Kanye West has opened up about his bipolar diagnosis, his controversial slavery comments, his highly collaborative lyric-writing process, and more in a new interview with the New York Times.

In the interview, compiled from multiple conversations with Jon Caramanica, Kanye attempts to clarify his statement that 400 years of slavery “sounds like a choice.” He argues his words were misconstrued: “I said the idea of sitting in something for 400 years sounds — sounds — like a choice to me, I never said it’s a choice. I never said slavery itself — like being shackled in chains — was a choice.”

Asked how he would word his thoughts now, Kanye says, “I wouldn’t frame a one-liner or a headline. What I would say is actually it’s literally like I feel like I’m in court having to justify a robbery that I didn’t actually commit, where I’m having to somehow reframe something that I never said. I feel stupid to have to say out loud that I know that being put on the boat was — but also I’m not backing down, bro. What I will do is I’ll take responsibility for the fact that I allowed my voice to be used back to back in ways that were not protective of it when my voice means too much.” Clarifying what he means by “back to back,” he acknowledges that wearing the M.A.G.A. hat and then discussing slavery on TMZ “left [his] voice unprotected.”

Of his broader politics, he says he felt a pressure to support Hillary Clinton—“because you’re black, because you make very sensitive music, because you’re a very sensitive soul.” He unburdened himself, he explains, by “getting out, learning how to not be highly medicated and, you know, just standing up saying I know I could lose a lot of things, but just standing up and saying what you feel, and not even doing a lot of research on it.” He adds: “Having a political opinion that’s overly informed, it’s like knowing how to dress, as opposed to being a child — ‘I like this.’ I hear Trump talk and I’m like, I like the way it sounds, knowing that there’s people who like me that don’t like the way it sounds.” Asked if he likes the sound of preventing Muslims from entering America, he says, “No, I don’t agree with all of his policies.”

Elsewhere, Kanye elaborates on his bipolar diagnosis, saying he began taking medication but was, at the time of one interview, down to “one pill in the last seven days.” He discusses the lyrics of ye song “I Thought About Killing You,” which allude to suicide. Asked if any of them are literal, he says, “Oh yeah, I’ve thought about killing myself all the time. It’s always a option and [expletive]. Like Louis C.K. said: I flip through the manual. I weigh all the options. I’m just having this epiphany now, ’cause I didn’t do it, but I did think it all the way through. But if I didn’t think it all the way through, then it’s actually maybe more of a chance of it happening.”

As part of his philosophy of openness, Kanye discusses his lyric-writing process, which is highly collaborative. (It had previously been revealed that Drake—with whom Kanye was at one point recording a possible collaborative album—wrote the hook for “Yikes”; he also wrote a “first verse” that didn’t make the cut.) He says that after his hospitalization, he began compiling notes about his experiences and feelings, then gave them to various writers. Among them are Consequence, who wrote the Stormy Daniels lyric on “All Mine,” and Malik Yusef, who contributed a key “Ghost Town” lyric, “Sometimes I take all the shine/Talk like I drank all the wine.” It’s also revealed that, eight days before the release of ye, Kanye had written none of its lyrics. “And he still went to see Deadpool 2,” the Times notes. “Twice.”

Read the full interview at the Times.

Read “Kanye West and Why the Myth of ‘Genius’ Must Die” on the Pitch.