Word: rappers
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...uncomfortable silence. As a producer, West had churned out hits for Roc-A-Fella's intimidating trio of stars--Jay-Z, Cam'ron and Beanie Siegel--and earned praise for his great ear and tireless ethic. But in 2002 the idea that someone like West could be a successful rapper was faintly absurd. "Kanye wore a pink shirt with the collar sticking up and Gucci loafers," recalls Damon Dash, then Roc-A-Fella CEO. "It was obvious we were not from the same place or cut from the same cloth." Says Jay-Z: "We all grew up street guys...
...Fella wasn't the only label to pass on Kanye (pronounced Kahn-yay; it means "the Only One" in Swahili) West. Executives at record companies large and small failed to reconcile West's appearance and demeanor with their expectations of what a rapper should be. They had no idea how to market him. "It was a strike against me that I didn't wear baggy jeans and jerseys and that I never hustled, never sold drugs," says West, 28, who grew up in suburban Chicago and often dresses as if he's anticipating an acceptance letter from Exeter...
When West finally got a deal (in the end, Roc-A-Fella overcame its institutional bias against Polo shirts), he shattered the myth that he was too soft, too weird and too bourgeois to fit the mold of a platinum-selling rapper. His 2004 debut album, The College Dropout, went nearly triple platinum, topped all the major critics' polls, earned 10 Grammy nominations and made rap accessible to audiences that hadn't paid attention in years. "That record restored my faith in hip-hop," says Jamie Foxx, who lent comic vocals to West's No. 1 hit Slow Jamz...
...College Dropout to develop coattails. Fashion-wise, you may have been blinded recently by the swarm of pink Polo shirts, while on the charts, West's friends John Legend, an R&B singer with a University of Pennsylvania degree, and Common, a whip-smart and austere Chicago rapper, both had sales spikes. West's Late Registration should push things further. "I didn't want to play it boring and safe," says West while sitting in the balcony of a 14th century church in Prague, one of the locations he hand-picked for the video of Diamonds from Sierra Leone...
Early on, West knew he wanted to be a rapper; at 13 he made an amateur recording about green eggs and ham. But his parents had other ideas. "My plan was that he would get at least one degree, if not several," says his mom, the Ph.D. After Kanye graduated from high school in 1995, he enrolled in art school and took an English class for a year at Chicago State before finally confronting his parents. After months of lengthy conversations, West persuaded them to let him try rapping and producing for a year. Recalls Donda: "He said...