Kanye West, in accepting Best Album honors in the Rap & Hip-Hop category, at the American Music Awards, on November 23, 2008

It's our responsibility as musicians to keep pushing each other, to keep competing with each other. It's a really great competition. I see here artists like Beyonce and Alicia Keys and Rihanna and Chris Brown and Chris Martin, all in the same room, and we're going to push this music to the point where it was like in the 1960s and '70s, when the talk was about Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles. We (all) will be the new Beatles. We (all) will be the new Hendrix; (in fact) in any other industry, they'll tell you that you're supposed to do better than those in the past, so when you say, 'I want to be Elvis,' they say, 'What's wrong with you?' Well, I wanna be Elvis.

— Kanye West

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "It's our responsibility as musicians to keep pushing each other, to keep competing with each other. It's a really great competition. I see here artists like Beyonce and Alicia Keys and Rihanna and Chris Brown and Chris Martin, all in the same room, and we're going to push this music to the point where it was like in the 1960s and '70s, when the talk was about Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles. We (all) will be the new Beatles. We (all) will be the new Hendrix; (in fact) in any other industry, they'll tell you that you're supposed to do better than those in the past, so when you say, 'I want to be Elvis,' they say, 'What's wrong with you?' Well, I wanna be Elvis." in the context of "Kanye West, in accepting Best Album honors in the Rap & Hip-Hop category, at the American Music Awards, on November 23, 2008" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Elvis Presley" (Quotes about Elvis Presley: The last names, or first or given names by which people are best known and whose quotes are included below are arranged alphabetically, for ease of reference. When the person being quoted has a royal, or religious title, they can be found by looking for their first or adopted name. Examples: Bhumibol King of Thailand; Elizabeth II Queen of England; Albert II Prince of Monaco; Astrid, Princess of Norway; Deborah Duchess of Devonshire; Pope Benedict XVI ., W) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed February 05, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Elvis Presley

About Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron Presley (8 January 1935 – 16 August 1977) was an American singer, musician, and actor. Popularly known by his first name as "Elvis," as "The King of Rock and Roll" or simply as "The King," he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century.