
Kanye West, Startup Idol - guynamedloren
http://madebyloren.com/kanye-west-startup-idol
======
acron0
I feel like he has the right idea but the concept of "risk", I feel, is pretty
worthless when you've probably got a few hundred million in the bank. In fact,
it upsets me in general when filthy rich people talk about risk, because I
have a mortgage and a family so for me, "risk" means maybe not being able to
put a roof over my son's head.

~~~
ctide
Do you think he was born with a few hundred million in the bank? He eschewed
all the standard hip hop trappings and didn't go all 'gangsta' when that's how
people made money. When he produced The Blueprint (one of the greatest hip hop
albums ever made) it was backed by soul beats which just weren't a thing in
~2000. He's always done his own thing, his latest album is a prime example of
that. He's still just putting out shit he wants to listen to, not necessarily
putting out what's successful at any given time in the industry.

It's easy to look back and say, you're filthy rich now so you aren't actually
taking risks, but taking risks is how he got there.

~~~
ItendToDisagree
For the record there were 'soul beats' long before Kanye. Ghostface has been
using that style since the 90s. In fact Kanye has been biting off Ghost since
the beginning and has been called out for such.

Lots of artists didn't 'go all gangsta' to make it. He isn't the first or the
last.

The Blueprint being one of the greatest hip hop albums ever made is also
highly debatable.

~~~
notmarkus
His newest album is an example of this as well. Ghostface has had a cult
following but limited wide appeal. Death Grips gained a cult following in the
past 1.5 years, and much of Yeezus sounds like a bad Death Grips album.

Claiming that soul beats weren't a thing in 2000 hip-hop is silly. Released in
'99: Mos Def's Black on Both Sides, the Roots' Things Fall Apart. Hip hop
_started_ with soul beats, and soul has always been a part of hip-hop.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop_music](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop_music)

~~~
ItendToDisagree
Mos Def is also a great example of someone who 'didn't go all gangsta' to make
it. The statement that 'going all gangsta when thats how people made money' is
really illustrative of a certain ignorance about hip hop and sadly one that is
widely held. It was one route yes but many artists did not follow it.

Edit: Removed part of comment that may have sounded overly negative.

------
morgante
Yuck. The idolization of assholes in our industry continues.

~~~
uid
unlike Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison ..

i'm actually struggling to think of an idolized figure in tech who isn't an
"asshole".

edit: put "asshole" in quotes, which gets my point across better

~~~
pg
Unless you know these people personally, you don't really know what they're
like. I know Mark isn't though.

~~~
uid
I know them as much as the comment above me knows Kanye. Being an asshole is a
public persona, and each of those people has been called or referred to as an
asshole.

edit: and there are plenty of anecdotal "Kanye is a nice guy when you meet
him" stories as well. Evel Knievel sued Kanye and described him as 'vulgar an
offensive', after they met he said "I thought he was a wonderful guy and a
gentleman":

[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2007-11-27-ka...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2007-11-27-kanye-
knievel_N.htm)

~~~
Shinkei
Laughing at 'Bill Gates is an asshole.' I've heard this anecdotally about
everyone on your list, but not about him. People malign Microsoft and Windows,
but please show me anecdotes about Gates the person being an asshole.

~~~
blacksmythe
Here is Spolsky's take on what Bill Gates was like to work for:

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html)

Certainly feared to some extent.

~~~
opminion
Bill Gates does not come across as an asshole at all in that article.

------
thecolorblue
He has changed recently but he used to be a soulful person who talked openly
about his own life. I find that inspiring. from his blog: (the blog is taken
down but this image can still be found on the internet)
[http://api.ning.com/files/2B9YJ2tmCwrwvNVAh7nc-3GXR2XCD8LwdS...](http://api.ning.com/files/2B9YJ2tmCwrwvNVAh7nc-3GXR2XCD8LwdSeCZOb0YFVwi7791Rd4WiGiP0s8*A9J6Ao9pP4zFIAqxLo1YO-k24yp17ZNFvgO/kw1.jpg)

------
normloman
Oh god, why are we listening to this douche.

~~~
ItendToDisagree
You mean 'God' not douche right? This is the guy who wrote a song proclaiming
he was God (its the title and chorus in fact)?

------
pdeuchler
I'm going to jump up on my soapbox real quick, because I've been screaming
this for a while.

All Kanye West has ever wanted to do is create. If you watch the full
interview with Zane Lowe[0], aka the interview that Jimmy Kimmel made fun of
and started a whole firestorm over, you realize (if you haven't before) that
Kanye sees bringing beauty to others as the penultimate goal in life (you
could argue he values his family a bit more). In a sense I think that's what
most people who get into startups, or really just "hacking" in general, want
to do. Create. Bring beauty. Improve the world in a small way. Leave it better
than how you got it, as my dad used to say.

Kanye has also gone through some of the exact trials and tribulations that
people trying to start a business go through. If you listen to his song
Spaceship[1] from "College Dropout" (his _debut_ album) you can really hear
the same kind of ethos as he tries to break into the music business while
working at the Gap:

>> Taking my hits, writing my hits >> Writing my rhymes, playing my mind >>
This f __king job can 't help him >> So I quit, y'all welcome >> Y'all don't
know my struggle >> Y'all can't match my hustle >> You can't catch my hustle
>> You can't fathom my love dude >> Lock yourself in a room doing 5 beats a
day for 3 summers >> That's a Different World like Cree Summer's

I'm cherry picking a quote, and it might lose it's umph because of that, but
besides the undeniable poetic like quality of his words (is my fanboy showing
yet?) you can see the dedication, and the repetition he puts into his craft.
This is directly applicable to those trying to get a startup off the ground;
You need hard work and most of all you need to _ship_ , and keep on _shipping_
to perfect your product. In fact, when I was trying to get my first startup
going I more or less listened to this song on repeat as motivation, because
Kanye understands the self-doubt. He understands the constant pressure to
succumb to social standards. He understands that people push back when you try
and break out. In fact, Kanye probably knows this more than most of us, as a
person of color. Yet even through all of this Ye still succeeds. In fact, (it
could be argued) the massive amount of people who don't like Kanye are more a
testament to his success than the people who do. But it doesn't just stop at
music. For those who weren't aware, Kanye started off as a producer and
against a lot of pressure to stay a producer became a rapper as well. One of
my favorite Kanye songs isn't really a song, but a narrative of how he
overcame this and got signed in "Last Call"[2]. As per the same BBC interview
I referenced above, Kanye is trying to break into fashion, architecture,
design, a myriad of industries using the same ideas and work ethic. Work hard,
and make something "dope", while disregarding the way "things are done around
here" (to complete the analogy for those less aware of the rap scene, Kanye
was one of the founders of "backpack rap", a kind of suburban, every day,
introspective way of rapping, as opposed to the massively popular "gangsta
rap" of the day).

Beyond all of that one of Kanye's biggest messages throughout his music is
that the message of "Stay in your place" is wrong. He is consistently trying
to upset the status quo. This is a message that should reverberate among any
of us trying to shake up an established industry, or trying to create a market
that simply didn't exist before. Kanye sees what is "not cool" in the world
and tries to fix that, whether it's jumping up on stage and proclaiming on
live tv that Taylor Swift doesn't deserve an award, or using shoe design as a
way to break the race barrier in fashion. He's just as much a hacker as any
one of us who works with code or hardware.

Kanye also sacrifices for his art. He paid millions out of his own pocket
(back before he was financially set, I might add) to produce his own music
videos for "Jesus Walks", after the studios wouldn't go with the direction as
he wanted. I can't pin down the quote right now, but I recall him saying
something to the effect of "If that album [Late Registration] wasn't a success
I would have been broke". As we all know "Jesus Walks" became a #1 hit, Kanye
got his videos on MTV, and the album went triple platinum. He continues to
shell out of his own pocket for tours (that consistently succeed far past
expectations) and runs his own design company, DONDA. Rumor has it he is
financing his stylist's new clothing line. Just because it's not software
doesn't mean he's not a VC.

This might not be the most lucid post, as I'm typing rather frantically in
order to get this out before the story drops off the front page, but tl;dr:
Kanye West exemplifies the hacker spirit, and learning from someone who has
succeeded so immensely as a creative person can't be the worst thing you can
do.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR_yTQ0SYVA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR_yTQ0SYVA)
[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGM6N0qXeu4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGM6N0qXeu4)
[2]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q602739kBr4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q602739kBr4)

~~~
guynamedloren
Yes, this, exactly this. You've said better than I did. He is absolutely,
totally a hacker. Pushing the limits. Challenging himself. Challenging the
status quo. I was just talking to a friend about this.

You know what somebody's really made of when they have all of the money in the
world. Then you watch them and see what happens. Everything Kanye does (at
this point) he does because he feels it needs to exist in the world. Another
million doesn't mean anything to him. $10 million probably doesn't even mean
much to him. He doesn't do it for the money. Unlike lots of musicians, he
didn't release 1 or 2 platinum albums and quit. He just keeps going. I align
him more closely to somebody like Mark Zuckerberg than, I dunno, Huey?
Zuckerberg has billions and just keeps on hacking. Kanye is a hacker through
and through.

> _Kanye also sacrifices for his art. He paid millions out of his own pocket
> (back before he was financially set, I might add) to produce his own music
> videos for "Jesus Walks", after the studios wouldn't go with the direction
> as he wanted. I can't pin down the quote right now, but I recall him saying
> something to the effect of "If that album [Late Registration] wasn't a
> success I would have been broke". As we all know "Jesus Walks" became a #1
> hit, Kanye got his videos on MTV, and the album went triple platinum. He
> continues to shell out of his own pocket for tours (that consistently
> succeed far past expectations)_

Did not know this any of this. Wow. Just one more reason to respect Kanye.

~~~
dragonwriter
> He paid millions out of his own pocket (back before he was financially set,
> I might add)

If you _can_ pay millions out of your own pocket for anything, you _were_
financially set when you decided to do that.

~~~
pdeuchler
I originally went into an in depth explanation of this in my original post,
but decided it was a rabbit trail. Oh well.

Essentially, artists have a lot of "credit" (i.e. they can elicit services for
cheap due to the massive exposure it might get), but very little cashflow.
They usually pay their living expenses through signing bonuses and use the
rest of the contract money to finance the production of the album. In this
specific case Kanye used a large amount of his own signing bonus for Late
Registration to pay for the videos, while using the bare minimum the studio
would give him to pay for _just_ the directors. While theoretically he still
would have had a lot of earning potential, and probably would have kept at
least some of his "credit" if LR failed, he still would have been extremely
cash poor. Kanye frequently talks about how bad he is with money and spending
habits, so his financial situation was most likely pretty precarious.

Side note: this is part of the "scam" of record labels... they purposely keep
the economic buying power away from the artists' wallet and keep it tied to
the artists' image, which just so happens to be very dependent on the studio's
continued marketing efforts. Kanye actually addresses this in an interview,
where he talks about "who is really free?" when comparing an up and coming
artist in a Maybach to a homeless man on the side of the street.

------
grimtrigger
I feel like the author is projecting a lot of their ideas onto Kanye. Either
that, or there's much more evidence for the article in the video, but not
quoted in the article.

~~~
guynamedloren
The latter - I tried to keep the article short and to the point, mentioning
several things without quoting directly. The specific quotes are at the bottom
of the post.

------
luser
TLDR; Kanye West is irrelevant - completely, irrevocably, without any
suggestion of irony, irrelevant.

You may now resume your non-smug, non-celebrity life.

------
deckar01
TLDR; Kanye West is a gay fish.

~~~
ItendToDisagree
'lyrical motherfuckin wordsmith motherfuckin genius' you mean!

