The offensive inspiration behind Kanye West's Adidas range

Kanye West says his Adidas range was inspired by the London riots. Photo / AP

Kanye West had the trainer-grabbing London looters of the 2011 riots in mind when he designed his new Adidas Originals Collection.

In a new interview with Style, the rapper also described himself as "the Robin Hood of fashion" because he believes there is "some information" in his designs "that can help people have better lives".

Kanye West appears with models during the showing of the Kanye West Adidas Fall 2015 collection at Fashion Week. Photo / AP

"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," he said of being in the capital when the violent events erupted.

"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."

In the interview, he also claimed he relished every opportunity to cleanse the world of ignorance.

"Racism and the focus on racism is a distraction to humanity," he said.

"It would be like focusing on the cousin from your mum'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 clean-up crew. And we're only cleaning up by helping each other."

His comments come a week after he claimed the "voices in his head" made him crash Beck's Best Album acceptance speech at the Grammys.

The rapper relived his 2009 MTV VMA Taylor Swift stage invasion to interrupt the musician on Beyoncé's behalf.

"What I really wanted to do [was] just joke around about what had happened before, but I just really didn't want to take away from Beck's moment or the time he's having to talk," he said.

"The Grammys, they play music really quick no matter who you are and everything. So I didn't want anything to take away from his screen time."

He went on to describe his comments about Beck respecting "artistry" was a "mis-wording".

He also expressed his hopes that the pair would be able to reconcile and "still go play basketball and stuff."

- Independent