For the past decade, since Kanye West has risen to fame through albums such as The College Dropout (2004), Graduation (2007), and Yeezus (2013), he has quickly become the person that everyone loves to hate. Perhaps it was West’s infamous 2009VMA incident in which he got on stage and declared that young Taylor Swift’s ‘You Belong With Me’ was no match to Beyoncé for ‘Best Female Video’ . Perhaps it was his constant self-proclamation of being ‘the best artist of his generation’ (IS THIS CORRECT?). Perhaps it’s his constant God Complex shown in the majority of interviews and quotes. I’m not sure if there was any exact moment in which the (majority of the) world decided to hate Kanye West. But we do.
I think it’s because we only see Dr. West as who he is now - the majority of us don’t know of his struggle or personal life - we see him as a very, very rich man, with a beautiful wife and child, and with enough money to last him a lifetime. But how did he get here?
West began as a producer for Jay-Z. He was often told that producing is all he would be able to do. After many failed attempts at getting a record deal, West first rose to fame because of a song he wrote after being in a car accident. His jaw needed to be wired shut for surgery - it’s speculated that after this accident, West did not like the look of his face and this is the reasoning for his lack of smiling in pictures and videos.
One of the most tragic - if not the most tragic - incidents in West’s life was the death of his mother, Donda West. Donda died in 2007 in California, during multiple cosmetic surgeries - which Kanye payed for. If West had listened to his mother (“my momma told me ‘go to school, get your doctorate, something to fall back on, you could profit with’”) and stayed in school at Chicago State University and not pursued music, he likely wouldn’t have had enough money to give her the expenses needed to cover the price of that surgery. Regardless - even if he had - chances are slim that he would be as much in the limelight that he was at that time, thus the constant LA image of ‘perfection’ would not be as prevalent in either of their lives.
In an interview, Kanye ocne stated: “If I had never moved to LA, she’d be alive,” Kayne said. When asked to explain further as to what he meant by that, West said “I don’t want to go far into it because it would bring me to tears.”
‘Hey Mama’, a song written before Donda’s death, and famously preformed a few after her death at the 50th Annual Grammy’s Awards, reads:
“You worked late nights just to keep on the lights / Mommy got me training wheels so I could keep on my bike / And you would give me anything in this world”
“And you never put no man over me / And I love you for that Mommy can’t you see?”
“Then I started to cry / As we knelt on the kitchen floor / I said ‘Mommy I’mma love you till you don’t hurt no more’ / ‘And when I’m older, you ain’t gotta work no more / ‘And I’mma get you that mansion that you couldn't afford’”
“I wanna scream so loud for you / Cause I’m so proud of you / Let me tell you what I’m about to do / You know I love you so / I’ll never let you go / I wrote this song just so you know / No matter when you go / I love you so”
The version sung at the Grammy’s includes all of these verses, but adds:
“Last night I saw you in a dream / Now I can’t wait to go to sleep / This life is all a dream / And my real life starts when I go to sleep”
In addition to the weight of his mother’s death on West, fame, as many others have experienced, is difficult to adjust to.
In a freestyle titled ‘Pinocchio Story’, preformed in Singapore, West sings:
Do you think I sacrifice / A real life / For all the fame, and flashing lights / There is no Gucci I can buy / There is no Louis Vuitton to put on / There is no Y.S.L. that they could sell / To get my heart, out of this hell / And my mind, out of this jail / There is no clothes that I could buy / That could turn, back in time / There is no vacation spot I could fly / That could bring back, a piece of real life / Real life, what does it feel like?
It's like I'm lookin for something out there, tryna find something / I turn on the TV, and see me, and see nothing / What does it feel like, to live real life, to be real / Not some facade on TV that no one can really feel / Do you really have the stamina? / For everybody that sees you that say, "Where's my camera?” / For everybody that sees you, to say sign a autograph / For everybody that sees you cryin, say you oughta laugh
And the day I moved to L.A., maybe that was all my fault
I just wanna be a real boy
As the writer of this article, I don’t want you to like, sympathize, or even feel bad for Kanye West because his mother passed away and he has difficulty adjusting to fame. I just hope to have showed you something you didn’t know about Kanye West. The media spins a sickening view on a triumphant and wise creator.
