Most biographies state that West was born on June 8, 1977, in Atlanta, Georgia, although some sources give his birthplace as Douglasville, a small city west of Atlanta.

After his parents divorced when he was three years old, he moved with his mother to Chicago, Illinois.

Kanye's full name is Kanye Omari West. His given name translates to "the only one" in Swahili, and his middle name translates to "God the highest", so technically his full name means "the only god in the West".

At age thirteen, West wrote a rap song called "Green Eggs and Ham" (the title of a best-selling children's book by Dr. Seuss) and persuaded his mother to pay for time in a recording studio.

His first official production credits came at the age of nineteen when he produced eight tracks on Down to Earth, the 1996 debut album of a Chicago rapper named Grav.

West is often credited with revitalizing Jay-Z's career with his contributions to the rap mogul's influential 2001 album The Blueprint, which is consistently ranked among the greatest hip-hop albums. The critical and financial success of The Blueprint generated substantial interest in West as a producer.

On October 23, 2002, while driving home from a California recording studio, West fell asleep at the wheel causing a head-on crash with another car. The crash left him with a shattered jaw, which had to be wired shut in reconstructive surgery, and broke both legs of the other driver--but the accident inspired West. Two weeks after being admitted to the hospital, he recorded a song at the Record Plant Studios with his jaw still wired shut. The composition, "Through the Wire", expressed West's experience after the accident, and helped lay the foundation for his debut album, as according to West "all the better artists have expressed what they were going through."

In the years leading up to the release of his debut album, West had received praise for his production work for rappers such as Jay-Z and Talib Kweli, but faced difficulty being accepted as an artist in his own right. A widespread critical success, The College Dropout was praised for its balance of self-examination and mainstream sensibilities. The album earned West several accolades, including Best Rap Album at the 2005 Grammy Awards, and is credited for popularizing the chipmunk soul and conscious rap subgenres.

He founded GOOD Music (an acronym for Getting Out Our Dreams) as a record label and management company that would go on to house affiliate artists and producers, such as No I.D. and John Legend.

One-upping John Lennon, West didn't just liken himself to Jesus--he posed as him, wearing a crown of thorns on a 2006 Rolling Stone cover that his critics condemned as blasphemous.