This inspired his song 'Through the Wire' the song would eventually be re-recorded and included on his debut album The College Dropout, which opened to mass critical and commercial fanfare, jump-starting his career. However, his emphatically middle-class background - being the son of a photojournalist and an English professor, and partly raised in the suburbs - didn't fit the profile for the Gangsta Rap popular at the time, and as a result he was long pigeonholed as an illegitimate 'producer-rapper' before being reluctantly being signed to the label he was an in-house producer for, Jay-Z's Roc-a-Fella Records.Įverything changed on October 23, 2002, when West was involved in a car crash after midnight that shattered his jaw.

Originally a producer in the mid-'90s for local Chicago artists, eventually making it big as arguably the secret ingredient to Jay-Z's Career Resurrection come the Turn of the Millennium, West started dreaming of becoming a rapper.

While he has become one of the most polarizing artists of the 21st century, few can claim to have impacted music and modern pop culture as a whole in the way West has, by means of both his artistic statements and a long, long list of controversial actions. Ye note yes, that is currently his legal name he had it changed in late 2021, reportedly inspired by the prominent use of the word 'ye' in the Bible (born Kanye note Pronounced 'KON-yay' and NOT spelled 'Kayne' Omari West June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer-songwriter, record producer, entrepreneur and fashion designer from Chicago, Illinois (born in Atlanta, Georgia).

Kanye 808s and heartbreak concert