Kanye West sat down for one of the most anticipated interviews of the year on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where he explained why he’s got a “calling to be the leader of the free world.”
Kanye West is most known for being a famous rapper and entrepreneur, but the musician is also a top-level fashion designer, architect, and, of course, a 2020 presidential candidate.
While he first announced his political ambitions at the 2015 MTV Awards, West has now revealed that it actually started while he was in deep thought during a shower.
“It hit me in the shower, and when I first thought of it I just started like, laughing to myself,” Kanye said. “Some people in the music industry, some tech elites, they just took it as a joke. I remember running into Oprah like two days after that and she’s like ‘you don’t want to be president.’”
Timestamp at 3:59 for mobile viewers.
According to the rapper, despite Oprah’s doubts, the outcome of the 2016 United States presidential election further encouraged him to pursue the highest office in the land as a political outsider.
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“I believe that my calling is to be the leader of the free world,” Kanye told Rogan, dead serious. “If it’s in God’s plan that part of my path is to be the governor [of California] first, then that’s fine, but my calling is to be the leader of the free world.”
Rogan was definitely intrigued by what Ye referred to as his “calling,” but thoroughly questioned what the star would really change or be different than politicians before him.
“So when you say this, when you say your calling is to be the leader of the free world, what does that mean to you?” the host replied. “What would be different about the way you would handle things if that’s your plan, why is that your calling? Like, what would you do as the leader of the free world?”
“There couldn’t be a better time to put a visionary in the captain’s chair,” Kanye argued back, in one of his more memorable quotes from the show. “I manifest, I see things, I’m a great leader because I listen, and I’m empathetic, I feel the entire Earth, and I feel us as a species, as the human race.”
The interview is a marathon at just under three hours long all stemming from this initial exchange, so if you want to hear the Yeezy founder talk all about his plans, ideas, and visions for the future, all along with what he would do as the leader of the free world, there is plenty here to go off of.
After initially canceling the interview because a member of his staff fell ill, Rogan and West managed to reschedule and it’s a good thing they did because after watching this, it definitely feels like we’ve been granted a very rare look inside the mind of Kanye like never before.