Before They Were Famous: Kanye West
April 27, 2016
- Kanye grew up in Chicago, Illinois
- His father was a musician and activist and his mother was a university professor
- Kanye before pursuing his music and fashion careers, he was first interested in visual arts and attended the University of Chicago for a degree in Fine Arts
- Soon he decided to drop out of the school to be a full-time beat maker and producer–thus the name of his debut album The College Dropout
- Before becoming so well-known, people always mispronounced his name Kanye with the way you would say “cane”
- In his days of just being seen as a producer, Kanye would carry around a CD of him rapping over his beats to play for people he would meet in the studio (such as Cameron, Mos Def and Jay Z)
- Just before being signed to Rockafella Records, Kanye was evicted from his apartment in the Chi so he and his mother packed everything they had into a U-Haul the next day and moved to New Jersey
- Kanye had another offer from Capitol Records he was originally going to take over signing with Jay Z (Rockafella Records) but they pulled the deal before he could
- Before he was even signed as a rapper, Mr.West had the lyrics written for Gold Digger, his biggest hit and performed an acapella version of it at a Cameron concert as an unknown producer
- While recording The College Dropout, Kanye fell asleep behind the wheel of his Lexus and crashed. He was hospitalized for weeks with metal plates in his jaw and his mouth wired shut. He still decides to continue with the album in recovery; he raps with a mouth wired shut in Through The Wire
