Kanye West is featured in the October issue of XXL magazine. In addition to gracing the cover wearing his signature heavy chain, Kanye penned his very first article for the magazine and was the creative director of a 40 page section of the special collector’s issue. In his article “The Exclusive Story by the Man Himself” Kanye sheds light on the publicisized and highly critisized Taylor Swift incident from last year’s MTV VMAs. Popeater managed to pluck out some choice quotes from the article.
“I stress that the incident wasn’t about Taylor personally. And it definitely wasn’t about race. Where I messed up is, at the end of the day, it’s your show, Taylor. It’s your show, MTV.”
“The relationship with the public and with your fans is like the relationship with your girlfriend. How could I not, at a certain point, be like, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been at the awards show. I’m sorry.’ Not that I don’t deserve to get beat up or change who I am inside, to make sure that that doesn’t happen again.”
“I knew I wasn’t in a great spot publicly after the incident, but I would just block it out and work as hard as possible and let my work be my saving grace. In a way, I had thrown a Molotov cocktail at my own career, and it gave me an opportunity, for the first time, to go away and find out who I was. Because I felt very alone.”
Ohh, dark stuff huh? You can pick up the October issue of XXL on September 28. The zine also includes stoires on Kid Cudi, Kanye’s G.O.O.D. Music label, and the top 10 producers-turned-rappers of all time.