Kanye West is the wealthiest man in hip hop and is just one of two self-made billionaires in the genre. Since his emergence on the Chicago underground hip hop scene in the mid-1990s, West has gone on to work with all the greats in the business and is widely considered a genius. Kanye’s impact on the sound of hip hop is unparalleled, and although other artists such as Pharrell have shifted the sonics of hip hop during their career, none have shifted it to the extent that Kanye has.
Aside from all the rants and craziness (like his recent feud with GAP), West is the most influential figure in hip-hop without doubt and, on numbers alone, obliterates almost every single rapper in hip hop with regard to sales and overall accumulated wealth. Elusively and erratically emerging from his Wyoming studio with new projects and creative visions, whether it’s to do with fashion, music or other, people turn their heads and invest in what Kanye West produces and sells.
Kanye has stated before that people often misunderstand him and mistake his confidence for arrogance. However, he claims that he is just getting started. Often drawing comparisons between himself and Walt Disney, he has stated previously that the numbers are incomparable if you look at how many albums he has made compared to how many films Walt Disney made. Therefore, he still has so much more room to grow and create. He has also done the same with Steve Jobs, highlighting if you compared how many albums Kanye West has made to the number of products Steve Jobs created, again, he would pale in comparison. Therefore he still has work to do.
Having released his debut album, College Dropout, in 2004, West has gone on to release eleven studio albums, two collaborative studio albums, one compilation album and one video album. With so many bodies of work, it is evident that there are a lot of tracks to choose from. Kanye’s best-selling album is Graduation which he released in 2007. His worst selling is Life Of Pablo which he released in 2016. However, his favourite track is not an obvious choice.
When asked in the interview with B96 radio what his favourite album was, Kanye responded with ease stating, “‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’”. When asked why he replied in detail, explaining, “It still applies. You just want a moment where no one can tell you anything. Just when you can be fully expressive creatively, and that’s what I wanna get to. People are always tryna tell me how and what to create and how to go about doing my paintings. Life is a painting, and I just wanna make mine a masterpiece, so that is my constant motivation, and I think it was very new and timeless at that time, that like…kinda dark Coldplay-type chords, and singing putting it next to trap drums, that was modern!”
So ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’ is Kanye West’s favourite Kanye West song. You can watch the music video for ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’ in the video below.
