If it seemed like Kanye West has spent the better part of the last few months with his head down working on the follow-up to Yeezus, this past weekend served as a potent reminder that the man still loves to preach. While filling in for Drake at London’s Wireless Festival, NME reports, Yeezy paused during his performance of “Runaway” for one of his now-patented speeches, this time directed at what he perceives to be racism in the fashion industry.
After briefly talking about how he can’t be controlled by the media—at the 4:30 mark in the above video—he launches into the usual self-motivational fare (“as far as I’m concerned everybody is a star”), but it isn’t until he takes aim at fashion houses that the speech becomes terribly substantive.
“I’m not going to call no names, I’m not going to say Nike or anything,” West begins around the nine-and-a-half-minute mark. “I’m not dissing Louis Vuitton, I’m not dissing the Gucci group and shit. I’m just saying, don’t discriminate against me because I’m a black man, or because I’m a celebrity, to determine that I can’t create. You know, no black guy or celebrity’s making no Louis Vuitton nothing.”
If only because of the auto-tune that underpins the whole speech, the tone doesn’t seem terribly vicious. As he says before starting in on the meat of the discussion, it’s just “about [his] dreams.”
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You can watch the whole 15-minute address above wherein he also claims to invent the word “dishumanize.”
