One of the most polarising icons of current popular culture, Kanye West, aside from his pioneering work Ye periodically makes the headlines for some of the craziest things imaginable. From announcing his intentions to run for the position of the President of the United States, to claiming that slavery was a choice, Kanye has emerged as one of the most prominent provocateurs of the world.
Over the course of his trailblazing career, Kanye has compared himself to a number of pioneers to prove that he is “the voice of this generation”. Starting as far back as Socrates and working his way up to Donald Trump, the rapper has left no stone unturned while supporting the thesis that he is, in fact, the embodiment of all of human history.
It is a well-known fact that Kanye borrows inspiration from a varied range of artistic sources while working on his musical projects. Equally inspired by Pablo Picasso and Pablo Escobar, the rapper has managed to create an incredibly enigmatic body of work that is simply unlike any other in the modern landscape of mainstream rap.
One particularly important influence on Kanye’s works is cinema, with the rapper regularly insisting that his favourite films have been revelatory experiences for him. For one thing, his tastes can never really be categorised into neat boxes and that’s exactly the case with his choices in cinema as well.
Ranging from Wreck-It Ralph to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s hallucinogenic surrealism, check out a list of Kanye West’s favourite films of all time.
While explaining his love for Jodorowsky’s 1973 masterpiece The Holy Mountain, Kanye said in an onstage rant: “I don’t know if y’all have heard of Tesla, and I’m not talking about the car, I’m talking about the inventor. Or if y’all ever heard about Jodorowsky, the director who made The Holy Mountain.” According to the rapper, Jodorowsky was a misunderstood genius just like him.
Kanye was so taken with Jodorowsky’s work that he even went to meet the filmmaker, completely surprising the ageing auteur. It was such a bizarre experience for Jodorowsky that the master of surrealism thought of Kanye as the real surrealist icon and called the meeting one of the most bizarre moments of his life!
Kanye West’s 11 favourite movies:
- Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)
- The Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973)
- Tron (Steven Lisberger, 1982)
- Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988)
- Menace II Society (Allen Hughes and Albert Hughes, 1993)
- American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000)
- There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
- Wreck-It Ralph (Rich Moore, 2012)
- Pacific Rim (Guillermo del Toro, 2013)
- 12 Years A Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)
- The Walk (Robert Zemeckis, 2015)
