This afternoon, Kanye West received an honorary doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While the speech was originally streaming at the SAIC's website, you can now listen to the full audio above via DNA Info.
In a statement, the school named West "a leader in the music industry as a Grammy Award-winning recording artist and producer, as well as a fashion designer and interdisciplinary artist whose work provokes cultural discourse by reflecting a realism of the street."
In his speech, West (now officially Dr. West) made remarks on overcoming his nerves, the risks of being opinionated, and why the recognition of an honorary doctorate matters to him. "I am a pop artist," he began, "so my medium is public opinion, and the world is my canvas."
"I'm sorry is something that you can use a lot," he went on. "It gives you the opportunity to give your opinion, apologize for it, and give your opinion again." He then said that George Bush, whom he infamously criticized during a Hurricane Katrina telethon in 2005, "has some very cool self-portraits." He added, "I didn't know he was an artist."
After joking that the honor would make the graduates' lives better firstly because "you don't have to defend [him] as much," he also explained that its "these Floyd Mayweather belts that are needed to prove what [he's] been saying [his] entire life."
"When I was giving a lecture at Oxford," he explained, "I brought up this school because when I went on that mission to create in other spaces—apparel, film, performance—it would have been easier if I could have said I had a degree at the Art Institute of Chicago."
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