide and master senseis like Laurence Fishburne and you have a squad behind you, you literally can put the world in slow motion."
Kanye also cited "The Cosby Show", President Barack Obama and Beyonce Knowles.
"This is a generation that is far less racist - yes, small remnants
remain of even thinking of calling something of a racial slur," he said,
"White people that listen to rap say 'n***er'...in the privacy of their
own home. That idea [racism], has passed. We've had 'The Cosby Show',
Obama's president, Beyonce's great... that's passed. But there's still
something you're taught every day, especially in the U.K., and that's
division by class. Our main focus, in my opinion...Imagine a world with
no war, and imagine if everyone's main focus, more so than going out to a
club, their main focus was to help someone else."
During his speech, Kanye admitted Nicki Minaj was better than him. "You know, Chris Rock and everyone else at every single media publication called 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' the best album
of the last 25 years.... One of the most memorable things about MBDTF
was Nicki Minaj, and the fact that she kicked my ass, on my own song, on
one of the best albums... I was
exiled from my country, it was a personal exile, but exile. To come back
and deliver my magnum opus of a work, and to be outshined...to be beat
by a girl, basically."
He later declared, "One of my biggest Achilles heels has been my ego.
And if I, Kanye West, the very person, can remove my ego, I think
there's hope for everyone."
