When you think of a popular figure in modern day media, who comes to mind? For many people, one of if not the first person to come to mind is possibly Kanye Omari West. Kanye West has become completely infamous over the past 20 years, becoming a household name and then some.
But recently, Kanye has been fading out of the public conscience. A wide variety of things are contributing to this: increasingly controversial statements, weak music releases, and simply the passing of trends.
In 2004, Kanye West would release his first ever single: Through the wire. A song Kanye rapped with his jaw wired shut, after an almost fatal car crash. This song peaked at 15 on billboard hot 100 and ended up being the fourth most popular song on the album.
From this album 7 tracks would peak hot 100 (Through the wire, Jesus walks, all falls down, slow jamz, spaceship, family business, and two words).
One year later in 2005, Kanye would release his second album: Late Registration. The song Gold Digger would peak at 1 on the billboard hot 100, and several other songs would get top 100 status.
In 2007, Kanye west would release his next album: Graduation. The song “Stronger” would also peak #1 on billboard’s hot 100, and the song “I Wonder” would peak at number 7, and “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” would peak at number 5.
At this point in time, Kanye was an insanely quickly growing star with an insanely bright future. However, over the next four months Kanye would find himself in heated controversy.
The first would strike when Kanye would get an opportunity to go on live television on MTV and say whatever he wants. When Kanye was prompted to talk, he stated, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
Then, 3 weeks later, at the VMA awards, Taylor Swift was receiving an award for music video of the year. When this happened, Kanye, completely unprompted walked on stage and stated: “Ima let you finish, but before I do; Beyonce had one of the best music videos of all time.”
And only 4 weeks after this, Kanye West’s mom, Donda West, would die due to complications with breast surgery leading to an artery disease. This would completely mentally demolish Kanye, even to this day.
After a year of heartbreak, Kanye would drop his 4th studio album: 808’s and heartbreak. This was his first album to not get immediate praise, with the initial reception of this album
being quite bad and very critical. Over time these reviews started to change, but the only song from 808’s and heartbreak to crack hot 100 was heartless.
With the heartbreak of his mom dying, the negative reviews of his new album, and the controversies he was in, Kanye would move to Japan alone.
Kanye would spend 2 years in Japan. Lots would happen over this period of time.
When Kanye first arrived in Japan, he made a song titled “Never See Me Again,” an unreleased suicide note that Kanye drunkenly turned into an unreleased song. This song was meant to be Kanye West’s suicide note.
Kanye would later state in an interview that the thing that stopped him from killing himself that day was “A random feeling that he needed to live”
1 week later, Kanye would bring down a large amount of the most talented instrument players, composers, singers, songwriters, and artists he could bring into a large secret studio in Japan.
After 2 years of tip top secrecy and complete silence, Kanye West would release his 5th studio album: “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”
This album would be released to IMMEDIATE widespread acclaim, with insanely positive reviews across the board from critics and fans alike.
This album would single-handedly throw Kanye back into the public conscience. The song POWER peaked at 7 on hot 100, and devil in a new dress peaked at 23.
Over the next few years, Kanye would change his style completely, while also focusing on real life shoe deals, artist deals, and creating a label. Kanye would build strong relationships during this time and make many friends.
All of this resulted in a delay of his newest album, before his 6th studio album YEEZUS would release in 2013. The album received mixed reviews initially before most people started to agree it was a cult classic, almost an acquired taste.
3 months later Kanye West and Jay-z would release another album, “Watch The Throne”. The song n***** in Paris would peak at #1 on the hot 100.
9 months before that, Kanye would release a collab album with nearly 20 members of his record label; including large names like Pusha T and Nicki Minaj. The project “cruel winter” was released in 2012. No songs would peak on the hot 100.
Kanye would stay a namesake from 2013-2016. Popular in memes, songs, shows, movies, really everywhere. Kanye would release several shoes, tons of clothing, and run several tours at this time.
After a very long wait, Kanye’s highly anticipated 9th studio album “The Life of Pablo” would release to high scores and several hits. While the album scored a 70 initially on Albumoftheyear.com, it would later raise to almost 90. The songs to peak on the hot 100 were “Father Stretch my Hands Pt.2” “Wolves” and “Famous”
Shortly after this, Kanye would make up with Taylor Swift after his diss “Famous” and the famous VMA incident. In 2016 they were seen hugging and hanging out in public.
In 2016, during the tour for TLOP, Kanye West would suffer a massive mental breakdown on stage. Ranting on stage, yelling and crying. Kanye would be taken out by EMS, taken urgent care and later diagnosed with bi polar disorder.
Over the course of 2017 Kanye would deal with many things. His loud and brazen political views started to shine at this time, being an avid trump ally in 2016-2019. Between these controversies and his deteriorating mental state, Kanye stayed out of music and out of the public eye for a small time.
In 2018, Kanye got busy. On June 1st 2018 Kanye dropped ye with no buildup or advertisement completely randomly. Then, only a week later, best friend at the time and longtime collaborator Kid Cudi would release the collab album “KIDS SEE GHOSTS”
Both of these albums received good scores, with ye eventually settling at 82 on Albumoftheyear.com. Meanwhile, kids see ghosts SKYROCKETED in popularity, eventually reaching a 95 score.
In 2019 Kanye would show his faith by releasing the album “Jesus is King” to mixed reviews.
It was at this point that Kanye started to deteriorate.
In 2020, mere weeks after the release of his 12th studio album DONDA, Kanye would go on several anti-sematic rants on twitter. “I’m kind of tired right now but when I wake up I’m going DEFCON-6 on Jewish people. Its ok to say that because if you look back far enough black people are actually Jewish too.”
He would also say that “Slavery was a choice”, getting him massive backlash from all communities.
In the face of these controversies, Kanye would go inactive and say nothing for about a year. When Kanye came back, he was simply much less relevant. Many artists cut ties with Kanye completely and even made a mockery of him when he came back.
Over the past three years, Kanye has made a fool of himself. He’s said political opinions that I highly doubt he actually agrees with, simply saying it for negative publicity. He has picked up even harsher and more dangerous drug habits, while destroying his brain. He has abandoned the faith that fixed him and his family and its showing. His music has been getting horrible reviews since 2020, and he hasn’t released anything most people want to listen to. Kanye is trying to dig himself out of his grave, but it might be far too late.