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Kanye West has a storied history with the Ellen show. Having debuted the “Net” Yeezy 1 along with the “Love Lockdown” video years ago, the artist/designer has continually stopped by her set to share both his work and what’s going on in his life.
Set to air today, Pitchfork was able to acquire preview footage from the new Ellen episode. Aside from debuting the Spike Jonze-direct “Only One” video and getting laced with a few bars from MC Degeneres, Kanye spoke on his new sound and his partnership with adidas, particularly pertaining to his frustration before having a fashion deal. West had the following to say:
“I think I was going through my version of my terrible twos [Laughs]. My daughter, she wants to express herself but she just doesn’t have the words for it. For me, there’s so many things that I want to do with film, with clothing, and I just didn’t have the words, or the resources or the backing or the perception that I could do it being that I was a rapper…you know, all these things. Now because of this adidas deal, they’ve allowed me a little bit of oxygen. When people give you about celebrity and the idea of money versus creativity, there’s no amount of money that someone can give you to make you not be creative if you were born to create. So, a lot of times people try to block you, block your creativity, control you with money. adidas allowed me to make my whole clothing line which I wanted to do and it was just like a little bit of oxygen. You guys last year, two years ago, three years ago, whatever, were seeing somebody being suffocated by a perception, being suffocated by people in a position that could blatantly see, ‘Wow, the Yeezys did really good, he was this influential, all these albums did this, but we’re not going to give him a shot because of something else.’ There’s a lot of people who were really calm about that, but the definition of crazy is trying to do the same thing and expecting a different result. So, I tried something different over the past couple of years, and I actually got some really good results from it, too.”
The oxygen analogy goes in line with West’s words at the adidas Global Brand Conference in Germany last summer, representing his passion to create. From the sounds of it too, it appears that West’s desire to do Disney-esque work and to create on a variety of platforms is still very much there. While we still haven’t received an official look at the adidas Yeezi or gotten a corresponding release date, it does sound like Kanye will have apparel to go with it. Keep it locked to Snkrs Day for more adidas Yeezi news and updates.
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