If you call yourself a Kanye West fan, here are 11 interesting facts (and more) you didn’t know about Kanye Omari West AkA Ye AkA Yeezy AkA Evel Kanyevel.
11. Kanye West sold his first beat to a local Chicago rapper for $8,800. He used the money to buy a Jesus Piece and Polo clothes. A year later, he sold the Jesus Piece to No I.D. to help finance his move to New Jersey to shop his demos around New York.
10. Kanye West once spent a day in jail for breaking a paparazzi’s camera and he used his one jail phone call to order Mr. Chow’s takeout to the jail.
9. When Kanye West was 10 years old, he lived in China for a year while his mother Donda West taught at Nanjing University.
Read: Kanye West, then 10 years old, lived in China for a year
8. After Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift‘s speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, he left the country. He visited Japan, Rome and then Hawaii. Mos Def told him to leave the States and stay out of the media.
7. Michael Jackson once called Kanye West to ask him about the jacket he wore in the music video for Stronger.
6. Evel Knievel sued Kanye West for using his image and name as “Evel Kanyevel” in the music video for Touch The Sky. Evel Knievel dropped the lawsuit after meeting Kanye and they settled it in a friendly manner. Evel Knievel thought Kanye was wonderful and a gentleman.
5. Kanye West’s album The Life of Pablo was the first album to go platinum from streaming alone.
Read: Kanye West’s album The Life of Pablo was the first streaming-only album to go No. 1 and platinum
4. Though Chicago is his city, Kanye West was born in Atlanta and spent the first three years of his life there, before moving to Chicago with his mother after his parents got divorced
3. Kanye shot the cover art for his album Ye on the way to the listening party. He took a photo of the Wyoming wilderness on his iPhone. Kanye also changed some lyrics on Ye on the way to the listening party.
2. On his album Ye, Drake wrote the hook for Yikes. He also recorded a verse that didn’t make the cut.
Read: Drake wrote the hook on Kanye West’s ‘Yikes’ off his album ‘Ye’
1. The bear on the cover of Kanye West’s first three albums was named Dropout.
Read: The bear on the cover of Kanye West’s first three albums was named Dropout
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