This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
Kanye West has a complicated relationship with the City of Angels. On the one hand, it's the city of Snoop, Dre, Marilyn Monroe, Walt Disney, Howard Hughes and all those greats West so admires. It's also the city where you have the freedom to drive and if you're Kanye you "get pulled over and they would still let me go." And now he's father to an "L.A. girl" named North.
But Los Angeles also the city where he lost his mother Donda West. He says in a video released over the weekend: "I remember liking it when I was first out there, but I also did lose my mother to that city. And that’s the weird thing, because I felt like this city took my mother, but this city also gave me my child."
Having a child has changed the way he sees, smells and hear the city: It "smells like my mother-in-laws brownies" and "It used to sound like the beach, and now it sounds like, 'Hey! Hey! Look over here, look over here!"
He adds in one very Kanye line about shouldering the weight of the universe as an artist, "People take their frustrations out on me."
Kanye West is sharing his complicated feelings about the city for a project being put together by Jared Leto of "30 Seconds To Mars." The band recently released a video called "City Of Angels" and is putting together a short film that debuts tomorrow, according to the Huffington Post. Here's the video:
