Kanye West First Made Music At Age 12 When He Created A Mario Style Video Game About A Giant Penis
Kanye West says he transferred the energy he once used for sex into music.
Everett Collection / Shutterstock Kanye West is always great for the good, ol' sound bite. Just when you thought he couldn't get anymore ridiculous, he turns around and says something eight million times more boastful than you thought was even possible. Good, ol Kanye.
But what else would you expect from the "voice of a generation" who penned the song to which a thousand and one Gold Digger punch lines were born?
In a March 2009 Details magazine interview, Kanye West delved into his youth and admitted he thinks he was a sex addict.
In fact, he says his voracious appetite for sex is what fueled his music. Kanye says he simply transferred over his obsession for getting laid into making records and building his fashion design empire. He makes the switch sound as simple as stirring the pasta sauce after the noodles are done cooking.
He told the magazine:
"People ask me a lot about my drive," he says. "I think it comes from, like, having a sexual addiction at a really young age. Look at the drive that people have to get sex — to dress like this and get a haircut and be in the club in the freezing cold at 3 a.m., the places they go to pick up a girl. If you can focus the energy into something valuable, put that into work ethic..."
Now we know about sex addiction. As profiled in the New York Times, having a healthy bed-hopping libido of too many strange bodies and unidentified cell phone rings the following week doesn't necessarily qualify you, Kanye.
Rather sex addiction is a serious illness that requires a 12-step program akin to alcoholism or drug addiction. Sex addicts blow off even their most serious responsibilities for sex, and don't "feel OK" until that goal is achieved. So does he give us any indication he was more than just a normal kid going out at night trying to look attractive.
Kanye first made music while creating a sexually suggestive Mario-style video game
"First beat I did," Kanye recalls, "was in 7th grade, on my computer. I got into doing beats for the video games I used to try to make. My game was very sexual. The main character was, like, a giant penis. It was like Mario Brothers, but the ghosts were, like, vaginas."
"Mind you, I'm 12 years old, and this is stuff 30-year-olds are programming. You'd have to draw in and program every little step — it literally took me all night to do a step, 'cause the penis, y'know, had little feet and eyes."
Wait? A 7th grader doodling private parts? As much as you don't want to admit it Kanye, we think you're pretty normal.
Melissa Noble is a writer, editor and creative director whose work on pop culture, celebrity, and relationships has appeared in New York Magazine, the Frisky, and OK Magazine.