Kanye West: The Most Influential Artist In Modern Music History

Kanye West is one of the most influential figures that the rap/hip-hop genre has seen in recent times. Kanye Omari West was born on June 8th of 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia. Even though he was born in Atlanta, Kanye spent his life growing up in the suburbs of Chicago. He even spent time in China with his mother while she was working as a professor at a university. West’s mother says that his interest in the arts started to flourish in elementary school. At around the age of 13, Kanye started to create his own musical pieces. Kanye started making musical advances throughout his teen years even when he made the decision to enroll at Chicago State University.

While attending the university, Kanye started to become more and more engulfed by his musical work, but his education would have to be sacrificed. This is when he made the decision to drop out of school and pursue a career in music full-time. After a few years had passed, when he was working with a variety of well-known artists and producing for them, he would go on to drop his first studio album, The College Dropout. This album would completely change the trajectory of his career and catapult him into a league with all of the biggest artists at the time. Kanye is known as a perfectionist and this is clear when looking at when his first studio album was released compared to when it was initially supposed to be released. This album came out about 6 months late due to Kanye West constantly removing certain songs, changing verses on others, and even adding certain instruments to the background to tune the beat.

Looking back at all of this, the extra caution and care made the difference as the album would go on to become voted one of the best albums of the year and earn a plethora of awards. Years down the road, The College Dropout would be considered a classic in the rap genre and the start of a legendary career. One of the reasons that Kanye is considered one of the most influential figures in the rap genre is the long list of other artists that he has either helped rise to fame or that he has helped in continuing to release quality content.

In the mid to late 1990s, Kanye produced for many small artists, most of them being from Chicago. Despite this, the start of West’s career as we know it today began when he started producing songs for artists signed to Roc-A-Fella Records.2 It was during this time that Kanye helped produce multiple songs on an album for Jay-Z. This album was called The Blueprint and it would not only become one of Jay-Z’s most popular pieces, but it would become one of the most iconic rap albums of all time. Due to the popularity of the album and Kanye’s efforts on it, his status as a producer skyrocketed.

At this point in his career, it was very early, and Kanye had already helped produce one of the most popular and influential rap albums in history. One way that Kanye helped many up-and-coming artists was through his record label GOOD Music, which he founded in 2004. One of the artists that Kanye helped very early on was Kid Cudi. As a result of help from the record label, Kid Cudi would go on to also become a very influential artist. Another artist that is signed to GOOD Music is Travis Scott, who is one of the most popular and iconic rappers in 2019. Other notable artists that are signed to GOOD Music include; Pusha T, Big Sean, and John Legend.5 It has become evident that Kanye is an icon in the rap scene for a variety of reasons other than his own musical productions.