Kanye West Complains About Glass Ceiling: "I have driven my Truman Show boat into the painting."
He's no Jay-Z
Kanye West launched an excoriating attack on racism across culture – infashion, theatre, film and music – in an interview with Radio 1's Zane Lowe on Monday night. Focussing on his desire to expand beyond music, he said: "I have driven my Truman Show boat into the painting. I have hit a glass ceiling." West said creative black people were allowed their "best perspective on T-shirts. But if it's anything else, your Truman Show boat is hitting the wall."
In an extraordinary interview, sometimes humorous and sometimes vituperative, West returned again and again to those who would thwart his desires to expand way beyond music, and to pointing out that black people are routinely denied the opportunities granted to white people. He said he might discuss ideas of theatrical production, as practised in the Watch the Throne stage show, in interviews, only to be ignored – then a week later see an interview with white cultural figure in which the same ideas were discussed and endorsed. "I look round the room and there is no one here who looks like me," he told Lowe. "And if there is, they are keeping quiet."