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Kanye West, Graduation

 

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Whatever you think of Kanye West - genius, prat, prattish genius - chances are he has thought it first. You can't imagine any other rapper uttering a line as candid as I Wonder's "You think I get on your fucking nerves." Much is made of West's elephantine ego, but what makes him far more interesting than your standard rap blowhard is the anxiety and doubt that inflate it. It is not so much arrogance as a mind game: if he says enough times that he's great, then the self-imposed pressure will goad him to be great.

 

Since he became hip-hop's most fascinating talent with the exhilarating one-two of 2004's The College Dropout and 2005's Late Registration, the Chicago rapper-producer's artistic ambition has swollen into a kind of mania. Not content with hip-hop, his recent underground mix album found him rapping over Thom Yorke's The Eraser and Peter, Bjorn & John's Young Folks, while Graduation happily sits Can next to Mos Def, and Chris Martin beside Lil Wayne.

The impression is one of gauche enthusiasm rather than cold calculation, but there is a frenzied hunger to his musical appetite, an attempt to assimilate everything into one irresistible sound. No wonder he approached Martin, another songwriter obsessed with the impossible objective of music so undeniable that even sceptics will throw up their arms and embrace it.

 

Graduation is not that record - nothing could be - but it's not for want of trying. The inspiration for the single Stronger - Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - could be Graduation's mission statement. So much work has evidently gone into every note that the album is both colossal and claustrophobic. Weighty, gothic synths bear down on several tracks. Bernard-Herrmann-esque strings glower over Flashing Lights. Drunk and Hot Girls, a bold, albeit ugly, experiment, is a dense, lurching variation on Can's Sing Swan Song. Another interestingly flawed venture is Homecoming. Here's a tip: if you're rapping about growing up in Chicago, don't duet with a singer from Devon. Emote though he may, Chris Martin can't convince anyone that he is moved by the memory of "fireworks over Lake Michigan".

 

Still, the music is never timid or conventional. Only as a lyricist does West sometimes disappoint. It is an unfortunate paradox that massive global success tends to shrink rather than expand a rapper's worldview, sealing them into the foggy bubble of celebrity until, vexed by a few criticisms, they mistake themselves for Nelson Mandela on Robben Island. Thing is, West is mostly tilting at windmills. One's admiration for his bravery in blurting "George Bush doesn't care about black people" after Hurricane Katrina wanes slightly upon realising, during the tense, angry Can't Tell Me Nothing, that he is less interested in the aftermath of Katrina than in the aftermath of what he said about Katrina. To call paparazzi worse than Nazis on Flashing Lights is simply imbecilic.

 

More often, though, he undercuts rap cliches with wit and ambivalence. The sexual prospecting of Drunk and Hot Girls has the salty realism of a Judd Apatow comedy: "Please don't throw up in the car." Barry Bonds, named after the controversial baseball star, is self-mocking braggadocio, winking at the listener with lines such as "I'm doing pretty good as far a geniuses go" and, "My head's so big you can't sit behind me". Big Brother's salute to mentor Jay-Z intertwines admiration and envy with fascinating honesty. "I told Jay I did a song with Coldplay," West sulks. "Next thing I know he got a song with Coldplay." Gentlemen, please. There's enough Coldplay to go round.

 

For those not interested in unpicking West's Gordian knot of insecurities, Graduation offers several instances of brilliant, questing pop, such as the jubilant Good Life or the squeaky Laura Nyro snippet on The Glory - nobody else can get so much out of a vocal sample. But his previous albums set the bar so high that one judges more harshly the occasional dud rhyme (cringe at the pairing of "Klondike" and "blond dyke" on Stronger), or trowelled-on synth smear, and wonders, more importantly, whether he now risks losing the ability to speak to listeners who aren't themselves conflicted multi-millionaire rap stars. He has the ears of the pop world. It would be a shame to squander that privilege on narcissistic bellyaching.

 

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2163386,00.html

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Kanye album 'outselling 50 Cent'

 

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Kanye West's song Stronger has been a major hit

 

Rapper Kanye West is winning the chart battle with 50 Cent on both sides of the Atlantic, early sales figures show. West's Graduation, which was released on the same day as his rival's third album, Curtis, could top the charts in both the UK and US.

 

50 Cent, real name Curtis Jackson, has vowed that he will retire from making solo albums if he is outsold by West. According to record sales executives in the US, West's album is projected to shift up to 700,000 copies this week.

 

Meanwhile, West has said that Britney Spears' comeback performance was used as a ratings ploy by MTV. The musician told a radio station in the US: "Man, they were trying to get ratings. They knew she wasn't ready and they exploited her."

 

The rapper added that he should have opened the MTV Music Video Awards show with his hit Stronger. Spears' first performance in three years kicked off the Las Vegas event and was widely seen as a disaster. West, 30, told Sirius Satellite Radio's Morning Mash Up show that MTV's decision was "a bad move".

 

"They exploited her, they played me and I really don't mess with MTV," said the chart-topper, who added that he had been asked to perform in a suite instead of the opening slot.

 

At Sunday night's awards ceremony, West threw a tantrum in front of the media after failing to pick up any of the five gongs he had been nominated for. "That's two years in a row, man... give a black man a chance," West said. "I'm trying hard, man, I have the number one record, man."

 

On Tuesday, the music broadcaster issued a statement about its "long and collaborative relationship" with the star, adding: "We hope and look forward to continuing that meaningful relationship."

 

Spears' performance of her new single Gimme More was critically panned. BBC correspondent David Willis, who witnessed the performance, said she appeared "really out of sorts" and "looked as though she completely lost the art of lip-syncing".

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6990599.stm

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Kanye's winter return

 

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Kanye's winter return

Gary Ryan

14/ 9/2007

 

KANYE West has cultivated a reputation for undiluted arrogance. Instances of his braying braggadocio have been well-documented: how he declared to journalists, upon the release of his first album, "Anyone who doesn't give this a perfect score is lowering the integrity of the magazine''; how when his big-budget promo for Touch The Sky failed to win best video at the MTV Europe Music Awards, he stormed the stage, grabbed the mic and attacked the validity of the whole ceremony.

 

All of which suggests Mother Nature left an IOU note where his humility should be.

 

And yet, if anyone has the right to be acquiring RSI from continually tooting his own trumpet, it's Kanye. Musically, he's unrivalled. Even those who only caught his thrilling sprint through his biggest hits (including the Shirley Bassey-sampling Diamonds From Sierra Leone and Gold Digger) couldn't fail to be awed by his alchemy, fusing symphonic soul to a futurist soundscape.

 

It was at Dianastock that Kanye premiered Stronger, the lead single from forthcoming third album, Graduation, which will complete the trilogy started in 2004 with The College Dropout and followed in 2005 by Late Registration. "Well, a lot of people keep on saying 'this final part to my records'," he jokes.

 

"But there's going to be a fourth part. The next one is called Good Ass Job, which is what you're supposed to get after you graduate."

 

At time of writing, Stronger - pivoted around a sample from Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - is on a collision course for the coveted No.1 spot in the singles chart. It was Kanye's discovery of the très now Gallic robots that helped shape the overall electro-charged sound of Graduation.

 

"I went to the Daft Punk show and it was the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life," he remembers.

 

"It pushed me to go back to the rest of the album. Hype Williams (director) heard Stronger and said, 'yeah we need to set the video in the future' and that made me go back to the rest of the album and start layering synths over the different songs. And that's how it really found its sound."

 

The Friday Night Project

 

Today, he's filming a stint as guest host of Channel 4's The Friday Night Project, a surprise move for hip-hop royalty. He's known for his witty couplets, but how is Kanye coping with revealing a more self-deprecating side? "I joke around all the time and stuff," he insists, "but you know, it doesn't come off like that in the media."

 

The media is the shadowy entity that drives West wild at the moment. As he sees it, the press view him, teeth bared, in a similar way as a vampire gazes at a haemophiliac. "I was dealing with a lot of flak from the media for emotional outbursts and different things," he says. "It really put me in a place where I had to make music to overcome that. It was all I had left. It was to the point where no one liked me. Like everybody thought I was just so arrogant."

 

Is he? "You know," he considers, "people are not really understanding what the true definition of confidence and the true definition of arrogance and the true definition of passion is. There's a difference between those three things. Arrogance is when you don't ask questions. I'll ask anybody questions about my songs and videos and change it according to people's feelings.

 

"But I'm also passionate and when I see an injustice or I feel like something is wrong, I'm going to speak out on it. And I just can't help it. I'd rather be hated for what I am than loved for what I'm not."

 

In September 2005, his Tourette's-like response to social wrongs detonated its most famous target. Appearing on a live telethon for victims of Hurricane Katrina, he veered wildly off the autocue complaining that "George Bush doesn't care about black people".

 

Beneath the distorting smokescreen of controversy, he was voicing what millions of Americans were probably thinking at the time. Of course, whereas the likes of Kanye and the Dixie Chicks were regarded as heretics for their prescient anti-establishment opinions, attacked and ostracised, these days Bush-baiting has become integral in racking up a Credibility High Score.

 

"I guess people are keeping it a little bit more real now," agrees Kanye. "At the time, that's what I had to do. It's almost a character flaw in me to be emotional and honest like that. Sometimes it works out; sometimes it can backfire on you."

 

Stance

 

Similarly, wearing his principles on his sleeve, he's one of the few (if not only) rap artists of note who has dared speak out against homophobia, a stance that would usually be considered as career suicide within hip-hop circles.

 

"Speaking out against hip-hop homophobia, some people were like 'Oh, Kanye must be gay! Look at the way he's dressing! And why would he speak about it? He's a gay rapper'," he notes. "And my whole point is, I wouldn't have spoke on that if I was gay or if I was in the closet. I would have stayed so far away from it.

 

"And I'm still homophobic myself to certain extent," he confesses. "You know, I wouldn't go to a gay parade and feel comfortable. I wouldn't ever to a gay club or something and just be chillin' and grab a drink.

 

"It's being in the entertainment world, I meet so many different gay people who are actually nice people. Where I came from, Chicago, being black and being a hip-hop artist, we used to really disrespect gay people. And the thing is, we can't get close to them with a 10-foot pole. And I realised, 'wow, how ignorant has this been?'"

 

West, whose first name is Swahili for 'the only one', is better company than you might expect, excitable and fluent in hyperbole. Ask him about the infamous MTV Awards rant, where he stormed the stage to protest against Touch The Sky losing out to Justice Versus Simian's We Are Your Friends (raving: "**** dis! My video cost a million dollars, Pamela Anderson was in it, I was jumping across canyons! If I don't win, the awards show loses credibility") , and he entertainingly motors on for 1,200 words uninterrupted, refusing to neuter his points.

 

You start to assume he filmed it on the Seventh Day when he was resting.

 

"You know, definitely I shouldn't have went onstage," he admits. "What I was trying to say was these awards shows are bull****. A few months later, at the Grammies, The Dixie Chicks won Song of the Year over Gnarls Barkley for Crazy. And I looked at Cee-Lo and I said, `do you want me to run onstage?' Because I'm sick of this **** happening.

 

"Everybody thinks I'm running onstage because it's about me. But no, it's about pop culture as a whole. We all have championships like sports players. So all I was doing was screaming at the ref.

 

"You don't know how important videos are to me. When I dropped the Heard 'Em Say video, I had a lukewarm response. So I obsessed over the Touch The Sky video and wanted to make a piece of pop art that connected across the board. And I felt like I accomplished that. I'm not saying that it's better than Thriller.

 

"And I'm not saying that it's the best video of all time. But I just think it was the best video of that year. By a landslide. So the videos shouldn't have even been mentioned in the same breath."

 

Budget

 

"The label said I had a $600,000 budget and I had to come up with that extra $400,000 somehow. I'm mentioned in the same breath as Puffy and Fifty Cent but I have nowhere near as much money. I don't have $400,000 disposable. And I felt like I was risking my life for it. When we were flying over the Grand Canyon, I always thought yo, OK, if I was to crash in this helicopter or something, it would be a very terrible thing, but at least it would go down in history that he died in pursuit of making great art.

 

"People have no idea of the amount of work that went into it. All they see is 'Kanye is a monster! He's so self-absorbed! He thinks it's all about him'."

 

"Maybe some snooty magazines won't cover me, but you know what? damn them! I don't even care. I'm emotional and I make good art and if that is the death of me, then that's what got me here in the first place."

 

Reflecting on the stage invasion, Simian's James Ford told CityLife: "It was pretty amazing to see someone like that with obviously an ego the size of a small country with no one around to tell him he's making a total **** of himself."

 

Does Kanye feel he has friends that act a stabilising influence, and ones who would rein him in and keep him grounded?

 

Good bunch

 

"Oh, definitely," he says. "I have a good bunch of people around me. I mean, a lot of it depends on what kind of person you are as well. Celebrities have the option of doing what they want. Some go and spend six months in Africa. Others spend the time on vacation. For me, because I make my music for real people, and that expresses people's struggles and everything people go through, I want to be a part of what's going on. So you know, I still would get on a train or catch a cab.

 

"I'm not like on a private jet every day. I'm interacting with people because I have to feel the vibe of everything that's going on and just be a part of that to write the way that I always did."

 

Graduation has led to some notable pairings. Takashi Murakami, the "Andy Warhol of Japan'', is responsible for creating the striking artwork surrounding the project while, closer to home, Chris Martin guests on the track, Homecoming ("He's a really funny guy," comments Kanye. "He's nice and intelligent and we had fun talking **** about people and making music.")

 

There's also a clothing line in the pipeline as well as a world tour masterminded by Jamie King (responsible for Madonna's ever-so-low-key jaunts).

 

At 30, Kanye's unflagging confidence is both his gift and his curse. And he's smart enough to know you can justify any behaviour through sheer force of talent. "All the flak I get - and more people hate than like me at the moment - only inspires me to make music that can overcome everything.

 

"But you know," he smiles, referencing his single's lyrics, "th-that don't kill me can only make me stronger."

 

Kanye West plays the M.E.N. Arena on Sunday, December 2. £30.

 

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/entertainment/music/rock_and_pop/s/1013712_kanyes_winter_return

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The Kayne West juggernaut

 

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The son of Chicago university professors, Kanye West had never seen a ghetto in his life. But that didn’t stop the multi-talented rapper/producer becoming hip-hop’s hippest superstar

 

Kanye West considers his first true moment of genius arrived 16 years ago, when he was 14. He and his classmates at Vanderpoel Elementary in Chicago were being driven to a banquet, a school tradition where children got to dine together as grown-ups. The girls wore dresses, the boys their Sunday best. Thanks to an enthusiasm for the then pop star Bobby Brown and a growing belief in clothes as an expression of individuality, West wore metal-toed dress shoes, a rayon Hawaiian shirt and green linen shorts. On the way, a friend started quoting Eddie Murphy’s stand-up show Raw. At the part where the comedian imagines gay San Francisco cops pulling him over for making homophobic remarks – “I’m gonna frisk you. You carrying any concealed weapons? What is this…?” – West lost it. He laughed so hard be peed his pants, right there on the school bus.

 

That’s when his genius kicked in. At the banquet he made a beeline for the bathroom, soaked his shorts in the sink and struggled back into them. Goodbye telltale dark patch. “I would rather have the pain of walking around with some cold, wet shorts,” he says, “than have my ego damaged.” Lately, he’s begun to wonder if there isn’t another side to this genius. “That’s also the perfect example of my greatest flaw,” he says. “My Achilles heel.”

 

It’s August. In a month’s time Kanye West will release Graduation, his latest and best album. Yesterday his single Stronger charted at No 3. But hip-hop is not a genre to satisfy itself with third places, and West has come to London for a week’s promotion – interviews, performances – to help things along. He sits on stage in a BBC theatre. As befits a man whose rigorousness over his appearance meant he started doing his own laundry aged 11, his wardrobe is no less street casual than it is impeccably considered: Dior jeans, Billionaire Boys Club pullover and Bathing Ape sneakers. Before him are 300 competition winners, guests of radio station 1Xtra. West will preview his new album, chat to DJ Trevor Nelson and answer questions.

 

Though the producer-turned-rapper has amassed many Grammys for a run of hits, including Jesus Walks, Diamonds From Sierra Leone and Gold Digger; it’s for his behaviour off-record that he is at least as well known. In September 2005, presenting a telethon for victims of Hurricane Katrina, he offroaded from the teleprompter to announce “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” to the horror of co-host Mike Myers but the delight of liberal America. The following January, he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone as Jesus, wearing a crown of thorns. In November, compounding an earlier incident when he walked out of the American Music Awards after conceding the Best New Artist award to country singer Gretchen Wilson, he took the MTV Europe Music Awards’ stage to protest that his Touch The Sky video had been passed over for Justice vs Simian’s We Are Your Friends. “F*** this!” he told 1.4 billion viewers. “My thing cost a million dollars, man. I had Pam Anderson. I was jumping across canyons and shit. If I don’t win, the award show loses credibility.” (He had already received an award that night – Best Hip-Hop Artist.)

 

In a genre hardly known for shrinking violets, West managed to cultivate an image as the biggest bighead of them all – it’s become a cliché to call him arrogant. But such self-regard has had an unexpected side-effect. In obsessively checking blogs about himself, this year he reached a sobering conclusion: people were beginning to hate him. Accordingly, he will spend much of his time in London explaining himself. But it’s not always easy. “How terrible my public perception was,” he sighs. “People think I’m this big asshole, and I’m just so full of myself and self-absorbed. And that’s not the case. I’m just really passionate.”

 

After he previews the album, nodding along with unrestrained glee, mouthing the words and pumping his fists to his own songs, he asks the audience a favour. “If you go online, don’t quote none of the lines. Seriously. You’re taking Christmas presents away from the people who couldn’t be here.”

 

Confidence in his abilities is one thing, but West is not above seeking advice. Studio engineers, colleagues and complete strangers soon learn to temper their opinions: he’s wont to take them at their word, altering works-in-progress accordingly. An incorrigible tinkerer, the version of Graduation West plays today is supposedly finished, though it will change many times over the coming weeks.

 

“This is a pretty good focus group,” he says, flipping the Q and A session. “What do you think should be the next single?” (A debate ensues, with no apparent resolution.)

 

“Humble – I’ve always said you don’t do that word,” concludes Trevor Nelson. Adding: “But you back it up with your music. Totally.”

 

Kanye West is not like other rappers. Raised by university professors in the middle-class Chicago suburbs, ghettos and guns are conspicuous by their absence in his music. Instead, he has forged into areas entirely alien to hip-hop. His albums of hyper-catchy, optimistic songs have made startling use of orchestral arrangements by Jon Brion, composer of soundtracks for Magnolia and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Diamonds From Sierra Leone was based around Shirley Bassey’s Las Vegas belter Diamonds Are Forever. Stronger features a Daft Punk sample, esoteric Parisian techno hardly being the bread and butter of American radio. “They said black people wouldn’t get Daft Punk,” he tells one interviewer. “Why don’t we let them hear Daft Punk and find out?” West says he hardly listens to rap: current raves include Keane, the Killers and Maroon 5. Coldplay’s Chris Martin sings on Graduation’s Homecoming. “Some of these aren’t the coolest groups,” he reflects. “But they have songs that really connect.”

 

Similarly, his last tour proved unrecognisable from a traditional rap show, featuring as it did a six-piece string section, including a harpist, and a set designed by Es Devlin, previously regarded for designing A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Royal Opera House and Hecuba at the RSC. Extra-curricular interests cover architecture (Claudio Silvestrin, John Pawson’s former partner, designed West’s Beverly Hills home) and art (Takashi Murakami, the “Japanese Warhol”, did Graduation’s sleeve). Then there are the clothes. He considers Mika, the flamboyantly camp singer, a current style leader, while West’s own preppy jackets and pink polos proved a major set-back in his early twenties when he was a backroom boy, producing hits for Lil’ Kim and Jay-Z, but longing for the latter to sign him as a performer. Persuading him took years. “We figured if we kept him close,” a sceptical Jay-Z admitted, “at least we’d have some hot beats.”

 

Wednesday: Kanye West shows his funny side

 

In a TV studio near the Thames, West arrives at rehearsal for The Friday Night Project, the bawdy comedy show that will be recorded before a live audience this evening, and aired two days later. Its format dictates that each week a different guest joins regulars Alan Carr and Justin Lee Collins, the show being loosely themed around that guest. West’s British record company have rather optimistically sold the programme to him as the UK equivalent of US institution Saturday Night Live, comedy exposure being of particular interest since he’s developing a show for HBO with “a Borat vibe”, starring himself and written with Borat and Seinfeld writer Larry Charles.

 

Things start shakily. “You have this thing called ‘dogging’ over here?” ponders Barry, West's bodyguard, emerging from a dressing room where the show’s writers are running through their script. He shakes his head. “They got him doing a gay sketch.”

 

The offending item, spoof rap video “Gold Dogger” – “I ain’t saying he’s a gold dogger/ But he ain’t chatting to that poor jogger” – featuring one Alan “Carr-nye” wearing an outsize gold tracksuit, is hastily rewritten. (Carr plays his homosexuality for double-entendres and West, in another break with rap tradition, has spoken up for gay rights – he has a gay cousin – but this is perhaps one step too far.)

 

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They rehearse an item where Richard Madeley appears on a video screen and asks West a question. “You might know that Judy once had a ‘costume malfunction’ at an award ceremony. Has anything ever gone wrong for you clothes-wise, on stage?” It won’t be the last point of British culture with which West is unfamiliar – further gags hinge on the Cheeky Girls, Roy Keane, Scottish dentistry and WAGs – but here Carr offers some clarification. “Her tits fell out.”

 

During the Friday night news, an item featuring Carr and West as newscasters riffing on the week’s stories, West spots an opportunity to flex his comedy writing skills. The first story concerns George Michael’s community service. “I think we might be able to improve on this one,” he tells the producer.

 

He suggests that, on hearing “George”, he should make reference to his telethon remark on the US President, about which he’s thoroughly fed up of talking. They try it out.

 

“I don’t want to talk about Bush,” West warns.

 

“Bush won’t pass my lips,” adlibs Carr. The crew fall about.

 

“It works better as a joke on me,” says West, a little sadly. “I think maybe stick to the original one.”

 

Nevertheless, the show is a triumph. West comes across as charismatic, sharp and likeable – which he is. “Man, I think both [hosts] were really talented, West later reflects. “I think Alan is a real comedic genius. He was killing it.”

 

Though he clearly dotes on his fiancée Alexis Phifer, the striking LA designer who accompanies him for much of his London visit, there’s perhaps one person who matters still more to West. His mother. “She’s definitely the most important person in my life,” he grins. “She’s my momager.” In between being both mom and manager, Dr Donda West recently found time to become an author. Raising Kanye: Life Lessons From the Mother of a Hip-Hop Superstar is full of insights into West’s childhood, not least for West himself who discovered his parents divorced when he was three after reading it (he’d assumed they separated before his birth).

 

Indeed, you don’t need to be Pamela Connolly to deduce that Donda might take much credit for her only son’s robust ego. Christening him Kanye Omari, Ethiopian for “the only one” and “wise man”, Donda deems him “destined for greatness”. “He doesn’t have any problems with self-esteem, does he?” notes one kindergarten teacher. “He does not,” replies Donda.

 

After West fails to win his very first award – lip-synching I Just Called To Say I Love You at a talent show, aged seven – mom begins teaching him “to love himself”, resolving “self-hate” needs to be “combated”. “Show me a good loser,” she writes, “and I’ll show you a loser.” Later, she moves the family from Chicago to suburban Illinois after Kanye’s bicycle tyre is slashed, dispatches a boyfriend who suggests she’s “spoiling Kanye” (“‘If you love him, Mom, stay with him,’ Kanye said, wiping the tears from his eyes. ‘I guess I’ll just go and live with my dad’”), and praises his fashion advice (“I guess I was looking pretty fat in the dress I’d put on. I didn’t get offended”). Perhaps unsurprisingly, West was also encouraged to pursue his dreams. Dropping out of first Chicago’s American Academy of Art, then its State University, he resolved to turn his bedroom hobby of making music into a career. Donda gave him a year to make it happen. Luckily, “Kanye had the gift of the gab”.

 

Friday: Kanye West gets Biblical

 

Today West is doing back-to-back radio interviews. It has come to light that Graduation will be released the same day as 50 Cent’s new album Curtis, and the press have made much of this supposed hip-hop showdown: the middle-class aesthete with a manager mom versus the thug-rapper and former drug dealer whose own mother was murdered when he was eight. Although 50 Cent has leant an air of embittered rivalry to proceedings, suggesting, “If Kanye West sells more records, I’ll no longer write music. I won’t put out any more albums”, one suspects behind-the-scenes machinations have determined this drama will be good for both artists. (Though hip-hop culture seems omnipresent, its popularity in America has tumbled. Sales of rap CDs are down 44 per cent since 2000, 30 per cent in the past year alone.) It’s a notion hardly dispelled a fortnight later when 50 Cent and West pose for Rolling Stone’s cover, as title fighters.

 

A BBC reporter wastes little time bringing up 50 Cent’s name. “He’s one of my favourite rappers,” West mugs. “I would hate to accidentally beat him and he would stop rapping.”

 

At Capital Radio, the DJ reads out an online comparison. “It’s no secret that 50’s a marketing genius,” he says, “with his brands of shoes, apparel, vitamin drinks, video games, porn prosthetics, films… he’s likely to burn out. But it’s West’s knack for carving out hits for rappers and R&B icons that will keep him relevant long after his hip-hop shelf-life expires…”

 

“I don’t know if I should take that as a compliment,” West muses. “Hip-hop shelf-life? Whoever wrote that is an idiot.”

 

On his specialist rap show, Tim Westwood brings up West’s PR conundrum. “Why do you think you got that hate? Do you think some cats didn’t understand you was having fun when you was talking crazy?”

 

Perhaps because he is conscious dedicated rap audiences are more accepting of artists talking themselves up, or perhaps because of the way the question is asked, something inside him is triggered; West seems to forget his tactic of patiently explaining himself, and really lets rip. “I don’t care what none of the media puts in print about me… I’m delivering a product on a whole new level… I’m a machine; I’m a robot. You cannot offend a robot… I'm going down as a legend, whether you like me or not… people need Kanye West albums… I am the new Jim Morrison… I am the new Kurt Cobain… They say, ‘He’s got a God complex, because he said if they wrote The Bible again he would be in it’… Yeah, I would be in it… I feel like I’m one of the more important people in pop culture… The Bible has 20, 30, 40, 50 characters in it. You don’t think I would be one of the character’s of today’s modern Bible…?”

 

“Oh my God,” says Westwood, after he finally exhausts himself. “Kanye, man. Cool!”

 

Having found himself a manager, the 20-year-old Kanye West started selling beats from his bedroom, making as much as $70,000 and earning his first gold plaque for contributing to an album by the Philadelphia rapper Beanie Sigel. Several false starts to his own performing career followed, not least when he told Michael Mauldin, Sony’s head of urban music, he’d be bigger than the then very big Jermaine Dupri – unaware that Mauldin was Dupri’s father. Eventually hustling his way to Damon Dash, head of Jay-Z’s label Roc-A-Fella, he produced a remarkable run of hits for Alicia Keys, John Legend and Jay-Z himself, finally persuading his bosses of his own potential as a rapper. A terrible car smash on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles in 2002 barely slowed him down; his first hit Through The Wire was so-named because it both sampled Chaka Khan’s Through The Fire and featured West’s vocal recorded with his jaw wired shut. 2004’s The College Dropout and 2005’s Late Registration confirmed West as the most exciting hip-hop artist of his generation.

 

“If you say you’re the best, and you really are, is that arrogant?” he says, one afternoon. “I think arrogance is like when you don’t ask questions, when you don’t go back and apologise.”

 

He is, he says, just being honest.

 

“You go to an award show and someone says ‘Who do you want to win?’ and you say, ‘Oh, anyone but me’. Why?”

 

Such honesty can be disarming. He’s as happy to talk about therapy – “I get along with shrinks really well” – as he is his predilection for pornography. “I’m addicted,” he beams. “It’s, like, my hobby. One thing I hate, though: do not come up to me when I’m in the porn store. I’m not taking a picture; I’m not signing autographs. It’s like Quentin Tarantino saying, ‘Do not come and talk to me while I’m at the movies.’” (Again, Donda West might take some credit here. One can only imagine West’s friends’ faces as she recalls driving them to school while extolling the benefits of masturbation “as a better alternative to sex at a young age”.)

 

West’s fiancée is less keen on the subject. “She’s not completely happy with it, no,” he concedes. “But she’s, like, way classy. She could end up in Vogue magazine.”

 

His week of promotion works. On Sunday, Stronger climbs to become his first British No 1. A month later, Graduation tops the charts in America and Britain, outselling 50 Cent 957,000 copies to 691,000 and prompting some serious back-peddling vis-à-vis 50’s threatened retirement. What’s more, West believes he’s shown his public a more human side: hopefully he can put the talk of being a bighead behind him. “We might be back at square one,” he beams.

 

But then comes 2007’s MTV Video Music Awards. West is nominated in five categories, but doesn’t win any. His backstage tantrum is soon all over YouTube. “F*** MTV! Five nominations, plus the fact that I appeared here last year, man. I’m never coming to MTV again – y’all find Britney! Get Britney! I’m through with this pop shit. That’s two years in a row.” West’s parting shot – worked-up, exasperated: “Give a black man a chance.”

 

Kanye West’s album Graduation is out now on Mercury

 

KanyeFL_215492a.jpg

 

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article2567089.ece?token=null&offset=24

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  • 1 month later...

Review: Kanye West - MEN Arena, Manchester

 

JUST three weeks ago, multi-platinum hit-selling rapper Kanye West was rocked by the tragic death of his mother and manager.

 

But on Sunday night he managed to put personal heartbreak behind him and had a 10,000-stong capacity crowd eating out of the palm of his hand.

 

Just 58, Donda West’s shock death, after suffering complications during cosmetic surgery on November 10, cast West’s world tour under a cloud.

 

But, with a little help from his friends (more of that later), the award-winning producer and rapper has soldiered on to the delight of British fans up and down the country.

 

After picking up six Grammy awards with his first two albums, The College Dropout and Late Registration, West is riding another sure-fire hit with Graduation – it sold almost a million copies in the first week – and he has this incredible Glow In the Dark Tour to go with it.

 

From the opening hit, Good Morning through Champion, I Wonder and Can’t Tell Me Nothing to the brilliant Everything I Am and the Coldplay- enthused Homecoming, West rocked through a foot-stomping 22 tracks over two solid hours.

 

Interspersed with the very best of his newest EP, he also threw in the anthem Gold Digger and his own version of Shirley Bassey’s Diamonds are Forever – Diamonds from Sierra Leone – before sending the place wild with Jesus Walks and Good Life.

 

But the best was yet to come.

 

After bizarrely stumbling around stage with a giant remote control, and being stalked by a stilt-wearing female robot to the sounds of Drunk And Hot Girls, West used Big Brother as an intro to inviting a special guest on stage to join him.

 

As the opening beats of rap hit Encore kicked in, the crowd seemed to silence for the first time all night as none other than Jay-Z stepped out on stage to join West for their collaborated hit.

 

The place erupted as the pair spat out the lyrics and posed for the sea of camera phones which lit up the arena.

 

In pop terms, I guess, that’s like going to see Justin Timberlake and then Michael Jackson coming out to help him tackle the encore. Amazing.

 

Then after quickly slipping into an ice white suit and shirt, West returned to add the finishing touches.

 

Fittingly, he stood under a single spotlight and belted out rap ballad Hay Mama from his first album, but then brought the house down with Daft Punk inspired Stronger.

 

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-entertainment/liverpool-arts/2007/12/04/review-kanye-westmen-arena-manchester-100252-20200585/

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  • 8 months later...

KANYE WEST GLOW IN THE DARK TOUR MSG SHOW PICS AND VIDEO FROM BOTH NIGHTS !!!!

 

I got pics and videos from both nights of the dvd encore shows for G.I.T.D tour (8.5 & 8.6 including the speech and Jay-Z surprise) from both nights, that will SH*T ON ALL OF THESE PICS AND VIDEO FOOTAGE'S LOL.

 

(WATCH THEM IN HIGH QUALITY !!!!)

 

http://www.youtube.com/ernestime

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ernestime/

 

get ready for your life to be changed !!! HAHA

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I'm not a fan of rap but I wouldn't say I hate it, it's definatly not something I listen to much though but can respect some rappers for thier lyric writing styles 2Pac and Eminem would be 2 examples, I don't think Kanyes music is great and he has a huge ego when he says stupid stuff like if the Bible was written today I would be mentioned in it, really get over yourself.

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  • 1 year later...
his new single POWER is awesome!:shocked2:

 

best rapper out there!!

 

Power is a very very good song. this on the other hand doesnt sound as good. i just dont think beyonce's voice sound works well with kanye's production qualities. as awesome as i think beyonce is, her voice really only works with very simple straight forward rnb beats whereas kanye likes to create more heavily layered tracks. this sounds like a mid-album filler song.

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