Kanye West Will Vote in 2020 Election: 'We Know Who I'm Voting On'

Kanye West is on the cover of GQ magazine’s May 2020 issue, on newsstands April 21.

Here’s what the entertainer had to share with the mag…

On his friend, Kobe Bryant: “Kobe was one of my best friends. There’s one street that I drive to go from either my office or my home to the property where the domes were built. [Ed note: The street is Las Virgenes Road, the site of the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant and eight other people just four days prior to this meeting.] So now there’s no way for me not to be as determined as Kobe every time I drive down that street. It’s game time…This is a game changer for me. He was the basketball version of me, and I was the rap version of him, and that’s facts!…No one else can say this. We came up at the same time, together. And now it’s like, yeah, I might have had a reputation for screaming about things—but I’m not taking any mess for an answer now. We’re about to build a paradigm shift for humanity. We ain’t playing with ’em. We bringing home the trophies.”

On politics: “Black people are controlled by emotions through the media. The media puts musicians, artists, celebrities, actors in a position to be the face of the race, that really don’t have any power and really are just working for white people…So let me say this: I am the founder of a $4 billion organization, one of the most Google-searched brands on the planet, and I will not be told who I’m gonna vote on because of my color. I’m definitely voting this time. And we know who I’m voting on.” (If you don’t know, Kanye West didn’t vote in the 2016 election.)

On music: “I was thinking of not rapping again, because I rapped for the devil so long that I didn’t even know how to rap for God. And the last thing I ever said on [the Saint Pablo] tour was, ‘The show’s over.’ Which felt like my mom talking through me…Like, ‘My son is not just here to fill up these sports arenas. My son’s got something else to do.”

For more from Kanye West, visit GQ.com.