Kanye West Writes About the American Dream in New Essay

Kanye West fronts the latest issue of Paper magazine, and he’s also penned its cover story. Asked for his take on the American Dream, West’s meandering essay covers his early days in music, overcoming critics in his fashion pursuits and why he considers himself first and foremost an innovator.

“I care about innovating,” he writes. “I don’t care about capitalizing off of something that we’ve seen or heard a thousand times. I’m not a capitalist in that way. I’m an innovator. That’s my job.”

West adds that he believes the future of the music industry relies on sharing his own creative endeavors and insights with other artists.

“I think it’s so important for me, as an artist, to give Drake as much information as I can, A$AP, Kendrick [Lamar], Taylor Swift, any of these younger artists as much information as I can to make better music in the future,” West writes. “We should all be trying to make something that’s better.”

Later on in the essay, he returns to that sentiment -- while recounting a tripped-out visit to the dentist -- saying he doesn’t care about being remembered or credited for his many and varying ventures, but rather it’s the contributions themselves that matter most to him.

“I said in my mind -- I’m still under the gas and getting my teeth cleaned -- ‘But I just want to be remembered,’” he recounts. “And I immediately corrected myself. I said, ‘It doesn’t even matter if I’m remembered.’ I came out of the gas and had a completely new attitude on everything. It’s fine to not get credit for everything; it’s almost better.”

West also confessed he’s not as passionate about music as he once was:

I made a decision [in high school] to focus on painting with sound instead of painting visually. I loved music. I loved it more than I love it now. But I think that can happen with anything. You can live in New York for 10 years and say, ‘I now want to move to San Francisco.’ It’s just harder for me to do music now, period. It’s easier for people who focus on it all day and who are younger in their concept of what they want to do with it. I am not what I would consider truly a musician. I am an inventor. I am an innovator.

Read West’s complete Paper article here.