Inside the Kardashian-West-Jenner world

Kim Kardashian West and Kris Jenner discussed with Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times the rise of their social media presences and businesses. Kanye West joined the conversation from the audience. Here are some notable moments from the interview, which has been edited and condensed.

SOCIAL MEDIA
Kim: I think about when I raise my kids and screen time, phone time, what to post, what not to post, even posting things in real time. I learned from a bad experience that I had when I was robbed that people really knew my every move, they knew what I had, they knew where I was, what I was doing, and that to me really changed maybe the things that I post. I still want people to feel like they’re along that journey with me, but I might video something and then post it like 30 minutes later, when I’ve left the location more for privacy.

OREOS
Kim: When I mentioned I was having a CBD baby shower because I needed some calm before the storm of a fourth kid coming, every CBD company on the planet reached out. And it’s kind of this joke also that I do, if I really want something and I’m a bit lazy, I can tweet, “I’m loving Oreos, I’m craving Oreos right now,” and then on my doorstep, every flavor Oreo will show up.

DIDN’T GET MILK
Kris: I thought Kim would be so great in a “Got Milk” campaign, remember like everybody did these “Got Milk” campaigns? And I thought, oh, well she’s perfect for that — I don’t know where that came from, and I’m sure I was a lot more excited and enthusiastic about this idea then the “Got Milk” people were, so that really never came to fruition. A couple years ago, Kim was in a music video, and she was taking a milk bath and I thought, “You did it Kim, you got milk all over that body!”

THE POWER OF SAYING ‘NO’
Kim: I will say a cute story since my husband’s here. So there was a fast-fashion brand, a few of them, and they would knock off Yeezy all the time, his color palette, designs. So this fast-fashion brand offered me a million dollars for an Instagram post and I thought, “OK, well that’s easy” — just to wear clothes that I could pick, anything that I wanted, it’s a quick post — and when I told him about it he asked me not to do it and said out of respect, I don’t think that we should be giving them everything, they copy everything.

I completely understood why he said no. I gladly said no. And then for Mother’s Day, he handed me an envelope and it was a check for a million dollars saying, “thank you for not posting for the other brand.” And then — I don’t know if I’m supposed to say this or if I have — and a contract to be an owner in Yeezy as a thank you. So there is power in saying no sometimes.

MEETING WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP
Kim: I focus on prison reform, and the president has done amazing things in prison reform. But that was a big thing where so many people advised me, “Don’t go to the White House.” And that didn’t make sense to me because I was like, if someone can get out of prison and get their life back versus my reputation of going to the White House — when there is only one person on this planet that can make the decision and that would be the president — and that was even a question for the media, that just absolutely didn’t make sense to me. I would go see anyone in power that would have that decision to change someone’s life.

STARTING A LAW FIRM
Kim: Now when I’m studying contracts and these are like actual life things that I’m dealing with now, and now that I own my own home and I’m old enough and I’m studying torts and I’m learning about personal injury, like everything I’m so interested in, it actually pertains to my life. I’m definitely working really hard, and it’s a commitment that I’ve chosen to take this time away from my family to study and to not go out with my friends and live a different life.

And I’m so OK with that. I love it and I just hope that one day I can start a firm that will help with prison reform. I would love to hire these men and women that are behind bars because they know the law better than most lawyers.

FAMILY
Kanye: I think if my family wasn’t so, that they didn’t work so hard and they weren’t so omnipresent, maybe I would just rest on my laurels of just being the greatest artist of human existence and that would just be enough. But that’s shown that is not enough, that you have to hit the gym, that you have to communicate, that you have to, it’s like modern-day Medici or Rome, it’s an era that people remember for all of human existence.

STARTING A CHURCH
Kanye: But just as a male opinion, looking at my daughters and looking at my family and as we are starting this church and saying that this innovation and community and what we’re doing with education and what we’re doing you know in politics even now like we have 12,500 acres in Cody, Wyoming. Trump has actually opened up the ability to buy more land, and in America — you know America, you can buy land and we can be owners and we don’t often have to be just the product of what Black Twitter tells us what we’re supposed to do.

This has been taken out of every single one of my interviews, so I’m going to say it now: My father’s a Black Panther, my mother was arrested to fight for us to have the right to vote, but it was the right to vote for who we tell you to vote on.

©2019 New York Times News Service