An artist who inspires me and my work is music mogul and entrepreneur Kanye West. Writing this paper I chose this artist because I myself inspire to be a fashion designer and music producer since I work as an audio engineer and in art school. Kanye paved the way for young black creative minds that there is no limitations on what you can do creatively. Through hard work, determination, and faith you will get where you’ll need to be in whatever occupation you do. A personal goal of mine is to be close if not just as great as Kanye but in my own way, the road isn’t easy but I’m working towards it.
Kanye West is a quadruple threat, he is a producer, rapper, songwriter, and record executive. The man can do it all, Ye started in Chicago building his buzz by making beats and working with underground rappers. Eventually he moved to New York to chase his dream and indeed he did. His music style is diverse as he is one of the pioneers of the autotune wave and also using orchestral arrangements. At first people didn’t understand why he was using these type of sounds proving he was ahead of time because now everybody uses autotune. In today’s music many people are using his methods to further push their sound musically. Dropping classics like “Late registration”, “Graduation”, and “808’s & Heartbreak”. Drawing inspiration from maximalism and minimalism led to diversifying his next projects like “Yeezus” and “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”. Although Ye is widely known for his music he is also widely known as a fashion designer. The brand Yeezy associate with adidas shows his creative side in design selling to millions of people worldwide. He also finalized a deal with gap to launch “Yzy Gap” and designing for balenciaga.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia Kanye West was born on June 8th, 1977. His parents divorced when he was only three years old so he moved to south side Chicago with his mother, an english professor, spending majority of his early life in Chicago. He would go spent summers with his father, an award winning photographer who became a church counselor. Early life for Kanye West was interesting, in the 1990s he started getting into music when a man who eventually became his mentor producer/DJ No I.D. Learning how to sample and program beats at the age of 15. Graduating from high school he went to art school at Chicago State University then dropped out after one year to pursue music full time. He explained his decision of dropping out after one year in a interview with Ebony magazine. In the interview he stated “I dropped out of school because I wasn’t learning fast enough, I learned from real life better.” This stuck out to me because similar in my situation, I learned sampling and producing by real life situations and gaining real life experience in a live studio, didn’t go to school for it. In my opinion I feel like real experience help improve performance because it polishes your skills rather than learning in a classroom. Shortly after dropping out Ye moved to New York and the rest was history.
Throughout Kanye career he has accomplished many feats making him arguably one of the most influential artists of the 21st century. West has won 21 grammy awards and 68 nominations only second to Jay Z. West is also one of the best selling digital artist of all time as well. All of West albums have received numerous accolades. Rolling stone nominated his album MDTF as 500 greatest albums of all time. Entertainment weekly named “The College Drop out” the best album of 2000s decade. Lastly Complex named Graduation as the best album released between 2002 and 2012, 808 & Heartbreaks was named by rolling stone as one of the 40 most groundbreaking albums of all time. Kanye catalog speaks for itself as he continues his illustrious music path.
In conclusion Kanye West is a big inspiration to my work as a producer and designer. His journey is a true testament of what hard work, perseverance and faith can get you. What I learned fromKanye is to chase your dreams and give your 100% to get the best results and let god lead the way. Ye is one of the most diverse artists of all time and created a wave inspiring many, so I’m gonna follow his footsteps and create my own wave because I have faith I can be who I want to become.
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