American rapper Ye, also known as Kanye West, is also a record producer, businessman, fashion designer, and entrepreneur. He is widely recognized as one of his generation’s greatest musicians as well as one of the greatest and most influential hip-hop artists of all time. Kanye West, who was born in Atlanta and reared in Chicago, rose to fame as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records in the early 2000s.
Kanye West did this by creating the “chipmunk soul” sampling technique and releasing singles for a number of singers.
Kanye West has worked as a fashion designer on apparel and footwear for Nike, Louis Vuitton, The Gap, and A.P.C. He also oversees the Yeezy partnership with Adidas. He founded and serves as the company CEO of Donda, a provider of original content. Kanye West ran an unsuccessful independent presidential campaign in 2020, focusing on promoting a standard code of conduct.
Kanye West is one of the best-selling musicians in the world, with over 160 million albums sold. He has received 24 Grammy Awards, which ranks him and Jay-Z as the two rappers with the most Grammys ever. His other honors include the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, the Billboard Artist Achievement Award, and a joint-record three Brit Awards for Best International Male Solo Artist. The 2020 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list by Rolling Stone featured six of West’s albums, and the same journal also named him one of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time.
Kanye West shares the record with Bob Dylan for the most albums to top the Pazz & Jop critics’ poll each year, and he has had the fifth-most Billboard Hot 100 performances (133 entries). In both 2005 and 2015, Time magazine included him in its list of the 100 most influential people in the world. He will be the richest musician in the world according to Forbes’ estimate of his net worth as of 2022, which is $2 billion.
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Who is Kanye West?
Kanye Omari West was given the name Ye at birth on June 8, 1977, in Atlanta, Georgia. He relocated to Chicago, Illinois, with his mother when he was three years old, following the separation of his parents. Former Black Panther Ray West, his father, was one of the first black photojournalists employed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Ray then changed his profession to that of a Christian counselor, and in 2006, with startup funding from his son, he built the Good Water Store and Café in Lexington Park, Maryland. Before retiring to become West’s manager, West’s mother, Dr. Donda C. West, was a professor of English at Clark Atlanta University and the chair of the English department at Chicago State University.
After living in Chicago, West attended Polaris School for Individual Education in the suburb of Oak Lawn, Illinois, where he was raised in a middle-class household. When West was ten years old, his mother relocated to Nanjing, China, where she was a Fulbright Scholar and taught at Nanjing University. West’s mother claims that despite being the only outsider in his class, he adjusted well and took up the language rapidly, albeit he has now lost most of it. I got A’s and B’s in high school,” West remarked when asked about his grades.
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Kanye West convinced his mother to pay for time in a recording studio at the age of thirteen after writing the rap song “Green Eggs and Ham,” which is also the name of a popular children’s book by Dr. Seuss. West’s mother accompanied him to the studio even though she learned that it was “a little basement studio” where a microphone was suspended from the ceiling on a wire clothes hanger. When West encountered producer/DJ No I.D., they instantly became good friends. After receiving his first sampler at age 15, No I.D. quickly became Kanye West’s tutor, and it was from him that West learned how to sample and create tracks.
Kanye West started studying painting classes at Chicago’s American Academy of Art in 1997 after receiving a scholarship to do so after high school. He soon transferred to Chicago State University to pursue an English degree. At age 20, he left college to pursue his musical aspirations after quickly realizing that his demanding educational schedule was damaging to his musical career. His mother, who worked as a professor at the university, was extremely upset by this.
“It was drummed into my head that college is the ticket to a good life … but some career goals don’t require college. For Kanye to make an album called College Dropout was more about having the guts to embrace who you are, rather than following the path society has carved out for you,” She remarked.
Kanye West’s Career
Midway through the 1990s, Kanye West started his early producing career by making beats mostly for up-and-coming regional acts. Over time, he evolved into a producer who specialized in accelerating vocal samples from vintage soul songs. At the age of nineteen, he earned his first formal producing credits by working on eight tracks for Chicago rapper Grav’s 1996 debut album, Down to Earth.
For a while, Kanye West worked as Deric “D-Dot” Angelettie’s “ghost producer.” West founded and became a member and producer of the Go-Getters, a late-1990s Chicago rap trio made up of him, GLC, Timmy G, Really Doe, and Arrowstar, because he was unable to record a solo album due to his affiliation with D-Dot.
Under the direction of the management company Hustle Period, John Monopoly, Don Crowley, and Happy Lewis oversaw his group. The Go-Getters’ first and only studio album, World Record Holders, was released in 1999 after they participated in a number of promotional picture shoots and radio performances. Other rappers from Chicago who appeared on the album included Rhymefest, Mikkey Halsted, Miss Criss, and Shayla G. Meanwhile, West, Arrowstar, Boogz, and Brian “All Day” Miller was in charge of production.
Kanye West was the first person Gee Roberson and Kyambo “Hip Hop” Joshua to sign to their management-production firm Hip Hop in 1998. Since 1978. Much of the late 1990s was devoted to creating records West for other well-known musicians and acts. Kanye West produced the third song on Foxy Brown’s Chyna Doll, her second studio album. Her second attempt went on to become the first female rapper’s hip-hop album to top the U.S. Billboard 200 list in its first week of availability.
With Jermaine Dupri and the production team Trackmasters, West co-produced three of the songs on Harlem World’s debut and lone album The Movement. Rappers Nas, Drag-On, and R&B singer Carl Thomas all appeared in his songs. West and his manager Deric “D-Dot” Angelettie co-produced the ninth song from World Party, the final Goodie Mob album to contain the rap group’s four founding members before their dissolution. Rappers including Ma$e, Raekwon, and Eminem made guest appearances on West’s six songs for the album Tell ‘Em Why U Madd, which was released by D-Dot under the guise of The Madd Rapper near the end of the millennium.
On October 23, 2002, a year after working late at a California recording studio, West had his breakthrough when he collided head-on with another vehicle while driving home. He had a broken jaw from the collision, which required reconstructive surgery to wire shut. The other driver’s legs were broken in the collision. West was motivated by the accident; two weeks after being admitted to the hospital and with his mouth still wired shut, he recorded a song at the Record Plant Studios.
As per West, “all the better artists have expressed what they were going through,” the song “Through the Wire” helped create the groundwork for his debut album by expressing West’s experience following the accident. The album, West continued, “was my medicine” because it allowed him to escape his suffering. The first time “Through the Wire” was made available was on December 2002’s Get Well Soon… mixtape by Kanye West. West also revealed that he was creating an album called The College Dropout, whose main focus was to “make your own decisions. Don’t let society tell you, ‘This is what you have to do.'”
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His breakthrough single, “Through the Wire,” reached number fifteen on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for five weeks before The College Dropout was eventually released by Roc-A-Fella in February 2004 and rocketed to number two on the Billboard 200. His second single, “Slow Jamz,” which featured Twista and Jamie Foxx, was even more successful, becoming the trio’s first number-one smash.
The College Dropout has consistently been regarded among the greatest hip-hop works and artist debut albums. It earned nearly universal praise from modern music critics and was chosen as the year’s best album by two significant music publications.
The album’s fourth single, “Jesus Walks,” which deals with faith and Christianity, may have given West more exposure. Industry insiders said that a song with such overt statements of religion would never make it to the radio, yet the song somehow made it to the top 20 of the Billboard pop charts. In the end, The College Dropout got a triple platinum certification in the US and won 10 Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year and Best Rap Album which it received.
During this time, West also established GOOD Music, a record label and management outfit that would later house affiliated musicians and producers like No I.D. and John Legend, and performed the song “Whole City Behind Us” in an advertisement for Boost Mobile with Ludacris and the Game. The utilization of sped-up vocal samples from soul albums was the mainstay of West’s production technique at the time.
However, due in large part to The College Dropout’s success, other artists had duplicated this sampling approach frequently. West thought that this overuse had led to a dependency on the technique, so he set out to develop a fresh sound. He also worked on singles for Brandy, Common, John Legend, and Slum Village at this time.
Kanye West started working on his second album that fall, spending $2 million and taking more than a year to complete it. Roseland NYC Live, a 1998 live album made in collaboration with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra by the English trip-hop duo Portishead, served as a major source of inspiration for West.
The live album influenced him to use string arrangements in his early hip-hop productions. The money from his commercial success allowed Kanye West to engage a string orchestra for his second album, Late Registration, even though he had not been able to afford many live instruments at the time of his debut record.
While West had caused controversy when he rushed out of the American Music Awards in 2004 after Gretchen Wilson won the Best New Artist award, his first significant incident occurred just days after the release of Late Registration, at a concert to support Hurricane Katrina victims. West was a featured speaker at A Concert for Hurricane Relief, which was televised by NBC in September 2005.
Graduation, Kanye West’s third studio album, received a lot of attention when it was released on the same day as rapper 50 Cent’s Curtis. Graduation outsold Curtis by a significant margin after its September 2007 release; the album debuted at the top of the U.S. Billboard 200 chart and sold 957,000 copies in its first week. West’s recent critical and commercial successes continued with Graduation, and the album’s lead song, “Stronger,” became his third number-one smash.
When West’s mother, Donda West, passed away in November 2007 from complications following cosmetic surgery involving an abdominoplasty and breast reduction, his life took a different turn. Months later, Alexis Phifer and West called off their long-distance, sporadic engagement and relationship, which had started in 2002. The incidents had a significant impact on West, who shortly after left on his 2008 Glow in the Dark Tour.
In addition to performing the album’s lead track, “Love Lockdown,” during the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards, Kanye West also unveiled his fourth album, 808s & Heartbreak. The atypical production style and the use of Auto-Tune surprised music audiences, which defined the song’s reaction before its official release.
The lead song “Love Lockdown” was released and debuted at number three on the Billboard Hot 100, earning it the title of “Hot Shot Debut.” The album’s follow-up single “Heartless” performed similarly and debuted at number four, earning him his second straight “Hot Shot Debut.” Despite backlash before its release, 808s & Heartbreak had a big impact on hip-hop music and inspired other rappers to experiment more with their productions.
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Kanye West’s contentious episode at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards the following year sparked controversy across the music business. In order to claim that Beyoncé’s video for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” which was nominated for the same award, was “one of the best videos of all time,” during the ceremony, West stormed the stage and snatched the microphone away from Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech for “Best Female Video.” As a result of his conduct, he was later removed from the rest of the show. In response to the uproar, West and Lady Gaga’s Fame Kills tour was postponed. West was awarded the year’s top male artist by Billboard in 2009.
West’s fifth studio album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, was widely praised by critics when it was released in November 2010. Many of them thought it was his best work and believed it sealed his comeback. Dark Fantasy follows a maximalist philosophy and deals with themes of extravagance and notoriety, in stark contrast to his previous work, which had a minimalist tone.
The album featured the worldwide success “All of the Lights,” as well as the Billboard singles “Power,” “Monster,” and “Runaway,” the latter of which came with a 35-minute movie of the same name starring and directed by West. West started the free music program GOOD Fridays during this time on his website, allowing a free download of recently unheard tracks every Friday, some of which were featured on the album.
The album Dark Fantasy went on to achieve platinum status in the US, however, the media criticized it for not being nominated for Album of the Year at the 54th Grammy Awards, calling it a “snub.”
Jay-Z and Kanye West collaborated on the album Watch the Throne, which was released in August 2011. Watch the Throne became one of the few major label albums in the Internet age to prevent a leak by using a sales plan that saw the album distributed digitally weeks before its physical equivalent.
When it peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100, “Niggas in Paris” became the song with the record’s highest chart position. October 2011 saw the beginning of the co-headlining Watch the Throne Tour, which ended in June 2012. 2012 saw the release of West’s compilation album Cruel Summer, which featured songs by performers signed to his record label GOOD Music.
Four singles from Cruel Summer were released, and “Mercy” and “Clique” both peaked in the top twenty of the Hot 100. The same-titled movie, which Kanye West also directed, had its world premiere at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival on seven screens in a viewing pavilion with a special pyramid design.
On June 18, 2013, Yeezus, Kanye West’s sixth album, was released to ecstatic reviews from reviewers. It was both his lowest solo opening week sales and his sixth straight number-one launch. The album’s debut track, “Black Skinhead,” was released by Def Jam to radio in July 2013.
On June 18, 2013, Yeezus, Kanye West’s sixth album, was released to ecstatic reviews from reviewers. It was both his lowest solo opening week sales and his sixth straight number-one launch. The album’s debut track, “Black Skinhead,” was released by Def Jam to radio in July 2013.
To support Yeezus, Kanye West announced in September 2013 that he would headline his first solo tour in five years, with fellow American rapper Kendrick Lamar joining him as a support act. Critics gave the tour five-star reviews. It was “crazily entertaining, hugely ambitious, emotionally affecting (really!) and, most importantly, totally bonkers,” according to Rolling Stone.
The show is “overwrought and uncomfortable at times, but [it] excels at challenging norms and provoking thought in a way that just isn’t common for mainstream musical acts of late,” wrote Zack O’Malley Greenburg in a Forbes article praising West for “taking risks that few pop stars, if any, are willing to take in today’s hyper-exposed world of pop.”
Rihanna and McCartney collaborated on the song “FourFiveSeconds,” which was released in January 2015. Additionally, Kanye West made an appearance on the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special, where he debuted the song “Wolves,” a collaboration with Sia and Vic Mensa, a rapper from Chicago.
In addition to releasing “Real Friends” and a preview of “No More Parties in LA” with Kendrick Lamar, West confirmed in January 2016 that SWISH would be released on February 11. Additionally, this brought back the GOOD Fridays project, in which he releases a new track every Friday. West confirmed that he had changed the album’s name from SWISH to Waves on January 26, 2016.
In the days before the album’s release, West was involved in a number of Twitter disputes and revealed a number of revisions of the album’s tracklist.
The title was once again modified by West a few days before the album’s release; this time, it became The Life of Pablo. At Madison Square Garden, West debuted the album on February 11th.
West announced on Twitter in February 2016 that he intended to release a new album in the summer of that year, which he was provisionally titling Turbo Grafx 16 in honor of the same-named video game platform from the 1990s. The joint lead single “Champions” from the GOOD Music album Cruel Winter, which hasn’t been published yet, was leaked by West in June 2016.
Later that month, West released a contentious music video for “Famous” in which wax replicas of several famous people—including West, Kardashian, Taylor Swift, Donald Trump, a businessman and then-presidential candidate, Bill Cosby, and former President George W. Bush—were shown cuddling up in a bed together.
In May 2017, it was revealed that West was working with a wide spectrum of musicians to record new music in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Break the Simulation is a philosophical book that West stated he would write in April 2018. He later clarified that he was sharing the book “in real time” on Twitter and started releasing content that was compared to “life counseling.” Later in the same month, he also revealed the June release dates for two new albums: a solo effort and a joint effort with Kid Cudi titled Kids See Ghosts.
He also disclosed that he would produce Nas, Pusha T, and Teyana Taylor’s forthcoming albums for the GOOD Music label. The non-album singles “Lift Yourself,” a “strange, gibberish music” with absurd lyrics, and “Ye vs. the People,” in which he and T.I. debated West’s contentious backing of Donald Trump, were also released shortly after.
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The album artwork for Pusha T’s Daytona, “the first project out of Wyoming,” a picture of the late Whitney Houston’s bathroom that Kanye West spent $85,000 to license, sparked significant debate when it was published in May. The following week, West’s eighth studio album, Ye, was made available. West has said that he re-recorded the album within a month after tossing the old tracks.
The following week, West and Kid Cudi released a joint album under the name Kids See Ghosts, which was inspired by their band of the same name. Nas’ Nasir and Teyana Taylor’s K.T.S.E., both of which were released in June 2018, were also produced by West.
The non-album song “XTCY,” which was previously planned to appear on Ye, was released by West on August 30, 2018. West and American rapper Lil Pump collaborated on the song “I Love It,” which was released on September 7th. West revealed the release date for Watch the Throne 2 on September 9 via Twitter. Later that month, West also revealed plans for his collaborative album, Good Ass Job, with fellow Chicago rapper Chance the Rapper, as well as the release of his ninth studio album, Yandhi, before the end of the month.
Kanye West also declared in September that he would switch to the name “Ye” as his stage name. Yandhi’s release date was originally scheduled for September 29, 2018, but it was changed to November 23, 2018. Later, in November 2018, West postponed the album once more with no new release date announced.
Later in the year, West started working with other musicians. He made a guest appearance with Nicki Minaj on the songs “Kanga” and “Mama” from American rapper 6ix9ine’s first album Dummy Boy. On the debut posthumous album Skins by XXXTentacion, West is the only featured artist. Both 6ix9ine and XXXTentacion were expected to appear on Yandhi. West canceled his appearance as the festival’s headlining act in January 2019 after negotiations fell through owing to disagreements over the stage layout.
Online song leaks from Kanye West’s unannounced album Yandhi were reported on July 18, 2019. The entire unfinished album that had been leaked by October of the same year was briefly made available on streaming services like Spotify and Tidal before being removed. Yandhi was effectively dropped when Kim Kardashian revealed on August 29, 2019, that West’s upcoming album would be called Jesus Is King.
Beginning on January 6, 2019, West began his weekly “Sunday Service” arrangement, which features soul renditions of his own songs as well as those of others. Several famous people, including the Kardashians, Charlie Wilson, and Kid Cudi, attended. At his orchestral performance of “Sunday Service” during Coachella’s second weekend, West debuted a brand-new song, “Water.”
On November 18, 2019, West revealed through Twitter that he would be releasing “JESUS IS KING II,” a remix album featuring [Dr. Dre] as a follow-up to Jesus is King. The initiative has not yet gone public. Only the remixes of the songs “Follow God,” “God Is,” “Every Hour/Selah,” as well as the unreleased tracks “Ashes” and “LA Monster,” have been made available online as of July 2022. In addition, West revealed a remix of “Use This Gospel” that includes a verse from Eminem.
The debut song from Kanye West’s tenth studio album Donda, “Wash Us in the Blood,” which features Travis Scott, another American rapper, and singer, was made available on June 30, 2020. It is comparable to the sound of West’s 2013 album Yeezus.
However, in a Twitter rant over record industry contracts, payments to artists and musicians, and the subject of ownership of their masters, West declared in September 2020 that he would not be releasing any more songs until he is “done with [his] deal with Sony and Universal.”
Donda was finally launched on August 29, 2021, after numerous delays. According to Kanye West, the album was released ahead of schedule without his consent. Additionally, he claimed that “Jail, Pt. 2,” a song featuring the controversial musicians DaBaby and Marilyn Manson, had been taken down by Universal. Soon after its release, the song was added to online music services.
On November 4, 2021, West indicated that a deluxe edition of Donda would soon be released during an episode of Revolt TV’s “Drink Champs” podcast.
Kanye West was announced as one of the headliners for the 2022 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on January 5, 2022. Later that month, West shared the Instagram cover art for his next track “Eazy” alongside rapper the Game. Although it was initially captured by English photographer and sporadic West associate Nick Knight in 1997, the image prominently depicts the corpse of a skinned monkey, which was criticized by the animal rights organization PETA. On January 15, the song was released.
Kanye West gave the Donda Experience Performance at LoanDepot Park on February 22, 2022. The Sunday Service Choir, The Game, Migos, Pusha T, Jack Harlow, Alicia Keys, Fivio Foreign, and Playboi Carti all made special guest appearances during this performance, which featured songs from Donda 2, Donda, and the Sunday Service Choir.
The Rolling Loud Miami Festival’s organizers declared on July 17, 2022, that West will no longer be the opening-night headliner on July 22, 2022.
Awards and Achievements
Kanye West has received numerous honors. Webby Award for Artist of the Year, Accessories Council Excellence Award for Stylemaker, GQ Awards International Man of the Year, Clio Award for The Life of Pablo Album Experience, and recognition from The Recording Academy are a few examples. The Billboard Artist Achievement Award has been given to eight artists, including West.
Kanye West is one of three artists to have received the Brit Award for Best International Male Solo Artist in back-to-back years, and he has won it a joint-record three times. He made history in 2011 by becoming the first artist to take home three Best Male Hip-Hop Artist BET Awards awards, the male artist with the most victories for Video of the Year at the event, and the only recipient of the Visionary Award at the BET Honors.
Nine nominations for Best Hip-Hop Video and two for Best Male Video make up West’s total number of nominations at the MTV Video Music Awards. He was the third rap group to get the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award in 2015. West is the rapper with the second-most Grammy awards and nominations of any artist (both behind Jay-Z). He received the most nominations at five awards shows, the most Grammys for a male artist, and the fourth-most awards overall in the 2000s.
Kanye West made history in 2008 when his first three albums were nominated for Album of the Year, making him the first solo artist to do it. West has won the award for Best Rap Album four times, while Eminem has won it six times, making them the only performers to have won it several times in a row. For Best Rap Song, West has received the most nominations and wins.
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One of the all-time top-selling digital artists is West. He holds the seventh-highest certification among US artists for digital singles (69 million). He was the fourth best-selling artist of digital tracks in the US throughout the 2000s and had the most male artists with RIAA digital song certifications. West was the fourth fastest artist to reach one billion streams in the first 10 years of Spotify’s existence, from 2008 to 2018, and the sixth most streamed artist overall. West has the joint-most studio albums that have debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart in a row.
West was the only act to sell more than 800,000 albums in a single week between August 2005 and June 2008, and he had the two biggest first-week album sales in the US. Both Graduation and Watch the Throne set records for first-week sales of digital albums on iTunes in the US.
Kanye West has six number-one singles, which ranks joint-fifth most in New Zealand, and three number-one singles on the Hot Rap Songs chart (nine). He has 20 top-ten hits in the UK, which is the third-most for a rapper, and the joint-second-most platinum singles in the country (eight). One of the seven acts with more than 100 Billboard Hot 100 entries is West.
Kanye West made history in 2008 when his first three albums were nominated for Album of the Year, making him the first solo artist to do it. West has won the award for Best Rap Album four times, while Eminem has won it six times, making them the only performers to have won it several times in a row. For Best Rap Song, West has received the most nominations and wins.
The College Dropout was named the best album of the 2000s decade by Entertainment Weekly, Graduation was named the best album released between 2002 and 2012 by Complex, 808s & Heartbreak was named one of the 40 most revolutionary albums of all time by Rolling Stone, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was named the best album of the 2010s decade and one of the greatest albums of all time by numerous publications, Yeezus was the most critically acclaimed album of 2013, and The College Dropout was named the best album of the 2000s.
One of the best hip-hop producers of all time is thought to be Kanye West. He appeared the most times on Complex’s list of the “Best Producers of every year since 1979.” (five). On the list of top producers on Billboard’s 2000s decade-ending charts, West came in third. After topping the Pazz & Jop critics’ poll the joint-most times, West has made more appearances (four) than any other performer on The Guardian’s “The Best Albums of the 21st Century” list (four albums).
Kanye west was the first non-athlete to sign a shoe deal with Nike in 2009. He was ranked third on NME’s list of the most influential musicians of 2014. West was the second rapper to ever perform as the Glastonbury Festival’s headlining act in 2015.
Kanye received the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Christian Music Album. At the 2021 BMI Trailblazers of Gospel Music Awards, he received the Songwriter of the Year award.
Kanye West Fashion Line – Yeezy
With his 2009 Air Yeezys sneaker, West became the first non-athlete to sign a shoe deal with Nike. West has long exhibited an interest in fashion. Along with Louis Vuitton, Bape, and Giuseppe Zanotti, he has also created footwear. In 2011 and 2012, he also debuted two apparel lines during Paris Fashion Week.
Adidas formally unveiled its new shoe collaboration with West in December 2013. The “Light Brown” version of the Yeezy Boost 750 sneaker was first made available on February 14, 2015, only in New York City via the Adidas mobile app, and it sold out in just ten minutes.
The Adidas and Yeezy sneaker collaboration had a total of 19 colors and 6 designs as of December 2017. 2015 saw the launch of Season 1 of Kanye West’s Yeezy apparel brand with Adidas. Season 2 came out later that year, and Season 3 premiered in February 2016.
Adidas stated in June 2016 that West has signed a long-term partnership with them after the success of his early launches. Kanye typically receives a 10% royalty on Adidas’ net sales. In contrast to Adidas.com, he receives a large royalty for goods sold through his own website, YeezySupply.com. Around 10% is his combined average royalty rate.
With positive reviews from critics, West debuted the Yeezy Season 5 line in February 2017. Kanye West and his wife Kim Kardashian debuted their kids’ clothing brand, “Kids Supply,” in May 2017. In July 2017, a second collection was made available. “Yeezy is no longer a fashion firm,” tweeted Kanye West in February. “We should be referred to as apparel or clothes or just YEEZY.”
One of the most well-known sneaker companies in the world is Kanye West’s Yeezy line. West’s “creative flair for design reflects his musical risk-taking,” according to Timm T. West. Another source described how West’s capacity to take on numerous projects has undermined traditional categories for creative production by comparing him to an orisha.
Influencers posed as Kim Kardashian clones to promote Yeezy Season 6 on Instagram in January 2018. West’s involvement in the fashion industry was called into doubt by this stunt. Whether or not it was a lighthearted homage to his wife or a critique of social media materialism. The purpose of the experiment was to challenge the top-down structure of the fashion industry. Influencers, porn stars, and Paris Hilton were among the models, who were all platinum blonde and wearing Yeezy season 6.
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It should be emphasized that, as of this writing, Kanye controls the whole stock of the Yeezy clothing brand.
Yeezy LLC was noted in a log maintained by the US Department of the Treasury of companies that had benefited from small company loans under the CARES Act as of July 2020.
Kanye West agreed to a 10-year contract in May 2021 that would tie Yeezy to GAP. Designer Mowalola Ogunlesi, a 25-year-old Nigerian-British, is in charge of the line. The first item from the collection, a blue, seamless, down jacket, was introduced in June 2021. It was favorably welcomed and sold out almost immediately.
Other Assets and Philanthropy
He also owns the business KW Foods LLC, which is the Chicago-based franchisee of the Fatburger fast-food chain. West announced the launch of DONDA, a creative content company named after his late mother Donda West, in January 2012. Along with musicians Jay-Z, Rihanna, Madonna, Chris Martin, and Nicki Minaj, West is also a co-owner of the music streaming service Tidal. The majority of the interested parties each share a 3% equity stake.
His charitable endeavors include the Kanye West Foundation, which supports Latino and African American children’s education, as well as donations of time, talent, and money to groups like Live Earth, World Water Day, and Hurricane Katrina assistance.
Kanye West’s Personal Life
Designer Alexis Phifer and West started dating intermittently in 2002; they were engaged in August 2006. 2008 saw the end of the couple’s 18-month engagement. From then until the summer of 2010, West dated the model, Amber Rose. West had been friends with reality television star Kim Kardashian for a long time before they started dating in April 2012. Kardashian and West got engaged in October 2013, and they wed on May 24, 2014, at Fort di Belvedere in Florence.
Kanye West took issue with the fact that the mainstream media covered their private ceremony extensively. They have four kids: Psalm West, born through a surrogate in May 2019, Saint West, born through a surrogate in December 2015, and North and Saint West, each born in June 2013 and January 2018 respectively.
In order to have North baptized in the Armenian Apostolic Church at the Cathedral of St. James, West and Kardashian (who is of Armenian origin) flew to Jerusalem in April 2015. On October 7, 2019, all of their other children were baptized at Etchmiadzin Cathedral, the mother church of the Armenian Church. Due to the couple’s high-profile status and successful individual professions, there has been extensive media coverage of their relationship; The New York Times described their union as “a historic blizzard of celebrity.”
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West made the permanent relocation to Chicago to set up the Yeezy corporate headquarters public in September 2018. This did not truly happen, and West went on to buy two ranches close to Cody, Wyoming, where he recorded Ye, his eighth studio album as a solo artist. While West moved into a property across the street to stay close to their kids, Kardashian continues to live with them in a California home that the now-divorced couple owns. West started the process of selling his property in Wyoming in the fall of 2021.
Kanye West said in July 2020 that he had pondered an abortion during Kardashian’s first pregnancy but has since adopted anti-abortion views during a rally for his presidential campaign. He made the remark and recognized that it might drive Kardashian to call their marriage off. Later that month, West tweeted that he had been trying to get divorced from Kardashian. Additionally, he said that the Kardashians were trying “to lock [him] up.”
CNN said that the pair were talking about divorcing in January 2021. Kardashian officially filed for divorce on February 19, 2021. He and Kardashian filed for divorce in April 2021, citing “irreconcilable disagreements,” and decided to share custody of their four children. Furthermore, they concurred that they don’t require spousal support. In 2021, West has made it clear or hinted that he would like to remain married to Kardashian than file for divorce. On March 2, 2022, Kardashian was deemed to be legally single.
Actress Julia Fox announced her relationship with West in an essay for an Interview in January 2022. Despite the connection, he publicly criticized Pete Davidson, comedian Kim Kardashian’s new boyfriend, and kept saying he wanted his “family back.” Commentators have called his treatment of Davidson and Kardashian an instance of abusive relationships and “harassment,” and the 64th Annual Grammy Awards dropped him as a performer in reaction to his “concerning online behavior.”
Less than two months after Fox publicly acknowledged her and West’s romance, she disclosed that they had broken up but were still friendly. She later said that the only reason she dated West during the COVID-19 outbreak was to “give folks something to talk about.”
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Kanye West Net Worth
American producer, rapper, fashion designer, and businessman Kanye West. Kanye West has a net worth of $6.6 billion as of this writing. He is one of the three self-made black millionaires in American history.
After his 2004 album, The College Dropout was released, Kanye became extremely well-known. With 21 Grammy wins from 69 nominations, he is currently among the most popular and honored performers on the planet. He has shifted his focus in recent years from music to business. West has amassed a large fortune thanks to his Yeezy/Adidas partnership.
Kanye West has recently made at least $100 million annually from his numerous projects. His royalties and other earnings from his Yeezy brand and Adidas collaboration account for the great majority of his earnings.
Yeezy earns a royalty on the more than $1.5 billion in annual sales of his own Yeezy clothing business, which he owns wholly and fully. Several private bank estimates place the value of the Yeezy brand at $4 and $5 billion. According to a March 2021 UBS estimation, Yeezy increases Kanye’s net worth by $3–4 billion. According to the same report, Kanye West’s contract with The Gap increased his net worth by an additional $1 billion.
