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Kanye West is one of the best rappers alive, but he's also a mystery. He spews truth in interviews like a Southern gospel preacher, he interrupts award presentations (or threatens to), and he's married to one of the biggest self-promoters the world has ever seen.
He is often characterized as a kind of sane madman who goes on rants and quotes the movie Step Brothers when talking about his wife. But in Jon Caramanica's recent profile of Kanye West for T Magazine in the New York Times, West reveals himself as the brilliant mind who wrote My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010, and Only One in January.
All of his outbursts and self-proclamations, of course, have garnered him the reputation for having an insurmountable ego. In the profile, West gives an anecdote that shows just how self aware he is:
"I have this table in my new house," West said, offering a parable. "They put this table in without asking. It was some weird nouveau riche marble table, and I hated it. But it was literally so heavy that it took a crane to move it. We would try to set up different things around it, but it never really worked.
"I realized that table was my ego. No matter what you put around it, under it, no matter who photographed it, the douchebaggery would always come through."
It's a reminder that despite his characterization as a ranting rapper without a cause, Kanye West really is poetic and a brilliantly self-aware performer.
