Kanye’s ‘Ellen’ Speech Might Be The Best Thing To Happen On A Talk Show In Years

Soliciting Mark Zuckerberg for millions of dollars over dinner. Selling bone density machines. Ending bullying. Steve McQueen. Barriers for people of colour in Hollywood. Michael Jackson. The ultimate inconsequence of our limited time on this earth. These are just some of the topics covered in Kanye West’s sprawling eight-minute speech delivered on Ellen in response to a question about his Twitter. It was occasionally delivered via a cappella rap.

It’s extremely important that you take some time out of your morning to enjoy it in its entirety:

Though the segment’s been widely derided as “a crazy rant”, a great deal of Kanye’s words were devoted to challenging those perceptions of him. At one point he even referred to himself as “whacko Kanye” and got riled up to the point he was one step away from jumping on the couch.

“People write ‘Kanye’s pissing everybody off, Kanye’s being so mad’,” he said. “They try to position it through the media in some way that I’m like [crazy]. But I care about people. My dad lived in homeless shelters less than five years ago — to find out [to help former drug addicts]; he’s a psych major. My mum is the first black chair of the English department at Chicago university. I was raised to do something; to make a difference.”

“It’s funny — I sit there with Obama, and Leo’s talking about the environment, and everyone looks at me like ‘[fashion is] not an important issue’. But I remember going to school in fifth grade and wanting to have a cool outfit. I called the head of Payless and said ‘I want to work with you’. I want to take all this information that I learned from sitting at all these fashion shows and knocking on all these doors and buying expensive clothes, and I want to take away bullying.”

“We got 100 years here, we one race, the human race. One civilisation. We’re a blip in the civilisation of the universe, and we’re constantly trying to pull each other down. Not doing things to help each other. That’s my point. It’s like… I’m shaking talking about it, I know it’s daytime TV but I feel like I can make a difference while I’m here. I feel that I can make things better through my skillset. I’m an artist.”

Kanye rounded out the (non-)interview, with an apology. “Isn’t that so funny: when people point fingers at the people who have influenced it the most. They talk the most shit about the people who cared the most. I’m sorry daytime television. I’m sorry for the realness.”

Judging from Ellen’s words, it wasn’t necessary:

I never know what my friend @KanyeWest is going to say or do on my show, but I always love it when he’s here.

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) May 19, 2016

But her face was telling a different story:

Then, after this impromptu deep dive into the nature of artistic success, discrimination, hardship and our own mortality, Kanye joined Ellen for a buzzer game in which he yelled “balls balls balls”. TV is weird.