From the baroque grandeur of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy to the punk fragments of Yeezus, from the social commentary of The College Dropout to the confessional summits of 808s & Heartbreak, West has always been at the leading edge, tirelessly expanding his scope and sound-and shifting everyone else’s playing field in the process. He launched his MC career with 2004’s The College Dropout and hasn’t looked back, releasing a string of groundbreaking-and often self-contradicting-albums, each of them a pacesetter for the culture around it. His chopped-and-pitched, sample-heavy “chipmunk soul” sound would define rap for years after. After contributing production to a series of increasingly high-profile projects (including work with Foxy Brown and the Mase-fronted Harlem World), West broke through in 2001 with his work on JAY-Z’s The Blueprint, producing and cowriting some of the album’s biggest songs (“Izzo ,” “Takeover”). Raised in Chicago by his mother, an English professor, West initially studied to be a painter while making beats on the side-a multidisciplinary drive that came to mark his career. Few artists have had as deep an impact on pop culture as Kanye West.
