10 Takeaways From Kanye West's Conversation With Joe Rogan - Billboard

Kanye West talked for nearly three hours straight -- circling around topics like his relationships with God and the music industry, his presidential run, and his takes on abortion, medication and racism -- on the latest episode of Joe Rogan's podcast.

I don't think in the black-and-white lines that I've been programmed to think in.

He's prioritizing his relationship with God over the music industry: "When I made Sunday Service, I completely stopped rapping, because I don't know how to rap for God.

When I went to the hospital in 2016, I wrote, 'Started church in Calabasas.' As we left from 2018 going into 2019, I said, ;I'm not going to let one Sunday go by without starting this church.; To start a ministry, I'm like the little drummer boy, where I'm saying, 'This is all I got to bring, my drum.' I might not be well versed in the Word, but I know how to make music and I know how to put this choir together.

I was tired of serving the music industry, tired of serving filling up stadiums.".

He "feels bad" listening to his own discography: "There's only a billion people on the internet.

You never think about that.

There's 7 to 8 billion people on earth, but then there's only a billion people that are influenced and on the internet.

It's only like 15, 16, 18 percent of human beings.

for us to survive, we have to make more human beings.

We don't have to have music.

He aired his thoughts on racism in America: "Most Black people, we don't know where we came from.

We don't know our bloodline.

We're given Black History Month and we take that like it's some gift to us.

Racism doesn't end until we get to a point where we stop having to put the word 'Black' in front of it, because it's like we're putting the rim a little bit lower for ourselves ...

Some people didn't know what I was crying about.

More Black children since February than people have died of COVID.

I had the virus, and I was sitting, quarantined in my house, and my cousin texted me about being prepared to run for president.

I don't think it was that bad -- I think it was a mild case.

I knew at the end, I was going to tell people I'm running for president in 2020?

"I had different friends -- some people in the music industry, some tech elites -- and they took it as a joke?

I remember running into Oprah two days or one day after that, and she [said], 'You don't want to be president.' One of my responses to the naysayers was, 'I'll definitely be a billionaire by that time.' Not that that's a reason why someone should be president...

He called out critics of his decision to run for president in 2020: "One of the most racist things that liberals who pride themselves on not being racist have said to me is, 'You're gonna split the Black vote.

And that makes it seem like Black people can't make decisions ourselves and that don't no white people know me.

[They're saying] that only Black people will vote for me.

"I know that me as president would be the best thing that would ever happen for America's foreign policy

I've traveled more than any president already, and I bring people together

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