Kanye West received his Michael
Jackson Video Vanguard Award and followed it up with a speech that can
double as a rant, or a Presidential campaign speech.
Read the full speech:
"Listen to the kids. Jeremy, I gotta put it down for a second. Jeremy Scott designed it.
First
of all, thank you Taylor for being so gracious and giving me this award
this evening, thank you. And I often think back to the first day that I
met you also. You know, I think about when I'm in the grocery store
with my daughter and I have a really great conversation about fresh
juice, you know? And at the end they say, 'Oh, you're not that bad after
all.' And like, I think about it sometimes. It crosses my mind a little
bit like when I go to a baseball game and 60,000 people boo me.
It
crosses my mind a little bit. And I think if I had to do it all again,
what would I have done? Would I have worn a leather shirt? Would I have
drank a half a bottle of Hennessy and given it to the rest of the
audience? If I had a daughter at that time, would I have went onstage
and grabbed the mic from someone else's?
You
know, this arena, tomorrow, it's going to be a completely different
setup, some concert or something like that. This stage will be gone.
After that night, the stage is gone but the effect that it had on people
remained. The problem was, the contradiction is, I do fight for
artists. But in that fight, I somehow was disrespectful to artists. I
didn't know how to say the right thing, the perfect thing.
I
just, I sat at the Grammys and saw Justin Timberlake and Cee Lo lose.
Gnarls Barkley and the 'Sexyback' album... Justin, I ain't trying to put
you on blast but I saw that man in tears bro. And I was thinking like,
he deserved to win Album of the Year. And the small box that we are as
entertainers of the evening, how could you explain that? Sometimes I
feel like, you know, all this shit they run about beef and all that,
sometimes I feel like I died for the artist's opinion, for an artist to
have an opinion after they were successful. I'm not a politician bro!
And
look at that. You know how many times MTV ran that footage again
because it got them more ratings? You know how many times they announced
Taylor was presenting the award because it got more ratings? Listen to
the kids bro! I still don't understand award shows.
I
don't understand how they get five people who work their entire life,
one sold records, sold concert tickets, to come, stand on a carpet and
for the first tie in their life, be judged on a chopping block and had
the opportunity to be considered a loser. I don't understand it bro! I
don't understand what the biggest album or the biggest video... I'm
conflicted bro. I just wanted people to like me more.
But
f—k that bro! 2015. I will die for the art, for what I believe in, and
the art ain't always polite. Y'all might be thinking fright now, did he
smoke something before he came out here? The answer is yes, I rolled up a
little something. I'm not dead y'all.
I
don't know what's going to happen tonight, I don't know what's going ot
happen tomorrow bro, but all I can say to my artists, my fellow
artists, just worry about how you feel at the time. Just worry about how
you feel, and don't never...
I'm
confident. I believe in myself. We the millennials, bro. This is a new
mentality. We not gonna control our kids with brands. We not going to
teach hate to our kids. We're going to teach our kids that they can be
something, that they can believe in themselves.
If
my grandfather was here right now, he would not let me back down. I
don't know what I finna lose after this. It don't matter though, because
it' snot about me. It's about ides, bro, new ideas, people with ideas,
people who believe in truth.
And yes, as you probably could have guessed by this moment, I have decided in 2020, to run for president."
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