In May, you tweeted that you don’t have a visa to get into America. Are you still having troubles with that?

I don’t know, you tell me. Can I hire you to investigate?

You’ve submitted an application and you can’t get a response?

Yeah. I don’t know what’s happening with my visa. It’d be nice to meet Interscope and go and sit down and present the album. But it’s a crazy time in America right now, which is why I can’t really talk about what’s happening in America on the album, because I’m not really there.

Before this interview, your publicist told me that you didn’t want to discuss American politics.

I don’t want to talk about America on this album because the only thing I have to offer is what somebody is thinking from outside. I’m not trying to have the same perspective as an American person from inside America. Because I’m not that. It’s OK to have somebody who has a perspective from the outside. It was really interesting to say something and have everyone sort of turn on me and go, “Oh my god, you’re the grossest human being.” Because I was like, “No actually, from the outside, this is normal.”

Are you speaking about your recent comments about Black Lives Matter—that American pop stars should speak up about the refugee crisis more?

When I said, “Oh, American artists can’t say this and this and talk about global world issues.” Sometimes my perspective doesn’t relate to the one from inside America because I’m not there. I’m actually from the outside of America and I should be allowed to have that opinion and that dialogue. We do have different circumstances, different demographics, different experiences, different cultural things going on. I just felt like, at this point, it is important to listen to more perspectives around the world on this. Or just generally about anything.

So you were trying to say that we need American stars to stand up for the rights of refugees because there aren’t Syrian ones who can?

Exactly. Because we’re going to be waiting. It’s annoying that I have to come out of retirement to tell you this. But that is the deal. This was my point: Either you expand yourself if you’re going to represent the world, or let more people from the world come in and expand it for you. America is the person with the distribution platform and they are the ones that make icons on that level. When I open up my YouTube in India, in Scandinavia, in Bhutan, I’m going to get the same YouTube clips from the front page, which is American artists. They do have to step into where we are now. We’re not in the ’90s—we are now, and this is what’s happening. Not everyone on earth sees the world from the American perspective. There are seven billion people on the planet that have their own experiences and ideas. And that’s what I was saying, and everybody was only digesting me through their mirror and their view.

It’s cool. In order to understand the real, you have to poke the situation. You might get into a scrap, you might have to take a few punches. But that’s the only way you truly know the situation. America on the whole is a privileged space for the rest of the world. And I think people forget that. From my perspective, when I see American artists, I think they are in a country where they can make that shit possible. They have the platform to do that. So if they wanted to raise awareness of something else in the world, they shouldn’t shy away from it, because they are very much a part of all of these cases. And you can’t deny that.

Let me approach it in another way, then: Since you’ve gotten so much heat in the past for things you’ve said, why not start parsing your words a little differently?

You know what, I’m satisfied with my fucking work. I’m interested in humanity and human beings. I want to do something positive. That is it. I don’t care what fucking color you are. I don’t care what fucking class you are. I don’t care what geographical place you come from. I want to contribute to the present day. I think I’ve contributed. My work is born out of ideas coming together and people coming together and cultures coming together and colors coming together and music coming together. You have to tolerate that. That’s the future. Being tolerant is the future. It’s not being segregated.

But the world right now sometimes feels like it’s moving in a more divided direction. Were you surprised by Brexit?

I’m surprised. Immigrants seem to be the hot topic and the very tool that’s being used in order to create the division. And the whole immigrant refugee community is a really multi-faced, multi-faceted one. So right now, that image is being twisted because it’s got a very specific face on it—“refugee” has a really specific picture to it right now. But it’s not specific. It’s made up of so many different cultures and colors. Using that to create division is totally contradictory.

Why do you think all this xenophobia is fermenting right now?

I have no idea. But what’s happening is massive. Human beings have to zoom out and look at the space on a much bigger level.

So are you worried?

Umm, nah.

How are you not worried about the state of the world right now?

Because you can’t stop things from happening. You can’t control it. That’s one thing I can tell everyone. As the type of artist I am, and the ups and downs and the fights I’ve had in public, I never stand still and never accept that I’ve got to the destination and that this is it and now I’m going to put my feet up. I’ve never had that mentality. Evolution happens. It’s inevitable. There’s epic movement right now on the planet. It’s really refreshing to me now that I can sit back and go, “Thank God. I was really honest about what I was.” This is all I can do. I can honestly say from my life experience—even as an artist, even as a rapper, even as all these things—that I was constantly bombarding my head against loads of issues. I have gained all this knowledge through personal experience. I’m not getting this because it’s a fad. I’m not doing it because it’s a trend or because I heard somebody else say it. I’m telling you this is my personal experience. That shit fucking happens, but you fucking survive it if you want to fucking survive it.