Always a provider of good quotations, Kanye West has described his ego as a marble table in a new interview about his high-profile lifestyle.

In a conversation with the New York Times’ T Magazine, the often controversial rapper spoke about a number of incidents in the recent past that have involved him. His comments about Beck at February’s Grammy Awards had the whole media talking about Kanye ‘doing a Kanye’.

Alluding to this incident, he said “I'm not a celebrity, I'm an activist. The fact that when I see truth it's really hard for me to sit back and just allow it to happen in front of me on my clock makes me, a lot of times, a bad celebrity.”

Kanye WestKanye West with daughter North

He also feels that married life with Kim Kardashian and fatherhood has changed him for the better, and help keep balanced and with a sense of perspective. “I feel like now I have an amazing wife, a super-smart child and the opportunity to create in two major fields. Before I had those outlets, my ego was all I had.”

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Begging the question in some quarters – what would he be like now if he weren’t married?! Now for the memorable bit: later in the interview, he compared his ego to a marble table that he had in his house but hated.

“We would try to set up different things around it, but it never really worked. I realized that table was my ego. No matter what you put around it, under it, no matter who photographed it, the douchebaggery would always come through.”

Over the last few months, not only has Kanye been teasing tracks from his forthcoming album So Help Me God, but he’s also been getting involved in the fashion world, with some of his projects being showcased during New York Fashion Week back in February.

Speaking about his motivation for getting involved in that world, he seemed to want to affect the same revolution for clothes that the internet did for music – democratising and demystifying it. “Before the Internet, music was really expensive,” West was quoted as saying.

“People would use a rack of CDs to show class, to show they had made it. Right now, people use clothes to telegraph that. I want to destroy that.”

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