Watch Kanye West Talk ‘Ye,’ Mental Health in New Interview
Kanye West talked about his new album Ye, his mental health and the meaning of the album title during a video interview conducted at the rapper’s star-studded Wyoming listening party.
“I wanted something with the energy the universe was giving me,” West told Big Boy TV of Ye.
“I think it came from me just going against mass opinion and I was able to find my voice, my voice… I just had to stand in front of that board every morning and ask myself, ‘Do these songs truly make me happy? Are these songs I want to play back? Do these songs make me cry?'”
West said that he overhauled the album following his controversial slavery comments to TMZ. “We just sat there and really honed in on the words,” he said. “Also, we know now, it’s all headlines… Every bar can be used… I took a bar off the album. It was just too sensitive about that topic and stuff.”
West added of the album title, “I believe ‘ye’ is the most commonly used word in the Bible, and in the Bible it means ‘you,'” West said of the album’s title. “So I’m you, I’m us, it’s us. It went from Kanye, which means ‘the only one,’ to just Ye – just being a reflection of our good, our bad, our confused, everything. The album is more of a reflection of who we are.”
As for West’s decision to give every album coming out of the Wyoming recording sessions seven tracks, like Ye and Pusha-T’s Daytona, West called seven “the God number.” “I went to Michael Jackson’s archive and he had these jackets that said ‘7-7-7’ on them. It just felt complete,” the rapper said.
West briefly touched on his mental health, revealing that he was diagnosed as bipolar at the age of 40. “I’m so blessed and so privileged because think about people that have mental issues that are not Kanye West, that can’t go and make that [album] and make you feel like it’s all good,” West said. “I’ve never been diagnosed [with a mental condition] and I was like 39 years old… That’s why I said on the album, ‘It’s not a disability, it’s a superpower.'”