American rapper and record producer, Kanye West, has showed of his new hair.
The rapper took to his Instagram account on Monday, October 18, 2021, to share the photo shortly after it was reported that his petition to have his name changed has been approved by a Los Angeles judge.
Legally named “Ye” since October 2021, the 44-year-old can now go without his first or last name.
Born on June 8, 1977, in Atlanta, Georgia, West moved with his mother to Chicago, Illinois After his parents divorced when he was three years old.
His father, Ray West, is a former Black Panther and was one of the first black photojournalists at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Ray later became a Christian counselor, and in 2006, opened the Good Water Store and Café in Lexington Park, Maryland, with startup capital from his son.
Before fame, West paired his beats with tongue-twisting raps and outspoken confidence. With a backpack and brightly colored polo shirt, his dapper fashion sense set him apart from many of his rap peers, while his attitude often came across as boastful and egotistical. This flamboyance made for good press, something that West enjoyed, for better or worse, throughout the course of his career.
With his outsized personality, Ye courted plenty of controversy, posing for the cover of Rolling Stone as Jesus Christ, claiming that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” during a televised Hurricane Katrina fundraiser, and infamously interrupting an awards speech by Taylor Swift in 2009. And yet, his steady presence in the celebrity limelight couldn’t eclipse his musical talent.
With guidance from local producer No I.D., West went on to learn the finer points of studio production, programming, and sampling, the latter technique becoming a hallmark of his early-2000s work.
West first got his foot in the industry door in the late ’90s, doing quite a bit of noteworthy production work for the likes of Jermaine Dupri, Foxy Brown, Mase, and Goodie Mob. However, it was West’s work for Roc-a-Fella at the dawn of the new millennium that took his career to the next level. Alongside fellow fresh talent Just Blaze, West became one of the Roc’s go-to producers, consistently delivering hot tracks to album after album.
Ye’s star turn came on Jay-Z’s classic The Blueprint (2001) with album standouts “Takeover” and “Izzo (H.O.V.A.).” Both songs showcased West’s signature beatmaking style of the time, which was largely sample-based; in these cases, the former track appropriated snippets of the Doors’ “Five to One,” while the latter sampled the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.” More high-profile productions followed after.