As we’ve witnessed in the past few years, Kanye West concerts usually come with an unwarranted speech. It appears he’s carrying this tradition into 2016 as his headlining set at the Paradise International Music Festival in Manila, Philippines last night indicates. Besides performing select The Life of Pablo -cuts like “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 2” and “Famous,” he took some time to delve into the importance of the latter. Kanye explained the idea behind thought-provoking song, how the infamous VMA incident with Taylor Swift was “the beginning of the end” and stated that he will continue to stick by staying true to what he feels. Read the transcription, courtesy of Manila-based photographer Kara Chung, below:
“What I wanted you to know the whole time — you know, in the spirit of Nina Simone, in the spirit of real artists — this is the song that broke the writer’s block for me because it’s something I wanted to say so bad that they told me I couldn’t say.
That night when I went onstage was the beginning of the end of my life. Lady Gaga cancelled the tour the next day. You know what night I’m talking about — when I just said what everybody else was thinking. So if I get in trouble for saying the truth, what’s being said the rest of the time?
And I had to fight every day of my life when the whole world turned against me for saying out loud what everyone else felt, but that’s the job of an artist, of a true artist: not to be controlled by any finances, not to be controlled by perception, but only to be controlled by their truth — what you see, what you feel, and say what you fucking feel.
You don’t know, it’s really overwhelming for me to perform this song for the first time and for you all to react to it in that way. That I fought to make that the first single off of Pablo. If you don’t mind I’d like to do this song one more time, can I do it one more time?”