THE OFFICIAL LOST SWAY X KANYE RUNAWAY MTV LIVE Q&A / INTERVIEW MEGADOC
An informational compilation by llightskinned & Rhythmic Reason
If you have something we missed or a new discovery, join the discord!
General Info
On October 23, 2010, Kanye’s film Runaway (a companion film to his 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy), premiered both on television through MTV, MTV2 and BET, and was also streamed live on MTV.com, BET.com and VH1.com. Following the conclusion of the premiere, a Q&A session/interview hosted by Sway Calloway aired live on MTV and MTV.com. (1).
During the interview, Kanye answered personal questions from Sway, as well as fan questions from Twitter that used the hashtag #AskKanye (2), with Ye primarily touching on various scenes in the film, his new album, and his life over the past year following the Taylor Swift VMA incident.
Some notable moments from the interview include:
- Kanye confirming that Watch The Throne was a full album rather than 5 track EP as originally planned (3)
- Kanye said that the MBDTF tracklist wasn’t yet finalized, and threw around the possibility of adding Chain Heavy & Mama’s Boyfriend as bonus tracks on the album (4)
- Kanye called out the MTV crew during the interview, telling them how to do their job live on air (5)
- Kanye joked about devil worship and Illuminati rumors
- Kanye said that Michael Jackson is arguably greater than Jesus Christ (6)
Perhaps most noteworthy about this interview though, is the famous gif of Kanye that would eventually go viral in the years following, now one of the most widely shared Ye gifs of all time. The gif shows Kanye laughing hysterically into a sudden blank expression:
HOWEVER, DESPITE THIS INTERVIEW'S CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE, IT'S ALL BUT COMPLETELY LOST!!!
Top 4 reasons why the interview is lost
- MTV never officially uploaded the interview in full after the premiere aired live, opting to post a collection of short clips on their website. These original clips have since been removed from their site, and to make matters worse, due to Adobe killing Flash (Technical explanation for those that care: the original clips .swf files were never archived, making them impossible to play on emulators like Ruffle.), the clips are unplayable on archived links on the wayback machine
- Since the full interview was never uploaded to MTV, the only way you could watch it after the premiere in full was unofficially through either a TV recording or a live stream recording of the event as it was happening. That being said, it’s unclear how many people recorded the event, and all recordings that were once uploaded on platforms like Dailymotion and YouTube were taken down by Viacom for copyright years and years ago
- It’s unclear if there are any surviving links to recordings of the interview that weren’t taken down for copyright, meaning we likely need to find someone who still has a recording on their
local hard drive to uncover the full interview. However, since the interview is now 14 years old, finding someone to contact who saved it to their hard drive over a decade ago (and someone who still cares about Kanye) is difficult
- People for whatever reason confuse this interview with either the 2013 Sway In the Morning interview, or the 2010 Runaway interview on BET with Rocsi, and just dismiss it as being “super easy to find”
Existing Footage
- Platform: YouTube
- Date: October 25, 2010
- User: heywhatnooo
- Duration: 0:26
- Content: Phone recording of Kanye showing the moments which led to the iconic gif
- Platform: Vimeo
- Date: October 31, 2010, 1:56:15PM
- User: morley korg
- Duration: 2:10
- Content: “I prodded the demon last week during his live post-Runaway interview, repeatedly sending questions about his demonic nature. Naturally, the soulless bastard felt forced to address it, and I took it from there” - Vimeo description
- Platform: Jezebel.com
- Date: November 13, 2010
- User: Tracie Egan Morrisey
- Duration: 10 seconds
- Content: “Any me thinking twice about what’s really in my heart because of what people’s reactions would be is me selling my soul to the devil, but now it’s like I can’t think twice” - direct quote
Photos
- Photos From Kanye West's 'Runaway' Interview
- Taken by Circe Baumgartner
- Circe Baumgartner's Home Page
- Taken by Circe Baumgartner
Dead Links
Playlist of MTV uploaded clips:
https://www.mtv.com/videos/kanye-wests-runaway/1650620/playlist.jhtml#vid=589708
Individual MTV clips:
https://www.mtv.com/episodes?id=1650374
YouTube upload:
Mrworldpremiere Dailymotion uploads:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfck03_kw-run-q-a-part-1_webcam
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfck25_kw-run-q-a-part-2_webcam
Musicplayon upload:
http://en.musicplayon.com/play?v=359547
Leads / Potential Leads
The original creator of the gif flipboitamidles:
The famous gif of Ye laughing hysterically into a sudden blank expression was created by the user flipboitamidles on the KTT (kanyetothe) forums back in 2010.
https://twitter.com/flipboitamidles/status/1469194237031817217?s=46&t=1N4Q3Re1FXABmLlCgMPikA
Efforts were made to reach out to him on Twitter but it’s unclear if he still has a digital copy of the interview on his old harddrive (he ghosted me)
Mrworldpremiere:
https://x.com/rhythmicreason/status/1692935910256468382?s=20
Efforts were made to reach out to mrworldpremiere on twitter, who uploaded the interview on dailymotion back in 2010. Unclear if he still has a copy on his harddrive.
Mtyb05 on KTT (kanyetothe)
User on KTT who said he recorded the entire interview on the original reaction thread. Efforts are being made to reach out to him.
CaCHooKa Man
User on KTT who posted a screencap of the Runaway film from the MTV broadcast. Unknown if he recorded the interview afterwards. Efforts are being made to reach out.