Kanye Receives Honorary Degree From SAIC
By Jim Bochnowski in Arts & Entertainment on May 11, 2015 9:30PM
Chicago's most famous College Dropout is now Dr. Kanye West, PhD, after receiving an honorary degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago today.
An obviously emotional West happily received his degree (seriously, he actually smiled, unlike his little trip to the Bulls game), then delivered a few remarks about his art.
Kanye's unfortunately short speech started with the line "I am a pop artist so my medium is public opinion and the world is my canvas" and only got better from there.
In a moment that more or less represented his entire career, Kanye talked about the need for forgiveness: "'I'm sorry' is something you can use a lot, it gives you the opportunity to give your opinion, apologize for it, and give your opinion again."
He talked about his most famous public nemesis, saying "George Bush...has some very cool self-portraits. I didn't know he was an artist," which was met with rapturous laughter. At points, he was clearly overcome by the moment and paused several times to collect himself, otherwise we might have seen an even softer, emotional side of Kanye West.
Finally, he closed his speech stating, "This honor is gonna make your lives easier. Two reasons: You don't have to defend me as much, and I'm gonna make all of our lives easier."
He went on to explain what he meant by "easier," stating that, "When I was giving a lecture at Oxford, I brought up this school because when I went on that mission to create in other spaces ... it would've been easier if I could've said, 'I have a degree at the Art Institute of Chicago.'"
We'll update this post after the SAIC uploads the full video and transcript to their website.