Kanye West (born June 8, 1977) is a rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and fashion designer from the United States. With 160 million records sold, West is one of the world’s best-selling music artists.
He has won 24 Grammy Awards, the joint tenth most of all time and the most for any hip-hop artist, together with Jay-Z. Among his other honors are a Billboard Artist Achievement Award, three Brit Awards for Best International Male Solo Artist, and the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award.
What are some of the Achievements and Legacies of Kanye West?
Kanye West is one of the most critically regarded popular music performers of the twenty-first century, receiving accolades from music critics, industry peers, and cultural influencers. In 2014, NME rated him the third most influential musician in music. Billboard senior editor Alex Gale called West “absolutely one of the best, and you could make the case for the best artist of the twenty-first century.” Dave Bry of Complex Magazine agreed, calling West the “most important artist of any art form, of any genre” of the twenty-first century.
David Samuels, a writer for the Atlantic, wrote: “Kanye’s power resides in his wild creativity and expressiveness, his mastery of form, and his deep and uncompromising attachment to a self-made aesthetic that he expresses through means that are entirely of the moment: rap music, digital downloads, fashion, Twitter, blogs, live streaming video.”
Joe Muggs, writing for the Guardian, said that “there is nobody else who can sell as many records as West does […] while remaining so resolutely experimental and capable of stirring things up culturally and politically.”
The Rolling Stone described West as “a producer who created a signature sound and then abandoned it to his imitators, a flashy, free-spending sybarite with insightful things to say about college, culture, and economics, an egomaniac with more than enough artistic firepower to back it up, an egomaniac with more than enough artistic firepower to back it up.”
Shahzaib Hussain of Highsnobiety wrote that West’s first three albums “cemented his role as a progressive rap progenitor.”
According to AllMusic editor Jason Birchmeier, West “[shattered] certain stereotypes about rappers, becoming a superstar on his terms without adapting his appearance, rhetoric, or music to fit any one musical mold.
Noisey’s Lawrence Burney attributes West’s financial collapse to the gangster rap genre, which formerly dominated mainstream hip-hop. The release of his third studio album has been hailed as a watershed moment in the music industry, paving the way for young rappers who did not fit the hardcore-gangster mold to attain wider public acceptance.
Drake, Nicki Minaj, Travis Scott, Lil Uzi Vert, and Chance the Rapper have all admitted to being influenced by the West. Several other musicians and music groups have cited West as an influence on their work.
Source: www.ghgossip.com
