Kanye West has a really, really long interview with Style.com this week, all about his collaboration with Adidas and his NYFW show last week. This is what bugs me about Kanye: he’s taken seriously within the fashion community, but he always acts like the world is against him. He has a massive martyr complex about everything, even when Anna Wintour is sitting right there, supporting his every move. Even when he gets a prime NYFW slot and he gets to work with some of the most experienced people in fashion, even when money is no object, Kanye is still positioning himself as an underdog. You can read the full Style.com piece here (it’s SO MUCH Kanye) and here are a handful of highlights:

He doesn’t read reviews: “I don’t read the reviews, because it’s some kind of backhanded compliment or something focusing on not the main point. It was really difficult to do this. It would be difficult to make a proposition this simple for any designer. So many people told me that it had to have logos or it had to have this, but I fought for exactly what I wanted in my closet. I fought for what was true to me … There are a lot of kids in the streets that have waited for someone to speak for them and what they’re doing and for them to connect with it directly. And that’s what I’m here to do. Just as the last photo showed you, I’ve got an army behind me, so unless the reviewer is recognizing the army, they’re not recognizing the tank coming. I mean, I don’t know if people felt this, but it’s too late. Like the Drake album says, if you’re reading this, it’s already too late. If you’re seeing this, it’s already too late.

The best red carpet look of all time? “I believe the category of ready-to-wear should be removed. I’m biased, but I think the best red-carpet look of all time—if not, one of the top five—was my wife’s look at the Grammys. You know what [Jean Paul Gaultier] just did. He said, “F–k the sh-t. I’m making real sh-t. I’m doing perfume and couture.” And by focusing on that, he delivered … I just think for me as a person that dresses the most photographed person in the world, I get bored with ready-to-wear really easily. Here’s this glamorous being, this modern-day Helmut Newton girl, and you just get this “mid” thing. I just feel like we’ve been hit with this barrage of extreme medium. And you never go and ask, “Hey, can I get an extreme medium?”

Kim is always his muse: “She was always my muse, now she’s become other designers’ muses. Or designers’ muses, because like I said, I don’t want to disrespect designers by calling myself a designer, I just think I have a vision of something that I want to do. But God has a special way to teach people through life. I guess I got a little more credit for my second collection than my first, for whatever that is worth. But soon as we started dating, fashion people were really opposed to the idea of reality stars. And all the relationships, the somewhat friends that I had somewhat built up, completely turned their backs on her and me. They already had their back to her, and now they turned it to me. The so-called traction that I was getting in the high-fashion world was completely thrown out the window and I was finally allowed to go to school, where every day I was in my mom [Kris Jenner]’s house, in my little brother’s old room, Rob’s old room, re-tailoring a Céline skirt, re-tailoring a Saint Laurent jacket, re-tailoring a Zara top, re-tailoring Wolford … And day by day by day, [Kim and I] learned, we got better. We looked at the photographs together and she improved my style, we improved each other.

Whether the NYFW audience was on his side: “This audience isn’t on my side, anyways. It’s the fashion audience. They’re not even on their own side.”

Chic: “I dislike the concept of chic being the highest compliment for a human being. I’d rather someone be nice than to be chic.”

The realization: “And I realized that it had all been a scam, that it had all been smoke and mirrors to present this concept that a straight black guy out of Chicago that’s a rapper, that’s married to a reality star, could somehow not design a coat, that can’t design a T-shirt, that can’t have enough of an opinion. You know, it’s like voting. Fashion is merely an opinion. And I’ve got a lot of opinions.

Racism: “Racism and the focus on racism is a distraction to humanity. It would be like focusing on the cousin from your mom’s side versus the cousin on your dad’s side. We’re all cousins. We’re all the same race. To even focus on the concept of race, it’s like—perhaps people give me an extra cookie for the fact that my color palette is so controlled and I’m black. When someone that’s like, racist, comes up to me at A.P.C. and says, “I thought it would be a bunch of animals on your shirts,” because they heard that I rapped. But it just makes the journey interesting. We came into a broken world. And we’re the cleanup crew. And we’re only cleaning up by helping each other.

[From Style.com]

Kanye actually makes several stabs at humility throughout the piece, although I have to admit, by “Chapter 3” of this interview, I did stop reading. The biggest headlines are about his “muse” Kim Kardashian and how he calls Kris Jenner his mom and all of that, but if you have a good 20-30 minutes, I would suggest reading the whole interview in depth. It’s a whole lotta Yeezy, but he’s always interesting. You don’t have to agree with him, you can laugh about what he says about fashion and Kim and art, but he IS interesting.

Photos courtesy of WENN.