Kanye West Clarifies Fight Against Record Companies

So I met with this gentleman, Sam, one of the founders of Y Combinator. So Y Combinator is a contract that my friend, the head of Dropbox, used and that a lot of tech guys use. And it's a standardized deal. So one of the ideas I had when I was in this process of innovating, I'm not in war with the music industry, it's just it's time for us to innovate. And we need to have contracts that make sense with exactly how we sell music. So you know, people, every vicinity, and that's like every 20 years, that's like the like decade is 10, vicinity is 20. And as you see now, it's like the world has just stopped for a second. And there's an opportunity to look and say, what are the things we need? What are the things we don't need? So I don't know if you saw when I posted my contract, I had 10 contracts that kept on putting me inside a labyrinth. And there's things that we don't need. Now I believe that the distribution partner that the label is like Prince would go and say, oh, we don't need the distribution part, especially if Prince was, you know, really alive and thriving in this internet era. I'm the kind of person where I'm not trying to go and eliminate anyone's job. So record labels are afraid of saying, okay, we're going to hand over the distribution completely to you guys, which is, you know, that's a possibility. There's a way where both parties can be happy, and that these infrastructural partners can be of service to the influencer, to the artist. Like these deals can be flipped in a way that they're just more fair. You know, a record, and I just, let me just go into this specific place with the record labels for a second. I know I'm talking about that. Because it's a confusing thing for people on the outside. Yeah. Before, when I told my father I wanted to rap, he was very like leery of that idea. He said, I heard this business is terrible. And you know, he's right. Like people are all seeing things that are wrong inside of contracts, turning blind eyes to it, and everyone's responsible. Everyone's a part of it. You know, it's like when the Me Too movement happened, you know, it wasn't just the guys that were getting tagged. And you know, some of the guys should have got hit with it. Some guys shouldn't, you know, that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm saying that in a way, everyone's responsible. Everyone's a part of the problem. That's why I really love that Black Mirror episode when, you know, everyone was making comments. And anyone that even made a comment, the bees, it was about these, you know, mechanical bees anyone and this is a spoiler alert if you haven't seen this episode, but anyone who made a comment, the bees came to go get them. And that's the thing about what you put in the universe, even a thought, you know, you put that thought into the, it's another thing to say something negative and put that into the universe is another thing to see someone being raped. You know, that's the reason why I compare what's happening to in the music industry to Me Too, because artists are raped. You've heard that term before. I'm not, this is not like a new thing that I'm making up. The contracts are made to rape the artist. And you know, I put my, like, I think about, you know, this is like a thought right now. It's like, is this a negative thought that I'm putting into the universe? But I have to say, like, when I was going on Twitter, I was thinking about Bruce and Brandon Lee. That crossed my mind to say, I'm, this is Sony, this is universal. And I'm willing to put the blue paint on my face and go out and do this because it's the right thing to do. Like music, like at this point, it loses me money. It doesn't make, it doesn't make me money. Because my $5 billion net worth and $300 million of cash that I see a year, music is like negative $4 million for me. So these contracts for me were kind of like Wang Gros and Heat, where this guy had everything, but he still said, Wang Gros messed up this, this, this heist that we're going to do. Like I look at the music industry, not music and the love of music itself, but the music industry. I look at it like Wang Gros, like I blame, you know, the loss of my mother, partially on the entertainment industry, the always fighting to, you know, represent, you know, who you are against media, entertainment industry that's trying to tear down anybody that's not going with the flow. I see, you know, I've got those kind of reasons personally, but vengeance is mindset, the Lord. So it's not a matter of going in for revenge. That's just me as a human being where I fall short. Like I'm not a monk. Can you explain what you're talking about with Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee? Like what, I lost you there. Okay. So Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee were both murdered. Well Brandon Lee died in an accident on a movie set. Yeah. Do you think it was a murder? That's a conspiracy, right? The conspiracy was that the Chinese Triad killed him the same way they killed Bruce. But the coroner's report was that Bruce died from a reaction to a medication, right? Yeah. I mean, but I think about that anytime I go to the hospital. I'm very, you know, I'm mindful of that stuff. You think about like Bob Marley, they didn't just JFK or MLK him. His like reports that it was something in his toe or... He had cancer, right? I believe he had a skin cancer. Yeah. Like I went to go, I got a shot in my hand because just from texting and stuff, my thumb was like hurt. And then I posted... You text so much you hurt your thumb? Absolutely. Just text them way too much. So I post a picture of the screen at the hospital and then I was asked to take it down. By who? People just call him. I forget exactly who asked me, but it was like they got to my management, they got to this and he said, take that picture down. Like the hospital, it was in the weirdest place. You know, so... What did they not like about the picture? I think it had like, it might've had some information on it that they didn't want to go out, like an address or something like that. And it's just like, but I don't want to go down these rabbit holes. I'm just saying like Michael Jackson, Nat waking up one day, Prince, Nat waking up one day, Bruce and Brandon Lee, Bob Marley, all of these things have crossed my mind, you know, as I'm going and saying, I need to innovate what these contracts are. Not just for me, but for all artists. It's not about me getting my masters back. It's about freedom. And I say on a new song, I say, if I would put myself in harm's way to get my masters, they would put their self in harm's way to stay the master. And that's, there's a complete parallel to the way the music industry works and the way the world currently works. And the influence that America has on other countries and the way governments work, the influence and the way government and the way people in power and control deal with, you know, disaster relief deal deal with Haiti deal with the Bahamas. Like where is the money going? Why aren't things being built and this concept of money, right? I asked myself this, I asked someone a week ago, like how much is America in debt? And they were like this many trillion. And then I asked my rhetorical question, but the dumbest question I've ever asked myself, I said, well, you know, how much does the earth cost? Think of it. Think about a bad question. But how much is the earth worth? Yeah. All the things on earth. Yeah. And it's saying we can't buy it. We couldn't make enough money to buy the earth. Right. So that means we made money. So if money is the key to all people's happiness and we'll solve everything and everyone's doing things for money, let's just make more money. But it's not about making more money. It's about keeping poor people poor and rich people rich and keep them keep keeping people in their place. And right now we're experiencing the fall of Rome or the Titanic has now hit a glacier. And there's people who would prefer to go down with the Titanic than to get on a lifeboat because they don't want to get seawater on their dress or on a nice outfit. People are so programmed and brainwashed into classism and protectionism that it's difficult for people to embrace innovation unless it has a tag on it. It's got a name brand connected to it that says with this innovation, you will be better than the person you'll be better than your next door neighbor. 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