Kanye West Gave a Cool Speech on Creativity and Kim Dating Black Men

Kanye West, a visionary, received the Visionary Award during a taping for the 2015 BET Honors on Saturday. He used this forum to address black artistry, racism and, uh, what it means to be married to a white woman.

Any opportunity for Kanye West to grace a public stage is a great one. But first, let’s talk about Dame Dash. He was there to present his longtime compadre with the Visionary Award. Reports state that a toothless Dash gave a seemingly tipsy, asshole-ish introduction that sounds more like a roast to me. Aka like Dame Dash:

Jay Z was ~~too tired to attend~~ there only in spirit, as part of a recorded video tribute. In his own speech, West spoke on the apparent stigma of dating Kim Kardashian, alluding to his “Gold Digger” jab about newly rich black dudes seeking trophy white women.

Yeezy speaks:

“It was interesting or groundbreaking and really special for me to see [Minister Louis Farrakhan]’s reaction and his expression about my relationship with the woman not of color. And for us to focus on the idea of love and not the idea of separation.

“At the barbershop… I used to hear people always talking about, ‘Man you know when an entertainer get on, of course you know he gon’ go and get a white girl and blah blah blah and a white girl gon’ get a rich black dude.’ But I wanna say that my wife has dated broke black dudes. It got nothing to do with the money.”

West also recalled Kim telling him how a very prescient Robert Kardashian foretold his daughter’s propensity for black men. He knew she would one day discover racism:

It takes me back to a story that she told me where her father Robert Kardashian walked out, and on the side of his Bentley, they wrote, “N-gga Lover” Because Robert Kardashian was the genius that put together the defense team that got OJ [Simpson] off. She had never seen her father curse or get mad. He was the most laid back human being. And he went so crazy and tried to chase the people down. And she’s sitting there crying and was like, ‘Dad, why you going so crazy?’ He said to her, ‘One day, you may have a black child…a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful black child…and it’s gonna be hard. You’re gonna see how hard it is.’ So true enough, we deal with racism because there are different races. Or the micro of it is that we focus on the different races as opposed to the macro, which is the human race.

No matter how confusing his words may be, it’s always a #blessing to hear Ye talk about black creativity and see how deeply passionate he is about getting our voices out.

Ye also told the crowd:

“I thought it was so appropriate the way Wayne Brady kicked his whole shit off tonight. Forced to express ourselves. Our power, our oil — since we don’t own any oil — our oil is our expression and our influence. Don’t never let them take that away. And when we have a chance to express it and influence, don’t only do it for us — do it for the human race.”

We’ll have to wait until the show airs on Feb. 23 to hear Kanye’s full speech. Usher and Phylicia Rashad were among the other honorees. Fun times.