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It's sad because to become successful Kanye had to ignore hundreds/thousands of important people telling him he wasnt good enough and he would never make it as

It's sad because to become successful Kanye had to ignore hundreds/thousands of important people telling him he wasnt good enough and he would never make it as a rapper. Then he became, arguably, the most popular rapper/hip hop artist of all time. Now image you've done what seems impossible despite countless people telling you it wont work out. You are in the top 1% of fame. Now someone tells you your other ideas are wrong. And that you cant actually achieve x goal. And that you don't know what you are talking about when you talk about y. And that you are sick and need to take meds to fix yourself. Would you believe them? Or would you believe yourself? I think Kanye is sick and needs help but I can see almost anyone falling into the exact same trap hes fallen into if they lived his life.

badpun 4y ago
> Then he became, arguably, the most popular rapper/hip hop artist of all time I don’t think he’s even recognized as being in the top 3. There are so many much better than him, such as Eminem, Tupac, Snoop Dogg.
wturner 4y ago
This is a great point. People become calcified and stuck in their ways as a survival mechanism! Times change and circumstances do too thus the axioms floating around in our heads deviate from "reality" like a lifeboat floating away while we pretend everything is normal. This is not only a lesson for the extreme rich - but everyone.
jprd 4y ago
Whoaaaaaaa. Whoa. Easy there. I don't want to get off topic here, but talking about Kanye West as "arguably the most popular hip hop artist of all time" should also come with that argument attached to justify such a grandiose statement. I mean, I need to see some Claire Danes w/red yarn vibes to even begin to understand that position. You can talk of Kanye and Swift in the same sentence (never had a struggle meal, I see your nick Taylor ;) ), but Kanye vs. Nas? Jay? J. Cole? Sheeet, even Em? I don't even know if there are metrics that could make that statement valid unless you restrict it to some weird "early 'aughts" sub-generation. I challenge thee to numbers, graphs and beyond all - cultural import! <gauntlet slap>
VincentEvans 4y ago
It’s odd how in my own personal experience, the only way that I know that Kanye is “the most successful rapper of all time” is people telling me that he is the most successful rapper of all time. I actually hardly ever hear his music, or see him performing anywhere, as compared to other rappers who, if I were to volunteer an opinion based on my own experiences I would think of as “most successful rappers of all time”, like Eminem, or Dre, or JayZ or even Snoop. It’s almost as if his whole thing was to successfully market himself to be associated with the title of the “most successful rapper of all time”. But I have to give him that other than such an illustrious title, I do hear of him in countless contexts other than music: his marriage, his shoes, his renaming himself, his presidential ambitions, his beefs with other actual artists, and now his purchase of 4chan.
- imperfect_light 4y ago
  He is in fact the richest rapper according to Forbes, apparently with about $2 billion net worth, twice as much a JayZ
- cwkoss 4y ago
  He reminds me a lot of Donald Trump
- missingrib 4y ago
  He's literally one of the best selling music artists who single-handedly pioneered multiple substyles within hip-hop over a 20 year career. He's released some of the most critically acclaimed albums of all time. Strictly as a rapper he might not be listed as "the best rapper ever", but as a musician he's easily up there.
- askafriend 4y ago
  You’re off the mark with this one. He is extraordinarily influential in music and hip hop. Maybe you missed the era where he skyrocketed to the top and spawned a generation of artists that emulate elements of his style to this day. His impact is undeniable and that’s why you hear about it. The disconnect is probably that he hasn’t done anything musically relevant in a few years + his mental health has continued to deteriorate in public.
User23 4y ago
It’s interesting that you feel entitled to judge the mental health of a Black man who is probably at least two to three orders of magnitude more financially successful than you are. At least try considering the possibility that his lived experience is valid.
puglr 4y ago
In 2006 I saw Kanye West perform at a music festival. This was while he was touring for his second album. I got an early taste of his mental illness. He started maybe 5 songs, each of which he would cut short in the middle to rant about the sound being off. He was completely unhinged and rambling each time. After 20 minutes he simply walked off stage and that was that. Ever since then, I've found that his illness has been very evident in the art itself. It precludes me from enjoying it, and there's been a number of times I've felt terribly sad seeing these signs celebrated by those who don't see the connection (which is not to suggest that they should). All that said, I've never even considered this perspective, so thank you for sharing it. It makes a mountain of sense, and makes the whole situation that much sadder (and more complex).
BizarroLand 4y ago
It's also common for people who win a Nobel Prize to go on to endorse and study widely discredited crackpot ideas. https://slate.com/technology/2015/06/tim-hunt-on-women-scientists-nobel-laureates-say-the-dumbest-things.html https://slate.com/technology/2015/06/tim-hunt-on-women-scien... It's almost as if there is something that happens once you have a major, incontestible success, that you come to believe that your victory had little to do with luck and more to do with destiny or some inherent quality that you possess, and therefore the one masterpiece is a shadow of what is to come. That foolish idea has led to many great follies.
itake 4y ago
> the most popular rapper/hip hop artist of all time Slim Shady stands up [0]. [0] - https://iamyourtargetdemographic.com/2011/08/30/kanye-west-vs-eminem/ https://iamyourtargetdemographic.com/2011/08/30/kanye-west-v...
- AlwaysRock 4y ago
  > arguably
- bambax 4y ago
  This article is from 2011, but today on Spotify Eminem still has more monthly listeners than Kanye West (53M vs 51M). Eminem also has several songs that have over a billion streams (one with >1.5b), while Kanye has just one and it's at exactly 1b. So yes, Eminem is still well ahead.
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  - mikercampbell 4y ago
    As a huge Eminem fan, 2011 was a good time to stop counting. I love his stuff, Revival, Kamazake, Music to be Murdered by - I probably know 10 songs almost by heart. But there's no denying that it's been a very different decade for Mathers and not everyone likes it.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      Give him a couple of years more to include "Rap God."
      - mikercampbell 4y ago
        Oh jeez, I forget that the LP 2 was released after 2010.
spywaregorilla 4y ago
As someone who doesn't listen to much rap / hip hop, and can only name his cover (adaptation?) of Stronger, I do know who Kanye is. I don't know anything about his music. Mostly I just know of him because he's a very public asshole. Much like his wife. I find it basically impossible to empathize with him. I just wouldn't ever be in that situation. "Rising against adversity" is not the story I'd be be using here so much as just a typical strongman bravado leading to an absolute disconnect from reality. I would wager greatly that it's not that he's grown cynical to people saying he can't do something, but that he's become delusional from people telling him a genius. People who convince themselves that they're smart do this thing where they have an idea, and conclude that because they've come up with it and they're smart that it must be a well reasoned idea.
- viscanti 4y ago
  > "Rising against adversity" is not the story I'd be be using here so much as just a typical strongman bravado leading to an absolute disconnect from reality. It's not really a story of rising against adversity though. It's that people who have a lot of success doing something have trouble turning around and doing the opposite. There seems to be a human tendency to double down on what people think got them their success.
- davewritescode 4y ago
  Early Kanye West brought a lot of attention to social issues through his music and was one of the first hip-hop artists to publicly advocate for acceptance of gay folks in hip-hop culture at a time when gay slurs were very common. His first album was downright wholesome as far as hip-hop and there's a reason he was so beloved. He's been on a long, slow, downward trajectory with his mental health since the death of his mother and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anybody looking out for him anymore. It's really sad to watch at this point. This is an interview from 2005 where Kanye defended gay people when it wasn't exactly popular. Trigger warning for gay slurs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp45-dQvqPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp45-dQvqPo
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
jjtheblunt 4y ago
> arguably, the most popular rapper/hip hop artist of all time is he ranked that somewhere? if so, i'm definitely getting old and out of touch with pop culture, and i'm from the Chicago area so grew up with everything available on the radio.
- volkk 4y ago
  seriously? you don't need to be "young" to know this. unless by old you mean 60+. then perhaps i can understand it
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-greatest-rappers-of-all-time https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-greatest-rappers... ranked number 10. But the interesting thing is that you can see how the rankings favor more recent people, with 80s and 90s artists also up there and with far longer careers, but eclipsed by the more recent people.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
That's not how his life story went at all. His father was a photojournalist for the main newspaper in Atlanta and his mother was a Fulbright scholar. He grew up in a solid middle class suburb and he attended a magnet school for gifted kids before getting a scholarship to the American Acaedmy of Art. He started producing music for artists directly out of high school and was producing for Roc-A-Fella within 3 years of starting out in the music scene. It was at Roc-A-Fella that he decided to be a rapper, and it took him all of 2 years to produce The College Dropout. He lived an incredibly charmed life before he ever started rapping.
ALittleLight 4y ago
From this perspective - my intuition is that the likelihood a Kanye West led Parler will be successful is substantially greater than that a rap career will be successful. In some sense West is moving on to more plausible investments as he gets older. West has had success as an entertainer and as a businessman - I believe he has a successful shoe company. He's famous. If he thinks he can take on Parler, that seems like a crazy challenge but one he is well equipped to take on. I would certainly believe in myself - even if I thought it was low probability I'd feel certain that it was possible.
- TigeriusKirk 4y ago
  I don't know if I think it's likely he can make a success out of Parler. That's a very tall order. But I definitely think he's got a better shot at it than whoever has run it to date.
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    Completely agree. Put another way, it was far dumber for Parler's current founders and investors to try and create the Nth twitter clone in the current year than it is for Kanye to try and run it. Assuming he paid a reasonable price - buying Parler is probably faster, simpler, easier than creating your own app, which Kanye might not have the expertise/team to feel comfortable doing.
c3534l 4y ago
I don't know much about Kanye, but are reports of people telling him he didn'h have talent to be a rapper genuine, or just something he tells people? Because it sounds like the sort of thing people make up for their own personal narrative. It reminds me of when people say things like "the doctor told me I only had a year to live" - which is something no doctor would actually say because its a massive legal liability, but it fits our personal narrative. Who were these people Kanye had to overcome?
- ls15 4y ago
  Most artists have to deal with rejection at some point
- x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
  Parent commenter is reading too much into Kanye's first struggles to become a rapper in light of this Parler purchase. But parent commenter is right that no one saw Kanye as a rapper initially. Back then, Kanye was only known as a beatsmith and producer, not someone to actually be on the track. Kanye has a song off his album College Graduation where he talks about his initial troubles[1] [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpbeS15sHZ0&ab_channel=KanyeWest-Topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpbeS15sHZ0&ab_channel=Kanye...
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    I believe it is also mentioned in Through the Wire
- filoleg 4y ago
  It was genuine. He worked hard to get good at making beats, to the point he got signed at Roc-a-Fella Records to make beats for big artists at the time (Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, etc). He was super known for that in the industry, but Kanye insisted on one specific term of the contract - they gotta let him release his own album. Which they hesitantly allowed, because they thought he was just gonna fail and go back to what they thought he was good at, making beats for other rappers. They didnt want him to be a rapper, but not for some malicious reason. They loved his beats, but thought no one would care for his songs that were nothing like the mainstream rap at the time, especially since none of them were about bling/drugs/gang stuff. That's just what was selling. And Roc-a-Fella Records wanted their star beatmaker actually making beats for their star rappers, not "pursue dreams". So they allowed him to make that album, thinking the sooner he is done with it, the sooner he will get back to beatmaking. All of this is confirmed by tons of other people affiliated with Roc-a-Fella Records (like Jay-Z and others) at the time.
mariodiana 4y ago
Kanye makes me think of someone I knew. I knew a young woman once whose conversation was impossible to follow. She was a college graduate, and seemed intelligent. But, I think either her mind wandered, or else she simply lacked the capacity to reliably establish context in conversation. I assure you, I really tried to make sense of what she was saying to me. She was beautiful, and I was interested in her. (I say this to emphasize how hard I was trying to make sense of it all.) But, in the end, I just could not follow. Maybe she had a kind of ADHD. But my point is that her "mental illness" likely went no further than that. I can't follow Kanye either—though I am far less motivated to do so, by comparison. But, the guy is successful. I'm tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt that, like the young lady in my story, he may know what it is he's saying.
- alfnor 4y ago
  Interesting, because personality disorders run in my family (ADHD, ASD, schizophrenia, OCD, depression, anxiety, etc.) and as someone with two of those diagnosed (and likely a third undiagnosed), I tend to follow Ye's line of thought flawlessly. On the other hand, I often have to speed-watch speeches and lectures, as most neurotypical people stay on the same topic far too long for me to stay attentive. By speed-watching, the subject changes frequently enough for my mind to never start wandering.
- lawrenceyan 4y ago
  It’s like trying to determine whether there’s actually signal there or just random noise.
- thomastjeffery 4y ago
  Intellect isn't a single axis. People can be very skilled at understanding the details while being totally blind to the bigger picture.
- andirk 4y ago
  To a lesser extent, I have found entertainment in speaking with people who start a topic with their thesis (i.e. why are there Yellow Pages and White Pages? So stupid!) To which you lightly counter with some easy to digest fact (i.e. yellow is biz, white is res), and then a few sentences later, they'll conclude with their original point, as if you said nothing at all (i.e. See? Isn't it stupid, yellow and white pages. Makes no sense!). It was frustrating before, but now it's enjoyable to see a person live in a different reality right in front of me. Note: Sorry for dating myself and using a The Simpsons reference.
ghostbrainalpha 4y ago
You are right. And that cycle of being told he was crazy but having massive success, was repeated TWICE in music and fashion. So it makes sense his ego would be making it hard to see the world as it is, EVEN IF he didn't have any mental illness at all.
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Maursault 4y ago
> but I can see almost anyone falling into the exact same trap hes fallen into if they lived his life. Kanye is a garden variety manic-depressive. It has likely been exacerbated by stress and self-medicating with the wrong drugs, causing instability, paranoia and delusion. Bipolar disorder is genetic, it doesn't develop due to no one being able to say "no" to them. What you are describing, however, is one way that Narcissistic Personality Disorder can develop. Successful individuals are more at risk of NPD. One of the biggest issues is that NPD patients usually don't suffer, so they rarely seek treatment, which can correct if not cure the disorder in under 2 years, rare among psychological disorders. But the symptoms of NPD not only include an exaggerated sense of self-importance, but also an inability or fear of criticism, and exceptionally strong denial. Narcissists don't listen to anyone, such as those that are trying to help them, yet they require constant admiration. It is likely West has one of the more benign flavors of NPD, at least, I haven't heard he is violent nor of reports of him berating and belittling others (though I do not follow celebrities). I think his biggest problem is BPD and drug abuse (though the self-medication may be keeping him alive, it is far less than an ideal solution), but due to the combination with NPD and vast wealth, and probably being surrounded by those that will never deny him his insane impulses, he's probably not going to get help until he bottoms out in clinical major depression for months, if he survives it. BPD must be maintained, and if it isn't, inevitably the train leaves the rails.
- vba616 4y ago
  > Bipolar disorder is genetic It is not. The question has been settled on a huge scale by historical events. If illnesses like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia were meaningfully caused by genetic factors, then the Nazi genocide of mentally ill people would have caused a dramatic and lasting reduction in mental illness post-war among the affected population. It didn't. You might also ask yourself, if something is genetic, shouldn't identical twins (preferably raised apart) both get it or both not get it? Obviously that situation is rare, but researchers do seek out and study instances.
  - vba616 4y ago
    Mental illness is a social phenomenon. There are lots of physical explanations for symptoms similar to psychosis - drugs, infection, immune disorders, chemotherapy, professional head trauma addict, but when nothing else clearly fits, "mentally ill" is the default, the end of the "switch" statement. The social construction of the category is embodied by the admission process at a hospital's mental ward. They literally go down the various causes that they can check for a disordered mental state, and if they can't find anything else, that is mental illness, end of story. In fact, lots of abnormal blood tests may be ignored if they don't fit into an obvious pattern. The meaning of the term is defined by what people with the power to assign it do. There is no abstract essence of it beyond the process as enacted. It's a label that serves a critical function of allowing society to abandon difficult diagnoses and redirect resources to others permanently. It doesn't represent an illness, but the lack of understanding what it is. This is not at all the same as the (unknown) constituent disorders being unphysical or one single entity. It's sort of like the "scientific creationists" that keep finding God in the gaps of science. There's always something left, but either you have faith in naturalistic explanations or not. If you aren't satisfied with science, you can't talk as though there is such a thing as scientific fact about the scientifically unknown, and implicitly lump it all together.
dkonofalski 4y ago
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. This is a very sad, very public case of mental illness combined with the paradox of success. There's no way, healthy or not, that he wouldn't think he knows better than everyone else for exactly the reason you describe. Anyone in his position would be fighting back the naysayers. The major difference is that Kanye has had enough failures and stumbles now that his whole "god" and "GOAT" persona is publicly falling apart and he doesn't know how to handle it. The mental health issues are just exacerbating his inability to reconcile his personal ambitions with reality. Just think about it... if you've been a success for so long and suddenly aren't, who would you blame? If you didn't say anyone but yourself, you're not Kanye.
cwkoss 4y ago
He's been delusionally egotistical for nearly two decades. I think he's always been a self centered asshole, the schtick was just more palatable when he was only talking about the trivialities of the music industry.
agumonkey 4y ago
Makes sense .. it's tragic.

badpun 4y ago

> Then he became, arguably, the most popular rapper/hip hop artist of all time I don’t think he’s even recognized as being in the top 3. There are so many much better than him, such as Eminem, Tupac, Snoop Dogg.

wturner 4y ago

This is a great point. People become calcified and stuck in their ways as a survival mechanism! Times change and circumstances do too thus the axioms floating around in our heads deviate from "reality" like a lifeboat floating away while we pretend everything is normal. This is not only a lesson for the extreme rich - but everyone.

jprd 4y ago

Whoaaaaaaa. Whoa. Easy there. I don't want to get off topic here, but talking about Kanye West as "arguably the most popular hip hop artist of all time" should also come with that argument attached to justify such a grandiose statement. I mean, I need to see some Claire Danes w/red yarn vibes to even begin to understand that position. You can talk of Kanye and Swift in the same sentence (never had a struggle meal, I see your nick Taylor ;) ), but Kanye vs. Nas? Jay? J. Cole? Sheeet, even Em? I don't even know if there are metrics that could make that statement valid unless you restrict it to some weird "early 'aughts" sub-generation. I challenge thee to numbers, graphs and beyond all - cultural import! <gauntlet slap>

VincentEvans 4y ago

It’s odd how in my own personal experience, the only way that I know that Kanye is “the most successful rapper of all time” is people telling me that he is the most successful rapper of all time. I actually hardly ever hear his music, or see him performing anywhere, as compared to other rappers who, if I were to volunteer an opinion based on my own experiences I would think of as “most successful rappers of all time”, like Eminem, or Dre, or JayZ or even Snoop. It’s almost as if his whole thing was to successfully market himself to be associated with the title of the “most successful rapper of all time”. But I have to give him that other than such an illustrious title, I do hear of him in countless contexts other than music: his marriage, his shoes, his renaming himself, his presidential ambitions, his beefs with other actual artists, and now his purchase of 4chan.

imperfect_light 4y ago
He is in fact the richest rapper according to Forbes, apparently with about $2 billion net worth, twice as much a JayZ
cwkoss 4y ago
He reminds me a lot of Donald Trump
missingrib 4y ago
He's literally one of the best selling music artists who single-handedly pioneered multiple substyles within hip-hop over a 20 year career. He's released some of the most critically acclaimed albums of all time. Strictly as a rapper he might not be listed as "the best rapper ever", but as a musician he's easily up there.
askafriend 4y ago
You’re off the mark with this one. He is extraordinarily influential in music and hip hop. Maybe you missed the era where he skyrocketed to the top and spawned a generation of artists that emulate elements of his style to this day. His impact is undeniable and that’s why you hear about it. The disconnect is probably that he hasn’t done anything musically relevant in a few years + his mental health has continued to deteriorate in public.

User23 4y ago

It’s interesting that you feel entitled to judge the mental health of a Black man who is probably at least two to three orders of magnitude more financially successful than you are. At least try considering the possibility that his lived experience is valid.

puglr 4y ago

In 2006 I saw Kanye West perform at a music festival. This was while he was touring for his second album. I got an early taste of his mental illness. He started maybe 5 songs, each of which he would cut short in the middle to rant about the sound being off. He was completely unhinged and rambling each time. After 20 minutes he simply walked off stage and that was that. Ever since then, I've found that his illness has been very evident in the art itself. It precludes me from enjoying it, and there's been a number of times I've felt terribly sad seeing these signs celebrated by those who don't see the connection (which is not to suggest that they should). All that said, I've never even considered this perspective, so thank you for sharing it. It makes a mountain of sense, and makes the whole situation that much sadder (and more complex).

BizarroLand 4y ago

It's also common for people who win a Nobel Prize to go on to endorse and study widely discredited crackpot ideas. https://slate.com/technology/2015/06/tim-hunt-on-women-scientists-nobel-laureates-say-the-dumbest-things.html https://slate.com/technology/2015/06/tim-hunt-on-women-scien... It's almost as if there is something that happens once you have a major, incontestible success, that you come to believe that your victory had little to do with luck and more to do with destiny or some inherent quality that you possess, and therefore the one masterpiece is a shadow of what is to come. That foolish idea has led to many great follies.

itake 4y ago

> the most popular rapper/hip hop artist of all time Slim Shady stands up [0]. [0] - https://iamyourtargetdemographic.com/2011/08/30/kanye-west-vs-eminem/ https://iamyourtargetdemographic.com/2011/08/30/kanye-west-v...

AlwaysRock 4y ago
> arguably
bambax 4y ago
This article is from 2011, but today on Spotify Eminem still has more monthly listeners than Kanye West (53M vs 51M). Eminem also has several songs that have over a billion streams (one with >1.5b), while Kanye has just one and it's at exactly 1b. So yes, Eminem is still well ahead.
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- mikercampbell 4y ago
  As a huge Eminem fan, 2011 was a good time to stop counting. I love his stuff, Revival, Kamazake, Music to be Murdered by - I probably know 10 songs almost by heart. But there's no denying that it's been a very different decade for Mathers and not everyone likes it.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    Give him a couple of years more to include "Rap God."
    - mikercampbell 4y ago
      Oh jeez, I forget that the LP 2 was released after 2010.

spywaregorilla 4y ago

As someone who doesn't listen to much rap / hip hop, and can only name his cover (adaptation?) of Stronger, I do know who Kanye is. I don't know anything about his music. Mostly I just know of him because he's a very public asshole. Much like his wife. I find it basically impossible to empathize with him. I just wouldn't ever be in that situation. "Rising against adversity" is not the story I'd be be using here so much as just a typical strongman bravado leading to an absolute disconnect from reality. I would wager greatly that it's not that he's grown cynical to people saying he can't do something, but that he's become delusional from people telling him a genius. People who convince themselves that they're smart do this thing where they have an idea, and conclude that because they've come up with it and they're smart that it must be a well reasoned idea.

viscanti 4y ago
> "Rising against adversity" is not the story I'd be be using here so much as just a typical strongman bravado leading to an absolute disconnect from reality. It's not really a story of rising against adversity though. It's that people who have a lot of success doing something have trouble turning around and doing the opposite. There seems to be a human tendency to double down on what people think got them their success.
davewritescode 4y ago
Early Kanye West brought a lot of attention to social issues through his music and was one of the first hip-hop artists to publicly advocate for acceptance of gay folks in hip-hop culture at a time when gay slurs were very common. His first album was downright wholesome as far as hip-hop and there's a reason he was so beloved. He's been on a long, slow, downward trajectory with his mental health since the death of his mother and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anybody looking out for him anymore. It's really sad to watch at this point. This is an interview from 2005 where Kanye defended gay people when it wasn't exactly popular. Trigger warning for gay slurs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp45-dQvqPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp45-dQvqPo
- spywaregorilla 4y ago

jjtheblunt 4y ago

> arguably, the most popular rapper/hip hop artist of all time is he ranked that somewhere? if so, i'm definitely getting old and out of touch with pop culture, and i'm from the Chicago area so grew up with everything available on the radio.

volkk 4y ago
seriously? you don't need to be "young" to know this. unless by old you mean 60+. then perhaps i can understand it
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-greatest-rappers-of-all-time https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-greatest-rappers... ranked number 10. But the interesting thing is that you can see how the rankings favor more recent people, with 80s and 90s artists also up there and with far longer careers, but eclipsed by the more recent people.

MisterBastahrd 4y ago

That's not how his life story went at all. His father was a photojournalist for the main newspaper in Atlanta and his mother was a Fulbright scholar. He grew up in a solid middle class suburb and he attended a magnet school for gifted kids before getting a scholarship to the American Acaedmy of Art. He started producing music for artists directly out of high school and was producing for Roc-A-Fella within 3 years of starting out in the music scene. It was at Roc-A-Fella that he decided to be a rapper, and it took him all of 2 years to produce The College Dropout. He lived an incredibly charmed life before he ever started rapping.

ALittleLight 4y ago

From this perspective - my intuition is that the likelihood a Kanye West led Parler will be successful is substantially greater than that a rap career will be successful. In some sense West is moving on to more plausible investments as he gets older. West has had success as an entertainer and as a businessman - I believe he has a successful shoe company. He's famous. If he thinks he can take on Parler, that seems like a crazy challenge but one he is well equipped to take on. I would certainly believe in myself - even if I thought it was low probability I'd feel certain that it was possible.

TigeriusKirk 4y ago
I don't know if I think it's likely he can make a success out of Parler. That's a very tall order. But I definitely think he's got a better shot at it than whoever has run it to date.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  Completely agree. Put another way, it was far dumber for Parler's current founders and investors to try and create the Nth twitter clone in the current year than it is for Kanye to try and run it. Assuming he paid a reasonable price - buying Parler is probably faster, simpler, easier than creating your own app, which Kanye might not have the expertise/team to feel comfortable doing.

c3534l 4y ago

I don't know much about Kanye, but are reports of people telling him he didn'h have talent to be a rapper genuine, or just something he tells people? Because it sounds like the sort of thing people make up for their own personal narrative. It reminds me of when people say things like "the doctor told me I only had a year to live" - which is something no doctor would actually say because its a massive legal liability, but it fits our personal narrative. Who were these people Kanye had to overcome?

ls15 4y ago
Most artists have to deal with rejection at some point
x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
Parent commenter is reading too much into Kanye's first struggles to become a rapper in light of this Parler purchase. But parent commenter is right that no one saw Kanye as a rapper initially. Back then, Kanye was only known as a beatsmith and producer, not someone to actually be on the track. Kanye has a song off his album College Graduation where he talks about his initial troubles[1] [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpbeS15sHZ0&ab_channel=KanyeWest-Topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpbeS15sHZ0&ab_channel=Kanye...
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  I believe it is also mentioned in Through the Wire
filoleg 4y ago
It was genuine. He worked hard to get good at making beats, to the point he got signed at Roc-a-Fella Records to make beats for big artists at the time (Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, etc). He was super known for that in the industry, but Kanye insisted on one specific term of the contract - they gotta let him release his own album. Which they hesitantly allowed, because they thought he was just gonna fail and go back to what they thought he was good at, making beats for other rappers. They didnt want him to be a rapper, but not for some malicious reason. They loved his beats, but thought no one would care for his songs that were nothing like the mainstream rap at the time, especially since none of them were about bling/drugs/gang stuff. That's just what was selling. And Roc-a-Fella Records wanted their star beatmaker actually making beats for their star rappers, not "pursue dreams". So they allowed him to make that album, thinking the sooner he is done with it, the sooner he will get back to beatmaking. All of this is confirmed by tons of other people affiliated with Roc-a-Fella Records (like Jay-Z and others) at the time.

mariodiana 4y ago

Kanye makes me think of someone I knew. I knew a young woman once whose conversation was impossible to follow. She was a college graduate, and seemed intelligent. But, I think either her mind wandered, or else she simply lacked the capacity to reliably establish context in conversation. I assure you, I really tried to make sense of what she was saying to me. She was beautiful, and I was interested in her. (I say this to emphasize how hard I was trying to make sense of it all.) But, in the end, I just could not follow. Maybe she had a kind of ADHD. But my point is that her "mental illness" likely went no further than that. I can't follow Kanye either—though I am far less motivated to do so, by comparison. But, the guy is successful. I'm tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt that, like the young lady in my story, he may know what it is he's saying.

alfnor 4y ago
Interesting, because personality disorders run in my family (ADHD, ASD, schizophrenia, OCD, depression, anxiety, etc.) and as someone with two of those diagnosed (and likely a third undiagnosed), I tend to follow Ye's line of thought flawlessly. On the other hand, I often have to speed-watch speeches and lectures, as most neurotypical people stay on the same topic far too long for me to stay attentive. By speed-watching, the subject changes frequently enough for my mind to never start wandering.
lawrenceyan 4y ago
It’s like trying to determine whether there’s actually signal there or just random noise.
thomastjeffery 4y ago
Intellect isn't a single axis. People can be very skilled at understanding the details while being totally blind to the bigger picture.
andirk 4y ago
To a lesser extent, I have found entertainment in speaking with people who start a topic with their thesis (i.e. why are there Yellow Pages and White Pages? So stupid!) To which you lightly counter with some easy to digest fact (i.e. yellow is biz, white is res), and then a few sentences later, they'll conclude with their original point, as if you said nothing at all (i.e. See? Isn't it stupid, yellow and white pages. Makes no sense!). It was frustrating before, but now it's enjoyable to see a person live in a different reality right in front of me. Note: Sorry for dating myself and using a The Simpsons reference.

ghostbrainalpha 4y ago

You are right. And that cycle of being told he was crazy but having massive success, was repeated TWICE in music and fashion. So it makes sense his ego would be making it hard to see the world as it is, EVEN IF he didn't have any mental illness at all.

deleted 4y ago

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Maursault 4y ago

> but I can see almost anyone falling into the exact same trap hes fallen into if they lived his life. Kanye is a garden variety manic-depressive. It has likely been exacerbated by stress and self-medicating with the wrong drugs, causing instability, paranoia and delusion. Bipolar disorder is genetic, it doesn't develop due to no one being able to say "no" to them. What you are describing, however, is one way that Narcissistic Personality Disorder can develop. Successful individuals are more at risk of NPD. One of the biggest issues is that NPD patients usually don't suffer, so they rarely seek treatment, which can correct if not cure the disorder in under 2 years, rare among psychological disorders. But the symptoms of NPD not only include an exaggerated sense of self-importance, but also an inability or fear of criticism, and exceptionally strong denial. Narcissists don't listen to anyone, such as those that are trying to help them, yet they require constant admiration. It is likely West has one of the more benign flavors of NPD, at least, I haven't heard he is violent nor of reports of him berating and belittling others (though I do not follow celebrities). I think his biggest problem is BPD and drug abuse (though the self-medication may be keeping him alive, it is far less than an ideal solution), but due to the combination with NPD and vast wealth, and probably being surrounded by those that will never deny him his insane impulses, he's probably not going to get help until he bottoms out in clinical major depression for months, if he survives it. BPD must be maintained, and if it isn't, inevitably the train leaves the rails.

vba616 4y ago
> Bipolar disorder is genetic It is not. The question has been settled on a huge scale by historical events. If illnesses like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia were meaningfully caused by genetic factors, then the Nazi genocide of mentally ill people would have caused a dramatic and lasting reduction in mental illness post-war among the affected population. It didn't. You might also ask yourself, if something is genetic, shouldn't identical twins (preferably raised apart) both get it or both not get it? Obviously that situation is rare, but researchers do seek out and study instances.
- vba616 4y ago
  Mental illness is a social phenomenon. There are lots of physical explanations for symptoms similar to psychosis - drugs, infection, immune disorders, chemotherapy, professional head trauma addict, but when nothing else clearly fits, "mentally ill" is the default, the end of the "switch" statement. The social construction of the category is embodied by the admission process at a hospital's mental ward. They literally go down the various causes that they can check for a disordered mental state, and if they can't find anything else, that is mental illness, end of story. In fact, lots of abnormal blood tests may be ignored if they don't fit into an obvious pattern. The meaning of the term is defined by what people with the power to assign it do. There is no abstract essence of it beyond the process as enacted. It's a label that serves a critical function of allowing society to abandon difficult diagnoses and redirect resources to others permanently. It doesn't represent an illness, but the lack of understanding what it is. This is not at all the same as the (unknown) constituent disorders being unphysical or one single entity. It's sort of like the "scientific creationists" that keep finding God in the gaps of science. There's always something left, but either you have faith in naturalistic explanations or not. If you aren't satisfied with science, you can't talk as though there is such a thing as scientific fact about the scientifically unknown, and implicitly lump it all together.

dkonofalski 4y ago

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. This is a very sad, very public case of mental illness combined with the paradox of success. There's no way, healthy or not, that he wouldn't think he knows better than everyone else for exactly the reason you describe. Anyone in his position would be fighting back the naysayers. The major difference is that Kanye has had enough failures and stumbles now that his whole "god" and "GOAT" persona is publicly falling apart and he doesn't know how to handle it. The mental health issues are just exacerbating his inability to reconcile his personal ambitions with reality. Just think about it... if you've been a success for so long and suddenly aren't, who would you blame? If you didn't say anyone but yourself, you're not Kanye.

cwkoss 4y ago

He's been delusionally egotistical for nearly two decades. I think he's always been a self centered asshole, the schtick was just more palatable when he was only talking about the trivialities of the music industry.

agumonkey 4y ago

Makes sense .. it's tragic.