#298 - Kanye West - The College Dropout (2003)
MUSIC HISTORY COMPILED BY ADAM BERNARD:
BACKGROUND – KANYE WEST
Kanye Omari West was born in Georgia in 1977, but grew up in Chicago. He spent part of his youth in China when his mother was teaching at Nanjing University. Kanye's artistic abilities were a given from his youth, writing poetry at 5 years old and becoming interested in drawing & music in 3rd grade according to his mother. He started making a name for himself as a producer in the late 1990s and early 2000s, getting his big break in 2000 when he produced for artists on Roc-A-Fella Records. West’s true aspirations were to be a rapper, but he didn’t portray the “gangsta image” that was big at the time. After striking out with Capitol Records, Roc-A-Fella signed him just so they wouldn’t lose his producer abilities to another label that would give him a chance. After a bad car accident that left him with his jaw wired shut, he became inspired and recorded the song “Through the Wire” despite his mandible being muzzled. The track eventually found it’s way on to Kanye’s debut, today's album.
His career took off after the College Dropout, also releasing Late Registration (2005), Graduation (2007), 808s & Heartbreak (2008). In 2009, the infamous MTV Video Music Award incident happened where he interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for Best Female Video to say it should have been Beyonce’s Single Ladies instead. A planned tour with Lady Gaga was then canceled, and West went to Hawaii for a self-imposed exile. He ended up creating "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" and won Best Rap Album for it at the 2012 Grammy's. Yeezus followed in 2013, with "The Life of Pablo" (2016), Ye in 2018, Jesus Is King in 2019, and Donda and Donda 2 (2021 & 2022) being released over the next decade.
One of the world's best-selling music artists, with over 160 million records sold, West has won 24 Grammy Awards, the joint tenth-most of all time, and the joint-most Grammy awards of any rapper along with Jay-Z. Among his other awardsare the Billboard Artist Achievement Award, a joint-record three Brit Awardsfor Best International Male Solo Artist, and the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. He was also named one of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. His net worth is estimated around $2 billion, making him the wealthiest musician in the world.
ALBUM BACKGROUND – THE COLLEGE DROPOUT
The debut studio album from Kanye was finally released in February 2004 after being delayed twice (a total of 6 months) due to Kanye wanting it to be perfect. The production of The College Dropout was primarily handled by West and showcased his "chipmunk soul" musical style, which made use of sped-up, pitch shifted vocal samples from soul and R&B records, in addition to West's own drum programming, string accompaniments, and gospel choirs; the album also features contributions from Jay-Z, Mos Def, Jamie Foxx, Syleena Johnson, and Ludacris, among others. Diverging from the then-dominant gangster persona in hip hop, West's lyrics concern themes of family, self-consciousness, materialism, religion, racism, and higher education.
The College Dropout debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200, and peaked at #1 on the US Top R&B Hop-Hop Albums chart. It sold 441,000 copies in its first week of sales, and was a large-scale commercial success, becoming West's best-selling album in the United States, with domestic sales of over 3.4 million copies by 2014 and was certified four-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2020.
This album took almost 4 years to complete, with no real start date since Kanye had been gathering beats for years. His career as a producer was going very well, but producing was always a stepping stone to rapping for Kanye.
The album's title is in part a reference to West's decision to drop out of college to pursue his dream of becoming a musician. This action greatly displeased his mother, who was a professor at the university from which he withdrew. She later said, "It was drummed into my head that college is the ticket to a good life... but some career goals don't require college. For Kanye to make an album called [The] College Dropout it was more about having the guts to embrace who you are, rather than following the path society has carved out for you"