Kanye West cried openly while granting BBC Radio 1 an interview as they discussed one of his mentors, late fashion professor Louise Wilson.
“Last time I saw her,” West recalled, taking a deep breath, “we had dinner at Hakkasan, which is my favorite restaurant in London.
And I think she knew that she was going to pass, and she just wanted to give me some words of advice moving forward, and she was asking me about my daughter, asked meabout my wife…and she said, you know, ‘So many students, they don’t give it their all, and the problem is, soon as they do anything halfway good when they’re 2 years old, 3 years old, their parents clap.’”At which interviewer Zane Lowe promptly started clapping. Kanye smiled.“Exactly,” the rapper agreed.
“They clap. And she just looked at me and she said, ‘Kanye, don’t clap.’” Kanye continued, “I didn’t know we were going to lose her…and she told me, she said, you know, ‘Thank you for the times where I came to performances and this has like really meant a lot to me, with…’”
He then trailed off, covering his eyes with his right hand. Pretty soon he had both hands covering his eyes as the tears welled up. And he couldn’t continue immediately, so much so that Zane patted him on the knee and said, “We’ll take a minute.” Kanye left the studio briefly.
“That’s never happened to me in an interview before,” a once again smiling Kanye said as he returned to his seat and they both settled back down. He looked down and added, “I think I’m good.”