Behind Kanye’s Mask - NY Times Interview

Kanye West, the prodigiously talented and at times controversial hip-hop star, will release his sixth studio album, “Yeezus,” on Tuesday. He recently looked back on his life and career in an extensive interview with Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The Times.

“No rapper has embodied hip-hop’s often contradictory impulses of narcissism and social good quite like he has, and no producer has celebrated the lush and the ornate quite like he has,” Mr. Caramanica writes. “He has spent most of his career in additive mode, figuring out how to make music that’s majestic and thought-provoking and grand-scaled. And he’s also widened the genre’s gates, whether for middle-class values or high-fashion and high-art dreams.”

This piece will appear in print in the June 16, 2013 issue of The New York Times

Read the FULL interview here.