Kanye West

Kanye West was born in Atlanta, but after his parents divorced, he moved to Chicago with his mother. The family was middle-class, and West's mom was an English professor. So Kanye studied well at school, and after graduation began to study at the American Academy of Arts, but his passion for music overpowered everyone else, and Kanye left the school to start recording and producing albums. West's first successful work was Jay-Z's "The Blueprint" (2001), more precisely, four tracks from this record. At the time of the beginning of the collaboration, Kanye was nothing compared to the super-successful producer and rapper Jay-Z. The latter even at first refused to sign West to his label Roc-A-Fella, believing that West would be more successful as a producer - his own work did not bear the "criminal" and "street" character, so popular among the majority of hip-hop audience. However, in 2004 Roc-A-Fella released West's debut album "The College Dropout". The album cover features a life-size puppet of Teddy bear, who was kicked out of college - apparently West was still worried about his "ruined" education. Subsequently, this bear, called the "dropout bear", became a kind of symbol of West and his work.
Читать далее