A few weeks back, I got a phone call from Kanye West and J. Sakiya Sandifer, who recently published a slim self-help book called Thank You and You're Welcome. My interview with the co-authors turned sour midway through, when I dared to ask Kanye what he thought of Eminem's album. "This is like Andy Kaufman going in, and they're like, 'Do Mighty Mouse!'" the rapper noted. "He's like, 'I don't want to do Mighty Mouse!'" (I think that he was supposed to be Andy Kaufman in that analogy, and I was the inconsiderate audience. Sorry, man, I was on deadline!)
Luckily, Kanye was in a forgiving mood. "I don't get offended anymore, actually," he said. "How did you like the book? I mean, it's like a 15-minute read." At this point, it emerged that I did not, in fact, possess a copy of Thank You and You're Welcome. So we all agreed to schedule another interview for the following week, by which time I would have been able to read the book. Their publisher sent over a copy; I read it cover to cover and drafted what I thought was a list of interesting questions. But when the co-authors called me for our second interview, things only got stranger. What follows after the jump is my testiest exchange with West and Sandifer — most of which did not make it into the printed version of our Q&A.
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