Rap Star Kanye West expressed his gratitude towards Pharell for their long friendship in a phone interview.
“I think one of the things that you, Pharrell, inspired in me was this fearlessness to break the mould. You’re the inspiration. Before I wore a pink polo you were wearing a pink polo. That lineage is mapped out and proven, and you can go from then all the way up to the moment we have in culture now. You broke down the doors in fashion for us.”
The two musicians and longtime comrade have talked over the phone about their music achievements and career, the importance of Virginia to modern Black music, and American manufacturing and its essentiality.
Indeed, the distance was never a problem that Kanye was calling from Wyoming, and Pharrell was somewhere in Miami, each practicing social distancing, they both shared their experiences during the coronavirus pandemic.
“This is a plague we’re living through at the moment. I don’t think there will be such a thing as a new normal – it doesn’t do enough justice to the difference in who we were pre-pandemic and who we will be moving forward,” Pharrell said. “Life’s going to have a different kind of gravity than it’s ever had before. It’s also gonna make us really separated… But we have been through many plagues before. We have been through pandemics. We survived. We’re gonna make it. In a lot of ways we got ourselves into this, we gotta get to work to get through it.”
“We need to understand humanity as one species. We need to change our mentality, readjust our mindset and use that readjusted mindset to change the world,” Kanye added.
Kanye West made it to the headlines by donating $2 million USD to various charitable causes and paid for George Floyd’s daughter’s college tuition. After the noises he have done in the media, West joined protesters in his hometown, marching for reforms to both city police and the public schools in Chicago. West is also working on the follow-up to Jesus Is King tentatively titled God’s Country. Back in April, he spoke with GQ about architecture, sustainability, and his fervent support of current President Donald Trump.
On the phone call, they have also discussed the big cultural impact and the music evolution of Michael Jackson and how he feels like the media has plotted to tear him, and other Black cultural figures, down in a similar way over the years. “In a way [Pharrell]‘s very similar to Michael Jackson, in the ways where Michael Jackson was doing covert, super gangsta stuff, like he’d just pop the needles off. He kissed Elvis Presley’s daughter on MTV. Black culture used to be… we used to be fronting all night, but Michael was doing stuff that was different from what we were programmed to understand as being what we should do. He bought The Beatles’ back catalog.”
Kanye continued, “We should have something that says we can’t allow any company to tear down our heroes. Not on The Shade Room, not on social media and especially not in documentaries. I’m like every time the media isn’t happy with me it’s like, ‘Here they go. They’re gonna come and Wacko Jacko me.’ Which in some ways, they’ve tried to do.”
The rap star really wants to help and he plans continual plan to build homeless shelters, which he’s currently workshopping in Wyoming, the emergence of the Age of Aquarius, and more. “Faith is not about what you see, faith is not about what you hear. Faith is about what you feel, and mankind is absolutely in a place and in a state of feeling more than it ever has been before,” Pharrell said.
