Kanye West: The Art of Living Creatively
“I’m a professional dreamer”
The Creator’s Digest is a comprehensive breakdown of the creative process and techniques behind the most prominent creative thinkers in business and entertainment.
If I could distill Kanye West’s career into three words, they would be “why can’t I?”
There’s no doubt Kanye is the biggest rock star of this generation but here’s what will surprise you about the enigmatic musician…
When you peel back the layers of everything he’s accomplished, you’ll find he’s not really a musician.
*gasp*
Before you get upset at me for making such a ludicrous claim, Kanye has always claimed he’s a creator first.
Everything else he does stems from being a creator at heart.
Music is merely a subset of his meta skill; learning and creating.
“I’m a creator. Like Walt Disney or something. Like rap is just a chamber of my
thoughts.”
“My talent is my ability to learn”
It’s this voracious hunger to satisfy his natural curiosities and create on the fly which makes Kanye such an enigma, even with his most loyal fans.
Case in point; his debut album the College Dropout was an act of epic reinvention of the rap genre.
Rewind back to 2004. I was in my second year of university when the album dropped.
Back then, I had no idea who the heck Kanye West was.
Popular magazines and TV told me he was a well-known producer who made tracks for rap stars like Jay-Z and therefore I should listen to his first album.
The next minute you know, I found my atheistic adolescent self bobbing his head to the tune of Jesus Walks.
Kanye’s career has always been about innovation.
This need to learn, create and reinvent makes him controversial and misunderstood by an audience who seem to always want more of “the old Kanye” (the Kanye they fell in love with before his last reinvention).
When rappers were rapping about drugs, money and bitches, he rapped about dropping out of college and following Jesus.
I knew Kanye was different when I first saw him on the College Dropout tour. To this day it’s one of the best concerts I’ve ever attended.
After blowing our minds with a hip hop concert conducted with a 12 piece orchestra, Kanye had just one thing to say to us:
“I hope y’all enjoyed the show. I want y’all to know we’re real musicians out here and not just a couple of ni**as on a mic.”
That’s when I knew Kanye was different from every other musician.
The crowd chuckled at his remark but it always stuck with me. Kanye was trying to create something new in rap.
It’s been 17 years since that concert and his hunger to explore new grounds and reinvent himself and his creations hasn’t changed one bit.
In that time, not only has he continued to reinvent music, he’s also become one of the most influential fashion designers of this generation and even ran for President of the United States in 2020.
In a 2013 interview with the NY Times, Kanye said “I love the fact that I’m bad at [things], you know what I’m saying? I’m forever the 35-year-old 5-year-old. I’m forever the 5-year-old of something.”
It’s this insatiable thirst for learning, creating and innovating which makes him such a polarising figure in a world where society tries to box everyone into a single identity.
Sure, he’s said some wild things and we all remember the Taylor Swift moment but what makes us pay attention is his refusal to stop asking the question “why can’t I?”
Why can’t you drop out of college to chase your dreams?
Why can’t you rap about Jesus on the radio?
Why can’t a rapper become a fashion designer?
Why can’t a rapper and fashion designer run for President of the United States?
So if there’s something you want to pursue that’s giving you a creative itch yet seems beyond your reach, be like Kanye and ask yourself “why can’t I?”
How to Create like Kanye West
Never start from scratch. Kanye’s musical talent was developed through producing tracks for other rappers. This practice begins by sampling copious amounts of music from other artists. He applies this philosophy with his apparel designs. For example, he reads the bible when he’s coming up with design ideas. “The bible is better than Pinterest” he said. One time, after reading a verse in the old testament prohibiting the blending of two different materials in a piece of garment, he instructed his design team to stop doing so. He’s also said that the anime film Akira was a huge inspiration for his Yeezy brand because his mom took him to watch it in the cinema when he was a child.
Stop thinking in numbers. People often make the mistake of trying to use quantifiable metrics to reverse engineer the creative process. For example, forcing yourself to write 1,000 words a day restricts your creative instincts because it primes you to focus on crossing the 1,000 word benchmark rather than focusing on writing something great. When asked by an interviewer about the number of Yeezy prototypes he had on display, Kanye responded with “I’m not a numbers guy. To ask me that is to ask your grandmother exactly what the recipe of the cake was. You can’t calculate love.” The lesson? Stop trying to use numbers to get a creative result. Just create with love.
Cultivate your inner-childlike curiosity. Kanye’s public outbursts make him seem like the most arrogant person on the planet, but his approach to learning and creativity says otherwise. He doesn’t mind being bad at things which is why he’s such a prolific creator. In fact, he thrives on being bad. In a 2013 interview he said “Yeah. I love the fact that I’m bad at [things], you know what I’m saying? I’m forever the 35-year-old 5-year-old. I’m forever the 5-year-old of something.” If you want to be the best, start by admitting you’re bad and let your 5 year old curious self take over.
Memorable Quotes
“There’s a little bit of Lamborghini in everything I do”
“My ideas are my air. I breathe creativity.”
“The more I get to create, the younger I feel”
“I’m a professional dreamer”
“I dropped out of school in order to learn”
“I’m such a futurist I have to slow down and talk in the present”
“Class is what people want.. you wanna be upper class, you wanna be first class, but in a plane crash everybody dead.. it ain’t no class”
“I make music and I do it but I shouldn’t be limited to one place of creativity.”
“I will die for the art, for what I believe in, and the art ain’t always going to be polite.”
“That’s the privilege of art. It’s to express EXACTLY what you feel and to never lose that.”
“The responsibility of the artist is to try and get away with whatever you can because everyone is compromising”