Grammy-winning rapper Kanye West is celebrating his 44th birthday on June 8.
West, who is currently going through a divorce with his estranged wife Kim Kardashian, recently made headlines for his bizarre 2020 presidential campaign.
From jumping on stage at 2009 MTV VMA's award and interrupting Taylor Swift's speech to his meet with former POTUS Donald Trump and his controversial tweets, the hip-hop star has more often than not proved that he is the king of controversies (quite literally).
On the 'Monster' crooner's birthday, here are some of Kanye's biggest controversies:
Interrupting Taylor Swift's speech at MTV’s Video Music Awards
The 43-year-old-rapper, who has 21 Grammy Awards to his name, stormed the stage to interrupt 'Blank Space' hit-maker Taylor Swift's acceptance speech for Best Female Video. Kanye left everyone shocked by declaring that Beyoncé was more deserving of the award.
The infamous 'Famous' song
Following the VMA controversy, Kanye West released a track 'Famous', which dissed Taylor Swift. West created a stir for using derogatory language for the Swift in his song.
Adding fuel to the fire, when the rapper dropped the music video for 'Famous', he added a naked wax figure of Swift among the other celebrities.
On New Year's Eve 2015, the hip-hop star dropped the track 'Facts' from his album - 'The Life Of Pablo'.
While the lyrics of the song were enough to raise eyebrows, Kanye later decided to publically defend actor Bill Cosby - who was accused of sexual assault by several women and was later found guilty.
Slavery sounds like a ‘choice’: Kanye West
The rapper once said that the slavery culture may have been a 'choice'.
In an interview with TMZ in 2018, the rapper, who had been tweeting out support for US president Donald Trump, talked about the President, free thinking and labels before he moved onto slavery.
Kanye said, "When you hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years? That sounds like a choice. You was there for 400 years and it’s all of you all."
"It is like we were mentally in prison. I like the word prison because slavery goes too direct to the idea of blacks. Slavery is to blacks as the Holocaust is to Jews. Prison is something that unites as one race, blacks and whites, that we’re the human race," he added.
West's bizarre 2020 presidential campaign
This was apparently the final straw for Kanye's estranged wife Kim Kardashian.
In his campaign rally, Kanye West claimed he and Kim discussed aborting their first child.
Kanye revealed he and Kim had talked about not going through with her pregnancy in 2012 when Kim "had the pills in her hand" to have an abortion.
He added, "My girlfriend called me, screaming, crying. I'm a rapper. And she said, 'I'm pregnant.' " But Kanye said he then got a sign from God through his laptop. "My screen went black and white. And God said, 'If you f**k with my vision, I f**k with yours' ... And I called my girlfriend and said, 'We're going to have this child.' " The rapper said he'd be "at peace ... even if my wife were to divorce me after this speech. She brought North into this world when I did not want to."
He broke down in tears and shouted, "She had the pills in her hand! I almost killed my daughter!" He also revealed that his father wanted to abort him, but his mother "saved his life," and went on to say women should be given money by the government for bearing children.
Twitter meltdown
Last year in July, Kanye left everyone stunned with his tweets about his wife Kim Kardashian, daughter North West and Kris Jenner.
The rapper, who went off the rails at his first campaign speech for his supposed run for president in South Carolina, had spoken about Kim's infamous sex tape with Ray J and her infamous Playboy cover.
