ONE OF THE reasons Kanye West inspires such a devoted following is that, despite all of the changes in his life and in his music, we can still recognize him as the same character he was when his story began. He is his own muse. When West débuted as a solo artist, in 2004, he came across as an Everyman striver whose petty arrogance masked a deeper set of insecurities. Puffing his chest one moment, self-scrutinizing the next, he seemed to offer a novel archetype: the grounded hiphop star. He was never a great rapper, but he made a style of his enthusiastic clumsiness, surrounding his verses with proud soul samples, on “The College Dropout” (2004); high-res orchestrations, on “Late Registration” (2005); and arena-size triumphalism, on “Graduation” (2007). As fame…
You're reading a preview of
The New Yorker (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 22, 2016