Why Joe Rogan beats the mainstream Media
In a three-hour-long interview, the podcast host gave the listeners insight into Kanye West’s mind and how one of the biggest stars thinks about the world.
Joe Rogan is a phenomenon that doesn’t need any further explanation. The guy who smoked a blunt with Elon Musk and interviewed stars like Mathew McConaughey and Mike Tyson is currently one of the most prolific podcasters. Yet, the podcast with Kanye West was one of Rogan’s best episodes I have ever had the pleasure to hear. Over three hours, the stand-up comedian listened to Kanye explaining his vision, going off on tangents, and talking about everything from faith to becoming president and designing sneakers. Rogan didn’t seem to have an agenda, letting Kanye’s mind roam free and explore ideas on the go.
While the beginning of the podcast was a stretch for listeners as Kanye soon went off topic and started to go on several tangents, Rogan quickly understood how to deal with those kinds of answers and began to show the listeners an inside into the Rapper’s mind.
Kanye often answered questions with long answers, going off on tangents and hopping from idea to idea only to come back to the original question after five minutes. Whereas a listener, you were fascinated by Kanye’s long explanations, most of the time, you had forgotten the original question and were just listening along. Rogan, on the other hand, always seemed to know what he had asked the hip-hop star and also knew what he wanted to take out of the long answer to continue the conversation.
Rogan proved himself by directing the always wandering mind of Kanye West in an extremely respectful and understanding way while not being too friendly or shy to ask a question. At one point, towards the end of the podcast, Rogan asked Kanye West some serious questions about Kanye’s actions as a president to specific issues and was not thrown off by some tangents Kanye told the host.
The newly Texan host managed to show how Kanye’s mind works, how the seemingly never-ending stream of ideas fuels this persona, the man behind the Yeezy brand, the billionaire. With a wide variety of topics, ranging from in-depth discussion and explanation from Kanye about his faith to the Rappers stance on abortion all the way to how he would/will (Kanye always talked about his presidency as a matter of when and not if) redesign the presidential outfit he guided the conversation, letting Kanye’s mind do the rest.
It seemed like Rogan and West were just friends talking. Also, some jokes found their way into the podcast, with Kanye at one point saying how funny it would’ve been if he could’ve pulled a water bottle closer with the force. He had made one of several Star Wars analogies sprinkled throughout the podcast just a minute before and joked about having a magnet under the water bottle so that Rogan would’ve been astonished.
When, after almost three hours, the two called the podcast a wrap, as a listener, you were left amazed. Amazed at how Kanye thinks, his completely different take on several issues, and his solutions to them. Amazed at how Joe Rogan had managed to let you into this realm of Kanye’s mind and amazed at the podcasters’ talent to make a three-hour session seem like barely one hour.
While there are maybe talented interviewers than Rogan, there are only a few that would’ve managed the art of the Kanye podcast. There would’ve been even fewer that would’ve managed to take the time and have the patience to dive into Kanye’s ideas and explore them without just stamping them off as the talk of an egocentric rapper.
To anyone interested in listening to the podcast themselves, it is episode #1554 of the Joe Rogan Experience.
Enjoy it and stay safe
Raffael
