I don’t write self-help books!

 

Kanye West has said his music video for Bound 2 was only accepted after he and wife Kim Kardashian appeared on the cover of Vogue.

The 37-year-old revealed he believes it was the endorsement of the fashion magazine which enabled the couple to be ‘understood’.

However, he claims that this only came after ‘two years of people not understanding an interracial relationship.’

Kanye opened up about the struggles he had come up against during the Cannes Lions festival - the biggest advertising festival in the world on Tuesday.

When asked about the topic, Kanye began cautiously saying: ‘I don’t write self-help books or anything like that.’

After laughter in the auditorium had calmed down he continued: ‘You have to be able to take the lashes when people don’t understand.

‘Two years of people not understanding an interracial relationship, two years of people not understanding the idea of the art world meets the pop world, you have to take the lash and be able to swim in the backlash.’

Addressing the battle he comes up against in terms of his creativity over a number of mediums, he said: ‘A lot of times I think I get a bad rap for saying “I can do this, I can do this”.

‘It’s like we are the creative with teeth, we have the gut feeling that we know that the idea is more important than our personal well-being.

‘So a lot of times I will say things that are not for my personal well-being which I think for people to create for their personal well-being is a selfish thing to do and you’re creating to make your life better rather than everyone else’s life better.

‘I get bashed so much but create so much, just know that if you want to be a boxer you’re going to get your face beaten constantly but then you may end up being a Mayweather or an Ali at the end of the day.’

He went on to discuss his now infamous video for Bound 2, which features his wife sitting topless on his lap while he rides a motorbike.

‘I still take a bashing for the Bound video. I always say that if Vogue had come out before the Bound video then everyone would have been like “oh it’s OK” and that’s the endorsement,’ he shared.

‘It took something established like Vogue to make everything OK and we had to wait. Like we had the wedding and then they were like "that’s cool now” because we were told by people who endorsed it.’

The father-of-one added: ‘I couldn’t have rapped if Jay Z didn’t endorse me, Eminem wouldn’t have been successful if Dr Dre hadn’t endorsed him.’

When asked if he thought whether or not hip hop was the first genre of music to endorse selling products, he agreed: ‘Yeah, because black people are allowed to wear big chains and name what they have on, and say out loud what stuff costs.’