UPDATE: The full video of Steve Stoute, Ben Horowitz and Kanye West's Cannes panel is now available for your viewing pleasure and daily inspiration.
If you didn't know from Kris Jenner's recent "proud mom" Instagram post, Kanye West took the stage at the Cannes Lions festival recently to speak on a panel for a seminar titled "Technology, Culture, and Consumer Adoption: Learning to Read the Cultural Landscape." Maybe married life is doing Yeezus well; according to Adweek, West was reportedly smiling, laughing and conversing about everything from Apple's recent multi-billion-dollar deal with Beats by Dre to how the internet is "fucking ugly." Here's a few highlights:
"After [Steve Jobs] passed, I made it my life's mission to do what he did inside of that company. I dream to help raise the palette and raise the taste level of a generation and also be involved with the production and distribution and advertising of that thing everyone's begging for.""Now, can you imagine telling someone who just wants to Instagram a photo, the No. 1 person on Instagram, that we need to work on the color of the flowered wall? But the fact that the No. 1 most liked photo has this certain aesthetic on it was a win for what the mission is—of raising the palette."
"The reason I said I didn't like Samsung particularly is because throughout my entire life, because of how my parents raised me, I have to work with the No. 1. I can't work with anyone but Jay Z, because he's No. 1. I can't be with any girl but Kim, because that's the girl whose pictures I look at the most and get turned on by. I'm not going to represent any company but Louis Vuitton, because that's No. 1. … Samsung is not quite Apple, but it showed that Jimmy [Iovine] and Dre would be able to connect with the No. 1 influencers."
"The world as a whole is fucking ugly. The Internet as a whole is fucking ugly, too. But I'm not in the construction business."
"People ask, Where's our future? Where's our flying cars? That is the world that's floating above us right now. And we can make that beautiful with the people in Cannes right now."
For more of Kanye's words on flying cars, Steve Jobs, and the importance of beauty in the future of design culture, read AdWeek's piece on his appearance in Cannes here. Or, you can revisit an unabridged FADER interview from 2008, when Kanye went candid in 20,000 words or less.
