All the feels! As his wife, Kim Kardashian, is pregnant with their second child, an unfiltered and reflective Kanye West shared his hopes for his future son in a new interview on Tuesday, Oct. 6, providing several deep anecdotes related to his past.
West, 38, sat down for a one-on-one with the SHOWStudio team at Paris Fashion Week, and was asked a simple question sent in by Anna Wintour. “What will you name your son?” the Vogue editor posed. “And what are your hopes for him as he gets older?”
Smiling, West replied: “I don’t have a name for him, but what I hope for him is that he can feel purpose. That he can learn that he has the opportunities to…” Reflecting further, the rapper brought up something he witnessed this past weekend.
“The other night I was driving in Paris, and I saw these three high school kids running top speed,” he recalled. “I didn’t know if they were chasing a guy or what, and there was a bus on the side of the street that was about to pull off, and they were beating on the side of the bus. And I looked at the time and it was like, 1 a.m., so that might be the last bus of the night, and I was just like, really saddened. I was like, ‘How can I make my son feel that?'”
West himself has felt that desperation. “Because once you’ve felt that, then none of these f–king questions matter. When you’ve missed that last bus before, when you have the opportunity to get on the bus? You don’t give a f–k about any of this,” he mused. “And having to sleep downtown in a parking lot, it’s almost like not feeling anything. It’s almost like being numb because of what I went through.”
The rapper went on to bring up another story about someone who had previously been the global manager of accessories at a really good company. “She stayed in a concentration camp until she was 5 years old,” he recalled. “After someone’s been through something like that, they can give a f–k less about f–k. None of this facade thing.”
According to West, he is appreciative of the majority of positive press surrounding his famous family. “I mean, yeah [I care],” he said. “I mean, that’s the reason why… with the help of Anna Wintour and other people, we’ve actually made a lot of positive press coverage. The majority is actually positive, because most of the things that we do are positive. And even the negative cannot outshine the truth. The truth shall come to light.”
Comparatively speaking, however, how he’s perceived by the public is nothing in the great scheme of life. “Do I worry about being in the public eye and raising kids? Yeah… but it’s champagne problems,” he said of his lifestyle. “It’s people who can’t feed their kids. That’s something to worry about more… These aren’t real issues. There’s people at war. There’s people trying to make it to London right now…. That celeb s–t, it’s not real s–t… You know what, I’m alive. I’m breathing… I have no problems.”
Fatherhood, in many ways, has changed him. “Three years ago, after this interview, I would’ve been on the train back to Paris to see the last of the shows to get that inspiration,” revealed West, who welcomed his daughter, North West, in June 2013. “Now, I’m on the first flight home to see my greatest inspiration, that’s my daughter.”
In fact, having a family — and his baby girl — has changed his music, too. “Having a family, period, has made me completely rethink the way I rap,” the College Dropout hitmaker reflected. “You know, people extend their brand for a long time. There’s true moments of genius, then there are moments of looking through the archives and putting s–t together. So many people rate Dark Fantasy as my best album, but Yeezus and 808 are so much stronger. Dark Fantasy to me is… almost like, an apology record. ‘Power’ was the least progressive song that I’ve ever had as a first single…. least challenging.”
He concluded his thoughts about the topic in one sentence. “I just love my family,” the rapper dished with a grin.
Watch his interview above, and watch his craziest moments from Us Weekly!
