Don’t let the biopics fool ya: the music industry can be surprisingly hostile and alienating. Often, there’s very little that motivates big artists to send the elevator back down after themselves, and they actively benefit from keeping the best producers, collaborators, and tips a closely guarded secret rather than sharing the spoils.
All of which goes to show that Kanye West really is one in a million. The man isn’t only a prodigious, almost unstoppable talent – he’s a surprisingly generous one too. Despite all that his self-aggrandising interview chatter might suggest, he understands the importance of helping those breaking out in the industry and over the years has come to serve as a mentor for a range of new, exciting talents.
To that end, here is a run-down of Kanye’s most beloved collaborators, ingenues, mates, and proteges, all of whom have been enriched by their proximity to Ye.
Big Sean
Of all of the rappers in the game, perhaps none owe Kanye a greater debt than Big Sean. A Californian-born, Detroit-raised prodigy, Big Sean (birth name Sean Michael Leonard Anderson) spent his adolescent years sharpening his bars and trying to make it big. Yet it wasn’t until a chance meeting with Ye that his ascendancy really began.
Having heard that Kanye was due to appear for an interview at a local radio station, Anderson decided to take his chance and accost the mega-star. Ye was initially resistant – perhaps he’d been stung by overeager young fans looking to show off their meagre talents before. But he acquiesced, granting Anderson the opportunity to perform 16 short bars for him.
Who knows which bars Anderson chose, but the risky stunt worked – as Anderson tells it, within moments Kanye was bopping his head and grinning along. Two years after that, Anderson found himself signed to Ye’s cutting edge label, GOOD Music, and not long after that, following the release of a series of excellent, still-underrated mixtapes, Anderson began walking the path of critical and commercial success he is still on to this day.
John Legend
John Legend is another performer who has benefited enormously from Kanye’s GOOD Music label. The international superstar and beloved crooner hadn’t even settled on a moniker when he met Kanye – back then he went by his birth name, John Roger Stephens. Having been introduced to Kanye by the acclaimed producer and all-around musical genius Devo Springsteen, Stephens quickly hit it off with the then only up-and-coming rapper and was hired to sing a selection of hooks for him.
Love Hip Hop?
Get the latest Hip Hop news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more
It was the beginning of an important and fruitful relationship. Before long, Kanye had signed on as Stephens’ manager, and played a significant role in the recording of the young R&B artist’s debut record, Get Lifted. Not only did Kanye produce the record, he featured on the bumping, beautiful ‘Number One’, and co-wrote a number of the record’s best tracks, most significantly the debut single, ‘Used To Love U’.
In recent years, Stephens has attempted to return the favour, most notably by reaching out and contacting Kanye during Ye’s controversy-courting promotional lead-up to the drop of eighth album Ye. Kanye didn’t exactly do much to honour their decade-old friendship, posting Stephens’ messages publicly on Twitter, but hey, Kanye’s gotta Kanye, I guess?
Chance The Rapper
For at least the last three Kanye album cycles, the music press at large has been anxiously searching for a successor to Ye. This is often how it goes in the biz – everyone’s always keen to pass on the mantle, and to establish emerging artists as cultural powerhouses by dubbing them new versions of yesterday’s titans. Hell, some rappers have tried to self- nominate; since pretty much his debut, Drake has anxiously emulated his hero Kanye, and has repeatedly called him one of the guiding forces in his own career.
But if there is any young gun who truly resembles Kanye in terms of sheer, exuberant, tactile talent, it’s Chicago’s own son Chance The Rapper. After all, few other youngbloods have Chance’s scrappily DIY attitude; a driving, all-consuming thirst for success that resembles Kanye’s gritty and energetic ‘Through The Wire’ era.
Indeed, Kanye proved a significant force in young Chance’s life before the two had even met – a devout Christian, the young Chance (born Chancelor Jonathan Bennett) listened almost exclusively to Michael Jackson, and soul and jazz performers of yesteryear, before he by chance stumbled across ‘Through The Wire’ on a college radio station. It was that song that redirected the course of his entire life, fostered in him an overwhelming love of rap, and directly led to the release of his acclaimed debut 2011 mixtape 10 Day.
Since meeting in person in 2014, Chance and Kanye have continued to play a big part in each other’s careers, culminating in the ‘Blame Chance’ meme, and the younger rapper’s appearance on the ecstatic ‘Ultralight Beam’, the high point of The Life Of Pablo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ism6efmBqo8
Jay Z
Okay, bear with me – sure, Jay isn’t strictly Kanye’s protégé. The two titans are, after all, on equal footing in terms of the cultural sway they both hold, and these days, following a series of rather public spats, they’re considered antagonists rather than collaborators.
But it’s easy to forget there was an era in hip hop history where Jay and Ye were friends, sharing their distinct and overwhelming talents rather than competing with one another, and in that golden age of contemporary rap, everyone benefited. They were proteges together; one constantly learning and growing from contact with the other.
With Watch The Throne, that 2011 collaborative masterpiece, being the economic powerhouse that it was (it spawned seven singles, and was certified Platinum in the U.S.) hip hop was thrust even further into the mainstream. It was the beginning of a golden era that continues to this day; a rap renaissance that has seen the genre emerge as the most important and financially success artform in America, and even the world. And it’s largely down to the friendship and collaboration between two of the world’s most dynamic musical talents.
