kanye revealed
Kanye West finally admitted how he dropped out of college. From MTV:
“It is true you can be successful without [college], but this is a hard world, a real world, and you want every advantage you can have,” West said backstage. “I would suggest to people to do all that you can. When I dropped out of school I had worked in the music industry and had checks cut in my name from record labels and had a record deal on the table, and when I wasn’t successful and Columbia said, ‘We’ll call you,’ I had to go back and work a telemarketing job, go back to the real world, and that’s how life is. Life is hard. Take advantage of your opportunities.”... “I think it’s just dope to help kids with money and school,” the rapper said. “That’s the main problem. When I was a college student I was broke, and I really like clothes. When I was in college it would have been better if I could have afforded more clothes!”
On a related note, John Smallwood had an interesting comment:
I get e-mails all the time questioning my blackness because I work for the Daily News, because I sometimes criticize black athletes, because I don’t always say what some black people want or expect me to say.So is growing up impoverished in the inner city an absolute must to be considered “truly” black?
I grew up in a school district that was only 6 percent black and was called a “nigger.” Would it have been more accurate had they called me “little kind-of-a-black boy lost in suburbia?”
Damn, it sure hurt like I was being called “nigger.”
If I don’t subscribe to the “thug life,” does that mean I don’t subscribe to the black life?