Kanye West – Runaway (Full-length Film)

Kanye West first gained recognition in the music business by producing well-known musicians. His 2004 debut album, College Dropout, demonstrated his skills as a rapper, and albums like Late Registration (2005), My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010), Yeezus (2013), and Ye (2018) solidified his position as the industry’s top hip-hop artist. A nearly two-decade Grammy Award winner, West is also well-known for his extravagant performances at award shows, his ventures into fashion, and his union with Kim Kardashian.

Childhood
On June 8, 1977, Kanye Omari West was born in Atlanta, Georgia. In addition to working as a photojournalist for the Atlanta Journal, his father Ray was politically involved in the Black Panthers and subsequently pursued a career as a Christian psychotherapist. Donda, West’s mother, was a teacher before going on to become an English professor at Chicago State University and, ultimately, the manager of her son. She passed away in 2007 at the age of 58 from heart illness following cosmetic surgery. West’s loss would have a significant impact on him both personally and artistically.

When West was three years old, Ray and Donda got divorced peacefully. Following that, his mother reared him in a middle-class South Shore neighborhood of Chicago, where he also spent the summers with his father. As part of a university exchange program, West relocated to China with Donda when he was ten years old and taught there for a year. He was the only international student in the class. Upon his return to Chicago, West became involved in the hip-hop scene on the South Side and became friends with DJ and producer No I.D., who later served as his mentor. After graduating from Polaris High School and receiving a scholarship to study at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, West decided to focus solely on his musical career, which would eventually inspire the title of his debut solo album.

Producer of Music
After a while of producing music for local musicians, West created his own sound, which became known as “chipmunk soul,” which is defined by accelerated soul samples. In 2001, he relocated to New York. His big break came from producing the Jay-Z song “This Can’t Be Life,” which was featured on the album Dynasty: Roc La Familia in 2000. The next year, he solidified his rising stardom by contributing four tracks to Jay Z’s The Blueprint, which is considered by many to be among the best rap albums ever. Subsequently, West produced music for other outstanding artists, including as the rappers Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Ludacris, as well as the singers Beyoncé and Alicia Keys.

However, West was not willing to stay in the background. At first, he found it difficult to be taken seriously as a rapper, but he wanted to be the main attraction. Though co-founder Jay-Z later told Time magazine, “We all grew up street guys who had to do whatever we had to get by,” he begged Roc-A-Fella records to let him rap. And then there’s Kanye, who has never in his life—as far as I know—hustled. It didn’t seem possible to me.” Several labels responded to West in a like way. He remembered, “I used to cry every time I left a meeting.”

In 2002, Damon Dash reluctantly signed West to Roc-A-Fella, primarily to keep him on board as a producer. That October, West suffered a broken jaw in a head-on vehicle accident while returning home from a recording session in a California studio. After undergoing reconstructive surgery, he wrote and recorded a song titled “Through the Wire,” which is a reflection of the event. The remainder of his debut album was largely composed when he was recovering in Los Angeles. However, as soon as the record was finished, it was posted online. West chose to improve it in response, rewriting and revising the lyrics and enhancing the production with heavier drums, strings, and gospel choirs (he personally covered the cost of the orchestras).

“The Dropout from College”
After the album’s eventual release in February 2004, West became a household name thanks to its 2.6 million copy sales. With topics including consumerism (which he was critical of at the time), racism, higher education, and his religious convictions, The College Dropout disrupted the template of gangsta-rap. On the track “Jesus Walks” he rhymed, “They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus/That means guns, sex, lies, videotapes/But if I talk about God, my record won’t get played.” With 10 Grammy nominations, West won three of them, including Best Rap Album and Best Rap Song for “Jesus Walks.” The College Dropout debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 200 chart. West established his record label, GOOD music, which stands for Getting Out Our Dreams, in collaboration with Sony BMG not long after the album’s release. He would release songs by Pusha-T, Big Sean, Common, John Legend, and more.

“Belated Enrollment”
For his sophomore album, which took a year and two million dollars to complete, West hired an orchestra and collaborated with composer Jon Brion, who had never before worked with a rapper. According to West’s statement to the New York Times, he wanted to “see how far he could expand” hip hop. West is a restless bourgeois-creative. The outcomes were astounding, resulting in three more Grammy Awards: Best Rap Album once more, Best Rap Song for “Diamonds from Sierra Leone,” and Best Rap Solo Performance for “Gold Digger.” On the Billboard Hot 200, Late Registration opened at No. 1, a position West would hold for each of his future solo album releases.

Rob Sheffield said in Rolling Stone’s five-star review of the album that “the Louis Vuitton Don doesn’t just set out to create pop music— he wants to be pop music.” “So he steps up his lyrical game, shows off his epic production skills, reaches higher, pushes harder, and claims the whole world of music as hip hop turf.”

One month following the publication of Late Registration, in September 2005, West made an appearance on an NBC show to help collect money for Hurricane Katrina victims. When he declared live on air that “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people,” voicing widespread criticism of the president for not visiting the damaged city of New Orleans straight away, he ignited a national media tempest that would be his first but by no means his last. West’s remark severely wounded Bush, who later described it as a “disgusting moment.”

“Congratulations”
Following his 2005–2006 U2 tour, West was motivated to elevate hip hop to a more theatrical level so that it could be performed in arenas and stadiums. He started to take inspiration from house music, which came from his homeland of Chicago, as well as rock ‘n’ roll, including the Stones, Led Zeppelin, and the Killers. His third album, Graduation, was released as a result on September 11, 2007. It came out on the same day as 50 Cent’s album Curtis, and the whole thing was billed as a confrontation between the street thug with bullet scars and the learned showman who is the soul of hip-hop. However, there could only be one winner thanks to Graduation’s innovative (for hip-hop) use of layered electronic synthesizers and catchy wordplay (he grinned on “Good Morning”) and slogans like “I’m like the fly Malcolm X/Buy any jeans necessary,” In just six days, West’s album sold 957,000 copies, instantly vaulting to the top of the charts.

West simply embraced the shift with his music video for “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” for which he hired comedian Zach Galifianakis to lip-synch to the lyrics on an alternate version, making it a viral sensation on YouTube, while the music industry was starting to wring its hands over the effect of the internet on its profit margins.

Mother’s Demise
Hailed as the musician who had put an end to gangsta rap, West was living the high life. And then tragedy struck in November 2007. Donda, his cherished mother, passed away after having cosmetic surgery due to a heart attack. He sang “Hey Mama” in honor of her on his first show after the funeral. West and his fiancée, Alexis Phifer, called it quits a few months later. Twelve months after his mother’s death, he released his second album, 808s & Heartbreak, which was rife with anguish, suffering, and estrangement. In fact, West gave up rhyming entirely in favor of singing through an Auto-Tune vocal processor, which gave his voice a robotic tone and is now a common practice in hip hop. Declaring, “Hip hop is over for me,” he categorized the new album as “pop art,” not to be confused with the visual art movement. (It wasn’t; for his guest raps on TI’s “Swagga Like Us” and Estelle’s “American Boy,” he was awarded two Grammys.)

Swift’s VMA feud and dissension
The following year at the MTV Video Music Awards, there were questions raised about how fragile West’s mental state was. He stormed the stage during Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for the Best Female Video award (for “You Belong to Me”) at the ceremony held at Radio City Music Hall in New York, yelling that Beyoncé ought to have taken home the trophy.

There are still aftereffects from that incident. 2013 saw West apologize, then take it back in an interview with the New York Times. They had gotten along well by 2015 and were even seen out to supper together. On his song “Famous” from 2016, Kanye then rapped, saying, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/Why? I brought fame to that b****.” “I want to say to all the young women out there: There will be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments…,” Swift retaliated from the stage at the 2016 Grammy Awards, this time unhampered. Never allow those people divert your attention.