Kanye West Details Future Creative Plans: "It's Time To Design Cities"

It's 2020 & the vision has never been clearer.

BYAron A.
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Kanye West has been shifting the culture through music and fashion but there's more that he would like to do. In an interview with LALA magazine for a cover story titled The Legacy Of Kanye West, the multi-hyphenate detailed his legacy and where we should expect it to go, especially when it pertains to fashion.

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"I love merch, but we did merch as a punk answer to us being told we can’t work at Louis Vuitton, Versace, Nike," he said in an excerpt obtained by Complex. "Merch started as one of the only things we could control. When we did our first fashion show, in crocodile and all these exotic fabrics, there was just a block, like, ‘No, you can’t get in. No, you can’t be involved with this.’ Somehow, I actually had to go back and start with a T-shirt."

As visual aesthetic plays a major factor in everything Kanye does, he explained how designing t-shirts and clothes applies to a larger creative vision that he has in mind for the future. "I think we can break the class system," West said. "This sweatshirt is the blank that we used for merch. In the setting, it feels very elegant, but it’s a very simple cut design—all of the energy and ingenuity. It’s so much time that went into finding the simplest version... That’s what artists do; they take everything that’s happening in life and sometimes encapsulate it into an hour and a half of Eddie Murphy on stage, or Dave Chappelle, or 16 bars inside of a verse, or the cut of a sweatshirt or a boot."

Along with that, he said his concept homes powered by water and wind are "very close" to being available to the public. “I didn’t come in to make merch. I came in to make operas,” he said. “That’s no knock to merch and no knock to T-shirts, but now it’s time to change the architecture. It’s time to design cities.” 

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About The Author
Aron A. is a features editor for HotNewHipHop. Beginning his tenure at HotNewHipHop in July 2017, he has comprehensively documented the biggest stories in the culture over the past few years. Throughout his time, Aron’s helped introduce a number of buzzing up-and-coming artists to our audience, identifying regional trends and highlighting hip-hop from across the globe. As a Canadian-based music journalist, he has also made a concerted effort to put spotlights on artists hailing from North of the border as part of Rise & Grind, the weekly interview series that he created and launched in 2021. Aron also broke a number of stories through his extensive interviews with beloved figures in the culture. These include industry vets (Quality Control co-founder Kevin "Coach K" Lee, Wayno Clark), definitive producers (DJ Paul, Hit-Boy, Zaytoven), cultural disruptors (Soulja Boy), lyrical heavyweights (Pusha T, Styles P, Danny Brown), cultural pioneers (Dapper Dan, Big Daddy Kane), and the next generation of stars (Lil Durk, Latto, Fivio Foreign, Denzel Curry). Aron also penned cover stories with the likes of Rick Ross, Central Cee, Moneybagg Yo, Vince Staples, and Bobby Shmurda.