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Kanye West: Racism focus is a distraction

Kanye West insists the world's focus on racism is a ''distraction to humanity'' and has called on people to help each other ''clean-up'' the world rather than destroy it.

The 37-year-old rapper can't understand why people feel so strongly about others from a different race and while he admits it can make his life ''interesting'' hearing about people's differing views, he has called for people to help each other to ''clean-up'' the world rather than destroy it. He said: ''Racism and the focus on racism is a distraction to humanity.

It would be like focusing on the cousin from your mom's side versus the cousin on your dad's side. We're all cousins. We're all the same race. To even focus on the concept of race, it's like - perhaps people give me an extra cookie for the fact that my colour palette is so controlled and I'm black.

''When someone that's like, racist, comes up to me at A.P.C. and says, 'I thought it would be a bunch of animals on your shirts,' because they heard that I rapped. But it just makes the journey interesting.

''We came into a broken world. And we're the cleanup crew. And we're only cleaning up by helping each other.'' Kanye - who has 19-month-old daughter North with wife Kim Kardashian West - has also turned his hand to fashion designing and admitted one of his main influences for creating clothing collections was the 2011 London riots, which saw thousands of people causing chaos in several boroughs in the capital resulting in looting.

He added to Style.com: ''I also just wanted to say a major influence was the London riots because I was living in London at that time and saw the way that the kids wanted the clothes and I didn't have the skill set to do the more inexpensive clothes. ''This designer said to me one time, we were looking at something online, 'This looks like a really bad couture designer that no one knows.'

''Think about the idea of a really terrible couture designer, which there are a lot of. I didn't have the skill set to do inexpensive clothes. Now I have a team of really, really great designers that speak in a very Apple, Pixar-type [way].''