Credit: Alamy

Kanye West nearly lost his life in 2002 as a result of a car accident. Instead of destroying his world, the incident laid the blueprint for his career as a rapper, inspiring the lyrics for his debut single ‘Through the Wire’ and giving him time to work on his debut album.

Ye was involved in the car crash on October 23rd, 2002, at around 3am after falling asleep at the wheel. He had been in a California studio producing songs for the likes of Beanie Sigel, The Black Eyed Peas and Peedi Crakk earlier that night.

The subsequent crash in West Hollywood caused Kanye to suffer nasal fractures and a broken jaw that was shattered into three pieces. After being rushed to the hospital, he received surgery on his jaw that had to be wired shut for six weeks. After only two weeks of recovery at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, he started recording his verses for ‘Through the Wire‘ with his jaw wired shut.

The song in question was the lead single from The College Dropout and sampled Chaka Khan’s ‘Through the Fire’. It peaked at number 15 on the Hot 100 and was nominated for Best Rap Solo Performance at the Grammy Awards.

Kanye acknowledged how he took the scary incident and turned it into one of the defining moments of his career. “To nearly lose your life, to nearly lose your mouth, your voice, your whole face, as a rapper, and I had to be on TV!” he told Yahoo Music. “My face looks crazy to me now, but I have to just thank God for the situation that I am in. ‘Through the Wire’ is the worst thing that could’ve possibly happened to me, and now it’s obviously the best thing. Look how it exploded!”

‘Through The Wire’ changed Kanye West’s life

Pharrell knew Kanye was going to be a star from the first time Kanye played ‘Through the Wire’ in the studio. “You gon’ make it, and when you make it, keep the same perspective,” he told Ye before it was released. “Still keep the same hunger. That hunger is to always be, ‘Man, I feel something, I gotta put it down, man,’ and then you put it down.

“As long as you keep that, the conduit between those two places clear for that energy to come through, you gon’ always be ill for the rest of your life. I can tell when a n*gga is really, really hot, but I can tell when they have the potential to become complacent. You do not have that.”

West reflected on how the car accident changed his life during a conversation with Interview Magazine in 2014, seeing a change in the way he conducted business. “I think I started to approach time in a different way after the accident,” he said. “Before, I was more willing to give my time to people and things that I wasn’t as interested in because somehow I allowed myself to be brainwashed into being forced to work with other people or on other projects that I had no interest in.”

He continued, “So simply, the accident gave me the opportunity to do what I really wanted to do. I was a music producer, and everyone was telling me that I had no business becoming a rapper, so it gave me the opportunity to tell everyone, ‘Hey, I need some time to recover.’ But during that recovery period, I just spent all my time honing my craft and making The College Dropout.”