Kanye West once called himself “the greatest artist of all time”. Hardly surprising words from a man who appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in February 2006 wearing a crown of thorns, his face covered in blood. The headline read ‘The Passion of Kanye West’.
He compared himself to Christ, saying he had to “fight for recognition” and “suffer for his success”. On his 2013 record Yeezus, he went further than John Lennon, who in 1966 said The Beatles were “more popular than Jesus”.
“I am a god,” West sang on the song of that name. Such narcissism meant that his million-selling albums were rarely just albums. They tended to be protracted, zeitgeist-defining cultural events, profound statements on the world, more philosophy than rap.
His new album DONDA marks the latest step in his artistic revolution – and messianic evolution. One of the songs is called ‘I Know God Breathed on This’.
The album, a follow-up to 2019 gospel release Jesus is King, was scheduled to come out last summer, then was bumped forward to last month. It was finally released two days ago. At one stage it looked like it was not coming out at all. He said he was contemplating never rapping again.
“I rapped for the devil so long that I didn’t even know how to rap for God. Then one of my pastors told me, ‘My son just said that he would want a rap album about Jesus from Kanye West.’”
The subsequent album is named after his mother Donda West, who died in November 2007, from complications following plastic surgery. She had had liposuction, a tummy tuck, and a breast reduction just the day before. In February the following year, he performed his song ‘Hey Mama’ at the Grammy Awards.
A decade later, it appeared that West still hadn’t processed the pain of his mother’s sudden death. In 2018, he posted a picture of a doctor with the text underneath: “This is plastic surgeon Jan Adams. The person who performed my mom’s final surgery. Do you have any title ideas? I want to forgive and stop hating.”
For the record, Dr Adams told American TV show Inside Edition that “the lengthy liposuction, tummy-tuck and breast-reduction surgery went ahead without any issues.”
He was born Kanye Omari West on June 8, 1977, in Douglasville, Georgia to Donda Williams and Ray West. Three years later, he moved with his mother to Chicago, following his parents’ separation. At 13 years of age, he recorded his first song, ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ and would rap on the street.
In 2000, he began producing Roc-A-Fella Records acts, most notably Jay Z on ‘This Can’t Be Life’. In 2003, he released his debut album, the brilliant The College Dropout. He was already a star, albeit a volatile one. When he did not win the Best New Artist award at the 2004 American Music Awards (country singer Gretchen Wilson won), he fumed: “I was definitely robbed.”
In 2005, he criticised the US president over the poorly delivered humanitarian aid in New Orleans in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people,” he said during a charity telethon. (Bush said that West’s remark was “one of the most disgusting moments of my presidency”.)
West was no stranger to televised controversy. In 2009 he stormed Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards, and said that Beyoncé deserved the award. Swift was mortified. West later claimed God told him to gatecrash the stage. Even US president Barack Obama weighed in, referring to West as “a jackass”.
Still, in the studio West was an innovator. His June 2013 album Yeezus was a hip-hop pièce de résistance of unsettling megalomania and visceral self-revelation.
“I’m so scared of my demons/I go to sleep with a nightlight,” he sang.
In October, he found someone to help him with the demons when he got engaged to Kim Kardashian. They married in Italy in May 2014. Two years later he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In February that year he tweeted: “BILL COSBY INNOCENT!!!!!”
In November 2016, a month after Kim was tied up and robbed in Paris, West was playing a show in Sacramento when he launched into a 17-minute attack on fellow rapper Jay Z, for not ringing to ask how his wife was.
A few days later, he was hospitalised for a “psychiatric emergency” and his tour was cancelled due to “mental exhaustion”. He hasn’t played live since.
Three years later, on David Letterman’s Netflix series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, he opened up about his mental health challenges. “When you’re in this state, you’re hyper-paranoid about everything. Everything’s a conspiracy. You feel the government is putting chips in your head.”
In 2018, he said he supported Donald Trump’s presidency and added that it was “brother” Trump – not Barack Obama – who gave him the belief that a Black man like Kanye could be president of America.
In 2019, he moved his HQ to a 4,000-acre ranch in Wyoming. He said his new base in the wilderness was “a paradigm shift for humanity”. Then on July 4, 2020, he announced that he was going to run for US president.
His campaign couldn’t have started more inauspiciously. At a rally in South Carolina, he claimed that 19th-century abolitionist and revered historical figure Harriet Tubman “never actually freed the slaves, she just had the slaves go to work for other white people”.
He also broke down crying when he claimed his parents wanted to abort him. Almost hysterically, he then said: “I almost killed my daughter” – referring to how he and Kim had once discussing her having an abortion.
In an interview with Forbes in 2020, he said Covid-19 vaccines were “the mark of the beast”. Satanic vaxxers notwithstanding, he also said Planned Parenthood clinics “have been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the devil’s work” and that the government in America used “population control” to limit the number of Black voters.
West’s failed presidential run was the final straw for his wife. Kim filed a $2.1bn divorce in February of this year. Perhaps she was upset when West started calling his mother-in-law Kris Jenner “Kris Jong-un”.
The rapper also claimed that Kris sent two doctors to his ranch in Wyoming, to “51/50” him (in California Law, this is an involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation). He also accused the Kardashian/Jenner family of “white supremacy”.
He also claimed that he had attempted to divorce Kardashian since 2018, adding: “I’m worth $5 billion and more than that through Christ.”
Two weeks ago, in a touching gesture, Kardashian joined West and their four young children when he hosted a giant listening party for the new album with thousands of fans at the sports arena in Atlanta, where West had lived while finishing the record.
Last year, clearly wanting to support her husband – however estranged – she called him a “brilliant but complicated person who on top of the pressures of being an artist and a Black man... experienced the painful loss of his mother.”
Let’s hope the 21-time Grammy winner can finally heal some of his pain with DONDA.