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Kanye West Explains His Beef With Corporate America

Rapper says he's not respected as an inventor.

In Part 1 of Kanye West's interview with the BBC's Zane Lowe, the 36-year-old rapper/creative said he's reaching glass ceilings that Michael Jackson never reached and he described his Yeezus album as the vessel for his "frustration." In Part 2 of the sit-down, which dropped on the Internet last night (Sept. 24), 'Ye breaks down his issue with corporate America.

"I make music, I can do it, but I shouldn't only be limited to one place of creativity," West said of the restrictions some apply to his creative ability.

"What people don't realize is, I want to make uniforms for my high school basketball team through brand Yeezy," 'Ye explained. "I want to make that one step, and then make another step ... And I eventually want to be the anchor of the first trillion-dollar company."

Setting soaring goals north of the norm is not unusual for Kanye, but he feels like there are forces working against him here. The "New Slaves" rapper described one instance when his innovative genius came to life on the Watch the Throne tour set that he designed with Es Devlin, but he was never given proper credit for his invention.

"I thought of surround vision there should be a screen above you, below you, to the left, to the right, and in front of you also."

Kanye said he personally funded the construction of the state-of-the-art set, which helped the tour gross $48 million during its North America run.

"I paid my own money that I got from doing 'Gold Digger,' which I never really liked that song, but I always knew I would get paid for doing 'Gold Digger.'

Yeezy went on to describe how he showed the design to industry insiders and he told the New York Times about it during an interview. But, "it doesn't get mentioned in the interview, and a week later, they did an interview with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and they're talking about what the next frontier of theater will be and how there will be higher priced tickets and it will be something that's surrounding, maybe goggles ... and I said, wait a second, I just only did the interview to tell people that I [already] invented it, I made it."

The prejudice he's encountering now due to his worldwide celebrity, Kanye describes as "classism. It's racism's cousin. This is what we do to hold people back. This is what we do."

Unwilling to fall into the box that he believes society wants him in, 'Ye further explained why he made the song, "I Am a God."

"We got this other thing that's also been working for a long time when you don't have to be racist anymore. It's called 'self-hate.' It works on itself. It's like real estate of racism. Where just like that, when someone comes up and says something like, 'I am a god,' everybody says 'Who does he think he is?' I just told you who I thought I was. A god. I just told you. That’s who I think I am. Would it have been better if I had a song that said, 'I am a n---a,' or if I had a song that said, 'I'm a gangster' or if I had a song that said 'I am a pimp'?"

"All those colors and patinas fit better on a person like me, right? But to say you are a god, especially when you got shipped over to the country that you're in, and your last name is a slave owner's. How could you say that? How could you have that mentality?"

The interview continues with Part 3 and 4, in which Kanye talks about Kim Kardashian, Jay Z and touring with Kendrick Lamar

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(photo: Courtesy BBC Radio)

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