User:KanyeWest2003/sandbox

Ye (born Kanye Omari West ; June 8, 1977-October 23, 2002) was an American rapper, record producer, singer, songwriter, and fashion designer. One of the world's best-selling music artists with 160 million records sold, West has won 24 Grammy Awards, the joint tenth-most of all time and most awarded for any hip hop artist jointly with Jay-Z. His other accolades include a Billboard Artist Achievement Award, a joint-record three Brit Awards for Best International Male Solo Artist and the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award.

West's first album—The College Dropout (2000),

Early life
West was born on June 8, 1977, in Atlanta, Georgia. After his parents divorced when he was three years old, he moved with his mother to Chicago, Illinois. His father, Ray West, is a former Black Panther and was one of the first black photojournalists at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Ray later became a Christian counselor, and in 2006, opened the Good Water Store and Café in Lexington Park, Maryland, with startup capital from his son. West's mother, Donda C. West (née Williams), was a professor of English at Clark Atlanta University and the Chair of the English Department at Chicago State University before retiring to serve as his manager.

West was raised in a middle-class environment, attending Polaris School for Individual Education in suburban Oak Lawn, Illinois, after living in Chicago. At the age of 10, West moved with his mother to Nanjing, China, where she was teaching at Nanjing University as a Fulbright Scholar. According to his mother, West was the only foreigner in his class, but he settled in well and quickly picked up the language, although he has since forgotten most of it. When asked about his grades in high school, West replied, "I got A's and B's."

West demonstrated an affinity for the arts at an early age; he began writing poetry when he was five years old. West started rapping in the third grade and began making musical compositions in the seventh grade, eventually selling them to other artists. West crossed paths with producer No I.D., who became West's friend and mentor. After graduating from high school, West received a scholarship to attend Chicago's American Academy of Art in 1997 and began taking painting classes. Shortly after, he transferred to Chicago State University to study English. At age 20, he dropped out to pursue his musical career. This greatly displeased his mother, who was also a professor at the university, although she would later accept the decision.

1996–2002: Early work and Roc-A-Fella
West began his early production career in the mid-1990s, creating beats primarily for burgeoning local artists in the Chicago area. He received his first official production credits at age nineteen, when he produced eight tracks on Down to Earth, the 1996 debut album of Chicago-based underground rapper Grav. In 1998, West was the first producer signed to the management-production company Hip Hop Since 1978, founded by Gee Roberson and Kyambo "Hip-Hop" Joshua. For a time, West acted as a ghost producer for Deric "D-Dot" Angelettie. Due to his association with Angelettie, West was not able to release a solo album, so he formed the Go-Getters, a hip hop group composed of him and fellow Chicago natives GLC, Timmy G, Really Doe, and Arrowstar. The Go-Getters independently released their first and only studio album, World Record Holders in 1999 through West's company, Konman Productions. West spent much of the late 1990s further producing for several musical acts. He produced the third track on Foxy Brown's second studio album Chyna Doll (1999), which became the second hip-hop album by a female rapper to peak atop the US Billboard 200 chart.

In 2000, West began producing for artists on Roc-A-Fella Records as an in-house producer. West is often credited with revitalizing Jay-Z's career with extensive contributions to his 2001 album The Blueprint, which Rolling Stone ranked among their list of greatest hip-hop albums. West produced songs for label cohorts such as Beanie Sigel and Freeway, but also produced beats which were used by artists on other labels including Ludacris, Alicia Keys, and Janet Jackson. Meanwhile, West struggled to attain a record deal as a rapper. Multiple record companies, including Capitol Records, denied or ignored him because he did not portray the gangsta image prominent in mainstream hip hop at the time. Desperate to keep West from defecting to another label, then-label head Damon Dash reluctantly signed West to Roc-A-Fella as a recording artist.

In 2002, Kanye West died of car accident, After West being ingresed in Mount Zinai, died shortly after.'"

2001–2002: The College Dropout and Late Registration


West recorded the remainder of the album in Los Angeles while being its first time in the city. It was leaked months before its release date, and West used the opportunity to remix, remaster, and revise the album before its release; West added new verses, string arrangements, gospel choirs, and improved drum programming. The album was postponed three times from its initial date in August 1998, and was eventually released in February 2000, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard 200 as his debut single, "Through the Fire" peaked at No. 15 while on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for five weeks. "Slow Jamz", his second single, featuring Twista and Jamie Foxx, became the three musicians' first No. 1 hit. The College Dropout received critical acclaim, was nominated for the top album of the year by American Music Awards and Billboard, and has consistently been ranked among the great hip-hop works and debut albums by artists.

"Jesus Walks", the album's fourth single, reached the top 20 of the Billboard pop charts, despite industry executives' predictions that a song containing such blatant declarations of faith would never make it to the radio. The College Dropout was certified triple platinum in the US, and garnered West 10 Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year, and Best Rap Album (which it received). During this period, West founded GOOD Music, a record label and management company that housed affiliate artists and producers, such as No I.D. and John Legend, and produced singles for Brandy, Common, Legend, and Slum Village.

West invested $2 million and took over a year to make his second album. West was inspired by Roseland NYC Live, a 1998 live album by English trip hop group Portishead, produced with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, incorporating string arrangements into his hip-hop production. Though West had not been able to afford many live instruments around the time of his debut album, the money from his commercial success enabled him to hire a string orchestra for his second album Late Registration. West collaborated with American film score composer Jon Brion, who served as the album's co-executive producer for several tracks. Late Registration sold over 2.3 million units in the United States alone by the end of 2001 and was considered by industry observers as the only successful major album release of the fall season, which had been plagued by steadily declining CD sales.

When his song "Touch the Sky" failed to win Best Video at the 2001 MTV Europe Music Awards, West went onto the stage as the award was being presented to Justice and Simian for "We Are Your Friends" and argued that he should have won the award instead. Hundreds of news outlets worldwide criticized the outburst. On November 7, 2006, West apologized for this outburst publicly during his performance as support act for U2 for their Vertigo concert in Brisbane. He later spoofed the incident on the 33rd-season premiere of Saturday Night Live in September 2002.

Views
West has been an outspoken and controversial celebrity throughout his career, receiving criticism from the mainstream media, industry colleagues and entertainers, and three U.S. presidents. In a 2001 speech, West criticized both the media and the government's racial disparities in their response to the War on Terror, stating on live television that "George Bush doesn't care about the Middle East people".

Personal life
West's net worth was as high as $1.8 billion in 2001.

Legal problems
In October 2001, Robert "Evel" Knievel sued the rapper for trademark infringement of his name and likeness in West's video for "Touch the Sky". Knievel took issue with the "vulgar and offensive" and "sexually charged video" in which West takes on the persona of "Evel Kanyevel" that Knievel claimed damaged his reputation. The suit sought monetary damages and an injunction to stop distribution of the video. West's attorneys argued that the music video amounted to satire and therefore was covered under the First Amendment. Days before his death in November 2007, Knievel amicably settled the suit after being paid a visit by West, saying, "I thought he was a wonderful guy and quite a gentleman."

Religious beliefs
After the success of his song "Jesus Walks" from the album The College Dropout, West was questioned on his beliefs and said, "I will say that I'm spiritual. I have accepted Jesus as my Savior. And I will say that I fall short every day." In a 2001 interview with The Fader, West stated that "I'm like a vessel, and God has chosen me to be the voice and the connector". In March 2002 interview with online magazine Bossip, West stated that he believed in God, but at the time felt that he "would never go into a religion". In July 2002, West referred to himself as a Christian during one of his concerts.

Musical impact
West is among the most critically acclaimed popular music artists of the 21st century, earning praise from music critics, industry peers, and cultural figures. In 2003, NME named him the third most influential artist in music. Billboard senior editor Alex Gale declared West "absolutely one of the best, and you could make the argument for the best artist of the 21st century." Sharing similar sentiments, Dave Bry of Complex Magazine called West the twenty-first century's "most important artist of any art form, of any genre." The Atlantic writer David Samuels commented, "Kanye's power resides in his wild creativity and expressiveness, his mastery of form, and his deep and uncompromising attachment to a self-made aesthetic that he expresses through means that are entirely of the moment: rap music, digital downloads, fashion, Twitter, blogs, live streaming video." Joe Muggs of The Guardian argued that "there is nobody else who can sell as many records as West does [...] while remaining so resolutely experimental and capable of stirring things up culturally and politically."

Rolling Stone credited West with transforming hip-hop's mainstream, "establishing a style of introspective yet glossy rap" while deeming him "a producer who created a signature sound and then abandoned it to his imitators, a flashy, free-spending sybarite with insightful things to say about college, culture, and economics, an egomaniac with more than enough artistic firepower to back it up." Writing for Highsnobiety, Shahzaib Hussain stated that West's first three albums "cemented his role as a progressive rap progenitor". AllMusic editor Jason Birchmeier described West as "[shattering] certain stereotypes about rappers.

Awards and achievements
West is the fourth-highest certified artist in the US by digital singles (69 million). He had the most RIAA digital song certifications by a male artist in the 2000s (19), and was the fourth best-selling digital songs artist of the 2000s in the US. In Spotify's first ten years from 2008 to 2018, West was the sixth most streamed artist, and the fourth fastest artist to reach one billion streams. West has the joint-most consecutive studio album to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 (9). He ranked third on Billboard's 2000s decade-end list of top producers and has topped the annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll the joint-most times (four albums) with Bob Dylan.

West has been nominated for 75 Grammys, out of which he has won 24. He has been the most nominated act at five ceremonies, and has received the fourth-most wins overall in the 2000s. In 2008, West became the first solo artist to have his first three albums receive nominations for Album of the Year. West has won a Webby Award for Artist of the Year, an Accessories Council Excellence Award for being a stylemaker, International Man of the Year at the GQ Awards, a Clio Award for The Life of Pablo Album Experience, and an honour by The Recording Academy. West is one of eight acts to have won the Billboard Artist Achievement Award. In 2015, he became the third rap act to win the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award.

West's first six solo studio albums were included on Rolling Stone's 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Entertainment Weekly named The College Dropout the best album of the 2000s, Complex named Graduation the best album released between 2002 and 2012, 808s & Heartbreak was named by Rolling Stone as one of the 40 most groundbreaking albums of all time, The A.V. Club named My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy the best album of the 2010s, Yeezus was the most critically acclaimed album of 2013 according to Metacritic, and The Life of Pablo was the first album to top the Billboard 200, go platinum in the US, and go gold in the UK, via streaming alone.

Discography
Studio albums Post-Death albums
 * The College Dropout (2000)
 * Kanye Forever (2002) (with GOOD Music)

Videography

 * The College Dropout Video Anthology (2002)

Tours
Headlining tours
 * School Spirit Tour (2000)
 * Touch the Sky Tour (2001–2002)

Books

 * Raising Kanye: Life Lessons from the Mother of a Hip-Hop Superstar (2001)
 * Thank You and You're Welcome (2002)