Entertainment

All Kanye Needs Is God, Alcohol, And...

by Ivy Jacobson

Perhaps Taylor Swift had an extra-rustic tea party with the gals to get over Kanye West interrupting her during her 2009 MTV VMA acceptance speech. She's also used humor — and homemade jam for Ed Sheeran — to cope with her true feelings about the incident. However, the world's greatest gift from God one-upped her Mason jar of feelings in Interview's Feb. 2014 issue, where Kanye West has a lengthy conversation with Steve McQueen, the 12 Years A Slave director, and says that all he needed to get over the hullabaloo was simple — the Lord, booze, and "a lot of sex."

McQueen asked how West "mentally, physically, and spiritually" dealt with all of the negativity and fallout from the press after he yanked the mic from Swift onstage and said that Beyonce's video deserved to win instead.

West replied:

It's funny that you would say "mentally, physically, spiritually" because my answer before you even said that was going to be "god, sex, and alcohol." ... I don't have an addictive personality, so that means that I can lean on what might be someone else's vice just enough to make it through to the next day. You know, just enough religion, a half-cup of alcohol with some ice in it and a nice chaser, and then ... a lot of sex.

West, ever the shrinking violet, also informed readers that if they were confused by his elaborate masks he wore during his Yeezus tour or didn't really get the concept of Kim Kardashian naked on a motorcycle in his "Bound 2" video, the joke is really on them.

Well, I'm a trained fine artist. I went to art school from the time I was 5 years old. I was, like, a prodigy out of Chicago. I'd been in national competitions from the age of 14. I got three scholarships to art schools—to St. Xavier, to the American Academy of Art, and to the Art Institute of Chicago—and I went to the American Academy of Art. So the joke that I've actually played on everyone is that the entire time, I've actually just been a fine artist.

McQueen additionally asked West if he's ever lonely as a musician.

Well, I've got my astronaut family. You know, becoming famous is like being catapulted into space—sometimes without a space suit.

You do you, Kanye, you do you.