Playboy Interview - Kanye West

A candid conversation with the record of the year contender about his Katrina controversy, hip-hop homophobia and his addictions to porn and sex

- Rob Tannenbaum

”White people, this is your only chance to use the word p‘nigger,’” Kanye West shouts to the Theater at Madison Square Garden crowd roaring the words to p“Gold Digger,” the biggest rap hit of the past year. “Take advantage of it.”

That snapshot from West’s recent tour sums up the wit and audacity of the 28-yearold rapper and producer. The chorus of the song p“I ain’t saying she a gold digger/ But she ain’t messing with no broke niggers”—is not only as catchy as bird flu, it’s also a provocative comment about money, race and sex. A one-man smash factory who has produced songs for Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Ludacris, Talib Kweli, John Legend, Common, Cam’ron and Jay-Z, West doesn’t back down from any topic—or from the spotlight.

Last September, during NBC’s live broadcast of a benefit concert for Hurricane Katrina victims, West burst the apolitical cue-card solemnity, denouncing the media for referring to black New Orleanians as looters and alleging that the government had been slow to respond, because those in need were mostly black. His digression was full of pauses and incomplete sentences, and co-presenter Mike Myers stood by in silent panic. After Myers interjected a few

lines from the Teleprompter, West distilled his argument to its pith: p“George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” NBC instantly cut away and excised the dangerous moment from a rebroadcast later that night on the West Coast, but the clip was kept alive on the internet, where bloggers called West everything from a racist to a hero to a self-promoting profiteer.