What are your parents’ names?

Donda West and Raymond West.

What do they do for work?

My father did a little bit of everything coming up. He was a photographer when I was young and he had a loft apartment when we stayed in Atlanta. They always had nice cribs.

Then my father ended up being a salesman. I remember he was in vacuum cleaner sales and we used to go to white people’s houses and he’d sit up there and show them how powerful the vacuum cleaner was by putting a penny on the floor and then put the vacuum cleaner over it and then Pop! It would come out and he would have bent the penny. And then he’d get up there, like, “Look at this vacuum cleaner!” And he’d give them his card and he’d take me to go get some ice cream or something.

And then the next day I’d see him go to some other white person’s house, put down the penny and shit, like, “Look at this vacuum cleaner!” We had a Nova and I remember some days we would ride around and he had vacuum cleaners in the back and we’d be going up a hill and the car would stop. And I just see him, like, “Not today. Not today.”

How long were your parents together?

Until I was like, 3.

And then your father moved out?

I used to go to Atlanta to see him, but when I was 6 or 7 he moved out to Maryland for a job. I forgot which job.

Did he ever remarry?

Yeah. He married four times. He works as a Christian marriage counselor.

I can see why.

Yeah. [Laughs.]

He probably knows a thing or two. And your mother?

, who to me to this day was like my step-father. I feel like he helped teach me responsibility, like I ain’t get to go play basketball. I had to cut the grass—but look where I’m at.

My mother was going to be an actress when she was young. When she graduated from her four-year program to get her bachelor’s degree, she went to some acting tryout. And if she had gotten that she would’ve followed the acting. But she ain’t get it so she went back to school.

Where’d she go?

She went to Clark in Atlanta. That’s where she met my father. And now she got her Ph.D in English, so then she became a teacher and she found a job at Chicago State. I went to Chicago State for half price because I didn’t want to be in school no way. It was just something to do while my music wasn’t really popping. By that time my mother became the head of the English department. The first black chair of the English department at Chicago State University, not to mention female. So now she had the department and I could just turn in my homework whenever I wanted. My whole goal when I went to Chicago State was just to walk around with my Ghostface chain, Polo’d up. Just be the coldest.

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So take me back to college, did you graduate from school?

Nah, man. I’m a college dropout. You ain’t heard the album title?

Nah.

That’s the album title.

Oh it is? Hey man, I’m right there with you.

That’s exactly what I want people to think with that title: “I’m right there with you.” I’ve thought about calling my shit I’m Good, because that’s a “cool” title, like just having a title that’s like, “Yo, you can’t criticize that.” But for me to try and put on the facade of being the coolest motherfucker ever, it’s not going to come across like that. I’m not saying I’m the coolest motherfucker ever, I got to put it in raps.”

Tell me about growing up in Chicago.

In Chicago you’re going to do one of three things. You’re either going to be sports—straight basketball or football—or you’re going to be hip-hop, like really focus on hip-hop and the culture—or you going to be gangbanging. You might be doing all this and gang-banging at the same time because 99 percent of people in Chicago is gangbanging.

We was gangbanging in kindergarten. We was on the school bus throwing up gang signs like, “Which gang sign was which again?” Perpetrating and shit. Moving our hats to the whatever side, and when the Starter coats came out, “I’ma get the Bulls and I’ma do this, this, this.” And if you wasn’t none of that, you was just a fucking lame and shit.

That’s how Chicago is. This gangbanging shit is so real that you not going to front whatsoever. Once you grown and you see niggas getting their heads chopped off and you going to funerals, you either going to take it to the fullest or you going to be like, “Nah, it’s not for me.” I know it’s not for me. I know that.

So basically, my main focus became music. I been making tracks since seventh grade. I was on the basketball team freshman year. I used to play for Eisenhower and we went to some tournament or something. But by sophomore year, I had been working on my music so much that by the time we went to tryouts, I’m just straight missing layups and shit.

So you just decided to...

I didn’t decide. God decided for me. Niggas was looking at me like, “Maybe this just ain’t your sport.” I remember when we was in the layup line we had to clap our hands like this [regular clapping] but when I was doing my clap, my shit was more like [claps and knocks beat], and niggas was like, “Damn. Maybe that’s what you need to do and shit.” [Knocks twice.] So at that point, basically, I just switched over to focusing on that.

You said you used to bring back slang and whatnot from the East Coast.

Yeah. My father stayed in Delaware for the latter part of his life but his father was in the Air Force, so he had to fly around. He spent some of his high school years in Germany so he was never at one school. And they always stayed around white people.

So when he finally got the opportunity to go to a black school everybody was like, “Yo, you talk white.” They wouldn’t accept him. And when he was around white people, you were a nigga off the bat so they weren’t trying to accept him. I seen how that hurt him. So whereas my father struggled with that, basically I learned how to speak every language.

—black people and white people interacting and racial profiling and all that—because I got locked up one day for having braids and driving in an Expedition. And they said, “Your braids is what gave you away.”

How all this relates is—I ain’t trying to front. I’m aware of shit. Because a lot of rappers.... Am I supposed to get here and say, “Yo man, I sold drugs and I did this?” Because I never did none of that. Is that automatically going to lower my record sales like crazy because I said I never sold crack? I apologize. I just went and got a job. Whatever.