Kanye West Talks Suicide, Diamond Teeth

Kanye West can’t seem to not be in the news of late. He’s gotta love it, but when it’s constantly about his Taylor Swift mishap and the rejection of his artwork, well, maybe he doesn’t.

Yeezy will be on The Ellen DeGeneres Show today, and in his first sit down interview in over a year, the rapper was asked about… yeah, Taylor Swift. Here’s what he talked about.

On what he did immediately after the fallout: “I left America. I stopped doing music all together. I just took some time. I went to Japan just so I could get away from paparazzi all together. Then in November I moved to Rome and just lived there and when I came back to the states I moved to Hawaii. I lived there for about six months and just worked on music.”

On his decision to get away from the spotlight: “It was the first time that I got to stop since my Mom had passed. I had never stopped and never tried to even soak in what all had happened … It was time to take a break and develop more as a person as a creator and focus more on my thoughts and my ideas and what I wanted to bring to the world.”

On his “whole world completely crash[ing]“: “I feel like in some ways I’m a solider of culture. I realize that no one wants that to be my job and I’ll never go on stage again. I’ll never sit in an award show again. Will I feel convicted about things that really meant stuff to culture that constantly get denied for years and years? I’m sorry I will. I cannot lie about it to sell records.”

Speaking of bad times, at an L.A. screening for his new short film, Runaway, last night Kanye spoke out about how he was thinking about offing himself. “There were times that I contemplated suicide,” West told the crowd. But reassured them, “I will not give up on life again. There’s so many people that will never get the chance to have their voice heard…I do it for them.”

Also, as we reported yesterday, there was a story going around that Walmart had banned the controversial artwork for West’s forthcoming album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. However, according to the big box chain, they hadn’t even seen the cover, let alone banned it.

“We’re excited about Kanye West’s new album and we look forward to carrying it in our stores on November 22nd,” a Walmart spokesperson said in a statement to EW.com. “As always, it’s our standard practice to carry the edited parental advisory version. We did not reject the cover artwork and it was never presented to us to view.”

West also revealed that he was replaced his whole bottom row of teeth with diamonds.

“I guess there’s just certain things that rock stars are supposed to do,” said West.

There is some good news to come out of the rapper’s camp, however. Kanye’s next single, titled “All of the Lights,” will have quite the guest list. In fact, it’s all A-listers. Set to appear in some capacity will be Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Elton John, Fergie, John Legend, The-Dream, Tony Williams, Kid Cudi, Charlie Wilson, Ryan Leslie, and La Roux’s Elly Jackson. Okay, mostly A-list.