Kanye West Rants At Cannes Lions, Hates Everything: “The World As A Whole Is Fucking Ugly”
"The internet as a whole is fucking ugly, too."
The Cannes Lions Festival is the world’s biggest awards show and conference for the creative communications and advertising industries, and it kicked off over the weekend.
This year’s speakers range from advertising legends like David Droga and Martin Sorrell to tech names like Buzzfeed’s Jonah Peretti and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg. There’s celebrity talent including Rob Lowe, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Sir Patrick Stewart, and a few oddball additions too, like Courtney Love and Neil Degrasse Tyson.
Also Bono, because Bono must be everywhere, always.
Pretty much the only name missing on the lineup was Kanye West. Which was no bother to Kanye West, because he shows up wherever he damn pleases anyway.
Overnight, Kanye popped up in a seminar to discuss culture, the internet, brands, the world, Vogue, and Kim Kardashian.
“I don’t want to say these really big, over-the-top statements that end up getting quoted,” he began. He then preceded to make a variety of big, over-the-top statements, which we have quoted below:
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On the world:
“The world as a whole is fucking ugly.”
On the internet:
“The Internet as a whole is fucking ugly, too.”
On Instagram:
“I said to Kevin [Systrom, Instagram co-founder], why don’t you let us re-do Instagram? Now, you know, Instagram is nice. It’s nice-looking. I’m not knocking it… But just as a simple task, we could clean that up.”
On good taste and luxury:
“I dream to raise the taste level of a generation, and to be involved in the production and distribution of advertising, and the things everyone is calling for. My goal in everyday life is to change the idea of luxury. Time is the only luxury; [luxury] is not these brands which sell our esteem back to us.”
On bad taste and murder, for some reason:
“I believe that bad taste is vulgar. It’s like cursing. I think the world can be saved through design. Because what is the most distasteful thing someone can do? Kill someone. So, good taste is the opposite of that.”
On Apple’s deal with Beats By Dre:
“There would have been no Beats deal [with Apple] without the Samsung deal [with Jay-Z]. It showed the number one company the importance of connecting with culture.”
“I think we will see a lot more collaborations like that — and the fact Apple did it means other brands will look at people like Kanye West and say, I want you to be a piece of my company and I want you to make a difference.”
On why Kanye doesn’t like Samsung, and how much Kim turns him on:
“The reason I said I didn’t like Samsung particularly is because throughout my entire life, because of how my parents raised me, I have to work with the No. 1. I can’t work with anyone but Jay Z, because he’s No. 1. I can’t be with any girl but Kim, because that’s the girl whose pictures I look at the most and get turned on by. I’m not going to represent any company but Louis Vuitton, because that’s No. 1.”
On the Kimye backlash, and Vogue:
“Two years of people not understanding an inter-racial relationship like that; two years of people not understanding the idea of the art world meeting the pop world. You have to be able to take the lashings to be able to swim in the backlash.”
“I still take bashing from the ‘Bound’ video. But if the Vogue [cover] came out before the ‘Bound’ video, everybody would’ve been like, ‘Oh, it’s Okay’, and that’s with the [Vogue] endorsement. We hadn’t gotten the endorsement yet from something established like Vogue to make everything okay. It’s like, when we had the wedding, “Oh, great, yes, that’s cool now,” because we were told by people who endorsed it.”
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On the wedding photo that took forever:
“I’ll tell you a little story about the Kiss photo that my girl put up. This was pissing my girl off during the honeymoon. She was exhausted because we worked on the photo so much, because Annie Leibovitz pulled out of the wedding, because I think she was scared of the idea of celebrity.
“But because Annie pulled out, I was like, ‘I still want my wedding photos to look like Annie Leibovitz’s photos’, and we sat there and worked on that photo for four days – because the flowers were off-colour, and stuff like that. Can you imagine telling someone who wants to just Instagram a photo, who’s the number one person on Instagram, ‘We need to work on the colour of the flower wall’? Or the idea that it’s a Givenchy dress, and it’s not about the name Givenchy, it’s about the talent that is Riccardo Tisci and how important Kim is to the internet.
“And the fact the number one most-liked photo [on Instagram] has a kind of aesthetic was a win for what the mission is, which is raising the palette.”
On Rome, content creators, and fuck you:
“Right here, right now we have enough people with sensibilities and connections to make [the world] a more beautiful place. That is the world floating above us right now, and that’s what we can achieve.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day. The internet is our new Rome, but it’s time for the best visual artists and content creators to be inspired. Empower the best content creators, or fuck you.”
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H/t: Mumbrella, Complex, The Verge, Daily Mail