Posted on 01/26/2006 5:26:20 PM PST by Chi-townChief
THE SCOOP: KANYE WEST's mom and manager, Donda West, a retired English professor at Chicago State University, had this to say when I asked about the latest controversy surrounding her superstar son. Kanye is being criticized for posing as Jesus Christ with a crown of thorns on his head on the cover of the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone mag and for saying he is addicted to pornography, recalling first seeing his father's Playboy mag when he was 5 years old.
"My initial feeling is, I don't see anything wrong with what Kanye said. And I don't see the controversy," Donda said. "He is telling how he feels and he is speaking the truth as he sees it. I think half of the American men, if not women, are addicted to pornography . . . but won't admit it. Or, they aren't admitting to being addicted . . . but they like it a lot . . . and where is the line between being addicted and liking something a lot? And if that wasn't the case, why is pornography a multibillion-dollar industry?"
"I support my baby."
Yeah, she said it!
mailto:sfoster@suntimes.com
Actually, he $upport$ her. And she'll ride that jackass to market as long as it has legs to carry her.
Well, this makes it perfectly clear why he turned out to be such a fine, upstanding young man.
Well of course she doesn't.
No surprises here.
Kanye West doesn't care about pornography.
My God! I just realized who Kanye West is! Donda West was a friend of mine here in Atlanta many years back, and she used to bring her son (we called him "Smack" back then) over to our house to stay with the babysitter who cared for our son. Small world! (And, yes, I think I do understand Kanye a lot better now.)
West was born 26 years ago on the South Side to Donda and Ray West, a Black Panther who became an award-winning photojournalist and most recently a pastoral marriage counselor. West's parents separated when he was 11 months old, and were divorced when he was 3, but the boy maintained a relationship with his father and often spent summers with him. Donda West nurtured her son in myriad ways, encouraging his gifts as a visual artist, for which he eventually earned a college scholarship, and budding poet.
"We were coming back from a short vacation in Michigan when he was 5 and he composed a poem in the back seat," she says. "The one line that sticks with me is `the trees are melting black.' It was late fall, and the trees had no leaves. He saw how those limbs were etched against the sky, and he described them the way a poet would."
Young Kanye spent a year with his mother in China while she was teaching English at Nanching University. The 10-year-old would make money by break-dancing on the streets for the locals. "He was an entrepreneur even then," she says.
While attending Polaris High School on the South Side, he struck up an acquaintance with the producer No I.D., who was then working with a future star named Common Sense (who later shortened his name to Common). Kanye would have his mother drive him to No I.D.'s house, where he'd soak up knowledge at the producer's basement studio. At 15, Kanye acquired his first sampling keyboard. Between the tutorials from No I.D., whom West would refer to as his "almost stepfather," and incessant tinkering, rapping and beatmaking in his bedroom, West developed his skills as a producer and rapper. His first break came in 1998 when he sold a beat to Atlanta producer Jermaine Dupri for his "Life in 1472" album, and West's life as a college student who would follow in his mother's multiple-degree footsteps became an afterthought.
"It was drummed into my head that college is the ticket to a good life," Donda West says, "but some career goals don't require college. For Kanye to make an album called `College Dropout,' it was more about having the guts to embrace who you are, rather than following the path society has carved out for you. And that's what Kanye did."
Soon the non-stop traffic in the fledgling producer's apartment studio in Chicago became too much for his landlord, and in 2001 West packed his bags for the East Coast, first settling in Newark, N.J., and finally a $3,000-a-month apartment in Hoboken, across the river from New York City.
More...
http://tinyurl.com/a7o4e
Most people don't pretend to be Christ. There's just some things one doesn't do.
West was born in Atlanta, the only child of Donda West, a professor of English at Chicago State University for the past twenty-four years, and Ray West, a pastoral counselor who holds two master’s degrees. The couple divorced when Kanye was just three, and Dr. West moved to Chicago with her son. Kanye grew up in a single-parent, single-child home and became extremely close with his mother. Even nowadays, West sometimes has the air of a guy who was treated like a prince at home, who could do no wrong. “I’ve always worshipped the ground he walked on,” Dr. West says. “People could say I spoiled Kanye. I don’t think so. He was very much indulged.” (He spent summers with his father and is less close with him. Kanye calls their relationship strained, though Ray West disagrees with that. “There’s never a phone call we don’t end with I love you,” his father says.)
Dr. West is Kanye’s biggest fan. She bought fifteen copies of The College Dropout and accepted no freebies. She listens to it constantly and can repeat his rhymes and deconstruct his songs. “I’m a fan of 50 Cents, Ludacris, Eminem,” she says. “I even like Chingy. But I really haven’t been as impressed by their lyrics as I am by Kanye’s. Everything you listen to by Kanye is gonna have something in it that’s heavy. I mean, Kanye has a way of putting a unique twist to things. [On “Through the Wire”] he doesn’t say, thank God I ain’t too cool for the safety belt. He says, thank God I ain’t too cool for the safe belt. So he’s gonna put his little Kanye twist to everything and I just think it’s so brilliant.”
More...
http://tinyurl.com/8wn2q
"Superstar son", where do they get this crap!
I'd like to see a joint production with him and R. Kelly.
Well there you have it, huh Mama West? There are no absolutes, no truth? As long as anybody speaks the truth as THEY interpret truth. Got news for you that is not truth, that is personal relativism and is about as far removed from truth as night is from day. Wow. What an absolutely foolhardy statement! The mind staggers.
Mama West is a University professor - gee, I'm shocked.
I'm waiting for him to mock ALLAH.
Do tell!
;)
My God! I just realized who Kanye West is! Donda West was a friend of mine here in Atlanta many years back, and she used to bring her son (we called him "Smack" back then) over to our house to stay with the babysitter who cared for our son. Small world! (And, yes, I think I do understand Kanye a lot better now.)
Smack?
The drug or the discipline method??
Actually, he was born in 1977 in Atlanta. His dad sure wasn't a Black Panther at that time. He had a photography studio a few blocks from our house. He was in fact an excellent photographer (and went on to win awards after he began working for the newspapers). But he was a lousy husband, and little Kanye grew up without a dad in the house. Which is why he is so very messed up -- as are all the mama-smothered little boys who have become rap "superstars."
Actually, it was a cute little noise he made. (He should have stuck with it.)
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