Kanye West Feels Weight of World on Shoulders

“There’s not one artist in the world that has as much responsibility as me. When I deliver a piece of music, it has to connect with the most genres of music … If you name rap artists, their only responsibility is to rap crowds. If you name a pop artist, their only responsibility is to a pop crowd. If you name some French dance music, their responsibility is to the cool crowd … All these people are looking at me from super-middle America to the hipsters like, ‘What’s he gonna do next?’� —Kanye West on his upcoming album [MTV]

“I got the idea to sing shirtless from a book that I read on Egyptology. I kept looking at the pharaohs and thought, these guys look bitchin’, they never wear shirts.� —Iggy Pop [NYP]

“[U]se the next couple of weeks preparing not only by publicly learning to fight (not a good message to fellow inmates), but by looking around, realizing that you are not as truly entitled as your money implies.� —Candy Spelling, in an open letter to Paris Hilton, responding to reports that the heiress has been taking self-defense classes [TMZ]

“Why is [Gore] actually organizing them? To make us aware of the greenhouse effect? Everybody’s known about that problem for years. We are all [expletive] conscious of global warming.� —Bob Geldof, on Al Gore’s recently announced Live Earth concerts. In 2005, Geldof organized Live 8 to raise awareness of Africa’s little-known poverty problem. [Yahoo]

“There was not a woman involved.� —Charles Grodin, on being impeached as president of his fifth-grade class [LA Weekly]
—Lindsey Thomas