The 5 Best Quotes From Kanye’s ‘Shoe Of The Year’ Awards Speech

Kanye was all smiles last night as he accepted the Shoe Of The Year award for his Yeezy Boost. What he called his “new style of speeches”—“it’s unorthodox, it’s vibes”—is pleasantly off-the-cuff, a mixture of humor, earnest stories about hard work, and inspirational nuggets. The star discussed his time working on designs in the period between 808s & Heartbreak and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. “I remember always going back to the fashion shows,” he explained. “Not because I wanted to be seen in some really expensive rapper jacket that I just bought, [but] because I cared so much about seeing the artists express themselves to the maximum.” Watch his full speech here, and check out the five best quotes below.

- “It’s cool to be up here with the three people I’ve screamed at the most in the past year.”

- “I have absolutely no plans for what I’m going to say, so this could land completely wrong. But it doesn’t really fucking matter, doesn’t it? Cause if you don’t like ten minute profanity-ridden speeches that end with a presidential bid, you can go to the bathroom.”

- “As a creative, it doesn’t matter how big a house is, how big your name is, how much money you have. Your job is to create while you’re here. And if anything gets in the way of that, if anything is stopping that or slowing it down, you gotta burn it to the fucking ground.”

- “The talent budget was $500,000, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to put together a design team with that. Luckily I was a multi-millionaire rapper and I covered the rest of it.”

- “Raise your hand if you’ve got a private plane!... so many people just end up being the face of something, just doing a one-off commercial. The guys that hired them got the private jet! And I want to be one of those guys. I’m going to be one of those guys.”

Revisit Kanye's FADER interview.