50 facts you missed about Kanye West

Learn 50 interesting things about Kanye West.

1. Kanye Omari West is an American rapper, songwriter, record producer and fashion designer.

2. Kanye West first became known as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records; he achieved recognition for his work on rapper Jay-Z's The Blueprint (2001), as well as hit singles for musical artists including Alicia Keys, Ludacris, and Janet Jackson.

3. His style of production originally used high-pitched vocal samples from soul songs incorporated with his own drums and instruments.

4. Kanye West later broadened his influences to include 1970s R&B, baroque pop, trip hop, arena rock, house, folk, alternative, electronica, synthpop, industrial, and classical music.

5. Kanye West was raised in a middle-class household in Chicago, Illinois, and began rapping in the third grade, becoming involved in the city's hip hop scene.

6. Kanye West attended art school for one semester before dropping out to pursue music entirely in the late 1990s.

7. Although his real desire was to become a rapper, record executives did not take West seriously, viewing him as a producer first and foremost.

8. After being signed to Roc-A-Fella in 2002, West released his debut album The College Dropout in 2004 to commercial and critical acclaim.

9. The baroque-inspired Late Registration followed in 2005, and Graduation in 2007.

10. Kanye West switched rapping for singing on his emotive 2008 effort 808's & Heartbreak, and embraced maximalism on 2010's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

11. Following several collaborations, West released his abrasive sixth album, Yeezus, in 2013.

12. Kanye West is one of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold more than 21 million albums and 100 million digital downloads.

13. Kanye West has won a total of 21 Grammy Awards, making him one of the most awarded artists of all-time and the most Grammy-awarded artist of his age.

14. Time named West one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2005, 2011 and 2015.

15. Kanye West has also been included in a number of Forbes annual lists.

16. Three of his albums rank on Rolling Stone's 2012 "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list; two of his albums feature at #8 and #1 in Pitchfork Media's The 100 Best Albums of 2010-2014.

17. West's background and style, from his debut album, deviated from the then-dominant "gangsta" persona in hip hop, and he would later alter the genre stylistically as rappers adopted his alternative aesthetic.

18. An outspoken and controversial celebrity, West has often been a source of controversy due to his appearances at award shows and his various television and radio interviews.

19. Kanye West has collaborated on multiple occasions with brands Nike, Louis Vuitton, Adidas and A.P.C..

20. Kanye West also runs his own record label GOOD Music and has directed several short films.

21. Kanye Omari West was born on June 8, 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia.

22. His parents divorced when he was three and he and his mother moved to Chicago, Illinois.

23. His father, Ray West, is a former Black Panther and was one of the first black photojournalists at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

24. Ray West was later a Christian counselor, and in 2006, opened the Good Water Store and Café in Lexington Park, Maryland with startup capital from his son.

25. Kanye West's mother, Dr. Donda C. (Williams) West, 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.

26. Kanye West was raised in a middle-class background, attending Polaris High School in suburban Oak Lawn, Illinois after living in Chicago.

27. At the age of 10, West moved with his mother to Nanjing, China, where she was teaching at Nanjing University as part of an exchange program. According to his mother, West was the only foreigner in his class, but settled in well and quickly picked up the language, although he has since forgotten most of it.

28. When asked about his grades in high school, West replied, "I got A's and B's. And I'm not even frontin'."

29. Kanye West demonstrated an affinity for the arts at an early age; he began writing poetry when he was five years old.

30. His mother recalled that she first took notice of West's passion for drawing and music when he was in the third grade.

31. Growing up in the city, West became deeply involved in its hip hop scene. He started rapping in the third grade and began making musical compositions in the seventh grade, eventually selling them to other artists.

32. At age thirteen, West wrote a rap song called "Green Eggs and Ham" and began to persuade his mother to pay $25 an hour for time in a recording studio. It was a small, crude basement studio where a microphone hung from the ceiling by a wire clothes hanger.

33. Kanye West crossed paths with producer/DJ No I.D., with whom he quickly formed a close friendship. No. I.D. soon became West's mentor, and it was from him that West learned how to sample and program beats after he received his first sampler at age 15.

34. After graduating from high school, West received a scholarship to attend Chicago's American Academy of Art in 1997 and began taking painting classes, but shortly after transferred to Chicago State University to study English.

35. He soon realized that his busy class schedule was detrimental to his musical work, and at 20 he dropped out of college to pursue his musical dreams.

36. His first official production credits came at the age of nineteen when he produced eight tracks on Down to Earth, the 1996 debut album of a Chicago rapper named Grav.

37. Because of his association with D-Dot, West wasn't able to release a solo album, so he formed and became a member and producer of the Go-Getters, a late-1990s Chicago rap group composed of him, GLC, Timmy G, Really Doe, and Arrowstar. After attending a series of promotional photo shoots and making some radio appearances, The Go-Getters released their first and only studio album World Record Holders in 1999.

38. Kanye West spent much of the late-1990s producing records for a number of well-known artists and music groups.

39. Kanye West got his big break in the year 2000, when he began to produce for artists on Roc-A-Fella Records. West came to achieve recognition and is often credited with revitalizing Jay-Z's career with his contributions to the rap mogul's influential 2001 album The Blueprint.

40. Serving as an in-house producer for Roc-A-Fella Records, West produced records for other artists from the label, including Beanie Sigel, Freeway, and Cam'ron. He also crafted hit songs for Ludacris, Alicia Keys, and Janet Jackson.

41. Despite his success as a producer, West's true aspiration was to be a rapper. Though he had developed his rapping long before he began producing, it was often a challenge for West to be accepted as a rapper, and he struggled to attain a record deal. Multiple record companies ignored him because he did not portray the gangsta image prominent in mainstream hip hop at the time.

42. According to Capitol Record's A&R, Joe Weinberger, he was approached by West and almost signed a deal with him, but another person in the company convinced Capitol's president not to. Desperate to keep West from defecting to another label, then-label head Damon Dash reluctantly signed West to Roc-A-Fella Records.

43. West's breakthrough came a year later on October 23, 2002, when, while driving home from a California recording studio after working late, he fell asleep at the wheel and was involved in a near-fatal car crash.

44. The accident inspired West; two weeks after being admitted to the hospital, he recorded a song at the Record Plant Studios with his jaw still wired shut.

45. Once he had completed the album, it was leaked months before its release date. However, West decided to use the opportunity to review the album, and The College Dropout was significantly remixed, remastered, and revised before being released. West's perfectionism led The College Dropout to have its release postponed three times from its initial date in August 2003.

46. Beginning his second effort that fall, West would invest two million dollars and take over a year to craft his second album.

47. In September 2005, West announced that he would release his Pastelle Clothing line in spring 2006, claiming "Now that I have a Grammy under my belt and Late Registration is finished, I am ready to launch my clothing line next spring." The line was developed over the following four years - with multiple pieces teased by West himself - before the line was ultimately cancelled in 2009.

48. In September 2005, West announced that he would release his Pastelle Clothing line in spring 2006, claiming "Now that I have a Grammy under my belt and Late Registration is finished, I am ready to launch my clothing line next spring." The line was developed over the following four years - with multiple pieces teased by West himself - before the line was ultimately cancelled in 2009.

49. began dating reality star and longtime friend Kim Kardashian in April 2012. West and Kardashian became engaged in October 2013 and married on May 24, 2014 at Fort di Belvedere in Florence, Italy. They have one child, daughter North "Nori" West, born in June 2013.

50. In April 2015, West and Kardashian traveled to Jerusalem to have North baptized in the Armenian Apostolic Church at the Cathedral of St. James. The following month, it was announced that West and Kardashian are expecting their second child. On June 21, 2015 Kardashian confirmed via instagram that she and West are expecting a boy in December 2015.

Source: Wikipedia.org