hollywood billionaire

Chapter 396 The Darkest Hour (Part )

Kanye West and Taylor Swift were originally from two different worlds.

In fact, so far, it is difficult for anyone to find anything in common between them.

The former was born in A-Town Atlanta, a famous southern city in Georgia, USA. His father was a member of the famous Black Panther Party and one of the first black photojournalists of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and his mother was an English professor at Clark Atlanta University.

The family conditions are good, and the economy is much better than that of ordinary black families. Even in white areas, they can be regarded as properly middle class, but Kanye West's childhood was still full of turmoil. Due to his parents' divorce, he moved to the South Side of Chicago at the age of three, where gang wars were intensifying and war was raging. He grew up cautiously in a relatively safe wooden house on South Shore Avenue in Oak Lawn.

The latter opened his eyes in the delivery room of Reading Hospital in West Reading, Pennsylvania, a wealthy and peaceful white New England town. His father was the founder of a financial consulting firm affiliated with Merrill Lynch, and his mother worked as a marketing executive for a Texas mutual fund before transitioning into a full-time housewife.

In the late 1980s, this family configuration was the most typical representative of the American Dream in the new era. Against the background of rapid deindustrialization, he relied on the booming financial industry to quickly get rich. He purchased an 11-acre Christmas tree farm and enjoyed a secluded life among the green pine forests in the outer suburbs of Philadelphia.

In the former's life, the role of father has been absent for a long time, and Donda West can only raise the children alone. While working hard to support the family, he also takes good care of the still young Kanye. This means that she must accept every job that increases her income level, and she must take her son with her at all times. Therefore, he was unable to obtain a normal and stable growth environment. He had to follow his mother wherever her teaching job required her to go.

From Atlanta to Chicago, Chicago to Nanjing, Nanjing and back to North America, his character as an artist who is eccentric, solitary, sensitive, conceited, and full of manipulative desires was constantly tempered through years of wandering around.

There are not many things in life that can stay with him for a long time, so he chooses to take the initiative and use paranoia so strong that it is almost arrogant to gain some sense of security for himself.

In stark contrast, the latter’s childhood was confined within state borders. Spend three seasons of the year on the farm. In the summer, Taylor will bid farewell to the hot and humid Greater Philadelphia area and head to Stone Harbor, a seaside city south of Atlantic City, the East Coast gaming center, two and a half hours away with his family, enjoying the cool sea breeze and basswood guitar. With you, start your summer vacation.

Kindergarten and preschool were in the Montessori school run by the Sisters of St. Francis Bernardine, and elementary school went to Windcroft, a prestigious private school ranked among the top in the Pennsylvania education system. As the family's financial situation further improved, the Swift family moved from West Reading, a middle-class city, to Wyomissing, a wealthy town where the average annual family income exceeds $25. Taylor also naturally entered "U.S. News" 》Wyomissing Area High School ranks among the top high schools in the United States.

Although strictly speaking, she is not a nepo baby born with a silver spoon in her mouth, but the resources Taylor Swift can enjoy are top-notch enough. She has performed in musicals at the prestigious Berks Youth Theater Academy since she was a child. If she wanted to make achievements in singing and acting, her father took her to New York to take classes with famous teachers.

Wanting to become a country music singer, her mother flew to Nashville with her to meet with record companies. After getting the artist development contract from RCA, his father even moved the entire company to Hendersonville, Tennessee, just to give Taylor a chance to get closer to the core circle... RCA's youngest development artist, Sony/ATV's youngest A young signed creator and the youngest performer at Bluebird Coffee. Universal Music executives helped her manage her career, and producers Shania Twain and Kylie Minogue protected her. The first album stayed on the Billboard charts for 157 weeks, breaking the record since 2000 and becoming the longest-lasting music work on the charts. Each of the subsequent albums also received platinum album honors.

By September 2009, Taylor Swift, who had only released two studio albums, had topped the Billboard album chart for eleven consecutive weeks. She is the longest-charting female country artist in history and the hope of all of Nashville. The originally lifeless country music scene saw a glimmer of vitality with her emergence.

She is America’s beloved princess and the highlight of white mainstream culture in the post-Cold War era.

On the other hand, Kanye West did not receive full support from his family for his musical dream. In other words, there is only one relative in his life, and this relative wrote a completely different plan for his life. His mother, Tang Da, hoped that he would study English so that he could inherit her legacy and become a professor after graduation. Therefore, when twenty-year-old Kanye West chose to drop out of school and become a full-time musician, one can imagine Tang Da’s inner disappointment.

An ordinary black kid from the south side of Chicago has no face, no famous teachers, no resources, no influential gang behind him, and he did not grow up in a community with a deep hip-hop culture. How should he survive in this dark game of the jungle?
Kanye's answer is to demonstrate extraordinary and indispensable hard power. In 1996, he began to create accompaniments for local artists in the greater Chicago area. After four years of hard work, he was recognized by Jay-Z and joined Roc-A-Fella Records. Not only did he become the vocalist for Jay-Z's sixth studio album "The Blueprint" The creative stalwart also produced a series of hit singles for other label artists, including Ludacris, Alicia Keys and Janet Jackson. Days like this have passed for another four years. Kanye West, who has always wanted to debut as a rapper, has been rejected countless times by major labels including Capitol Records. The reason is very simple: he is indeed a very talented person. A talented young man, but he does not belong to the chaotic streets, nor does he have any black background. In the environment when 50 Cent-style gangsta rap was all the rage, no one was willing to spend even a moment on this young and dull producer. Dollar. In the end, it took Kanye four full years to finally get himself an opportunity to prepare and release a solo album at Roc-A-Fella.

Everything that follows is history. The debut album "The College Dropout" peaked at No. 47 on Billboard and won the 808th Grammy Award for Best Hip-Hop Album. The second album "Late Registration" debuted at the top of the album chart. With the blessing of Nas, Jay-Z, Jamie Foxx, Common and other big names in the rap circle, it surpassed Kanye West's single-term Grammy nomination record. It was promoted to eight times. Next, two new albums "Graduation" and "s & Heartbreak" were released in two consecutive years, which directly brought Kanye West into the discussion of "GOAT in the hip-hop circle".

Apart from anything else, just looking at the achievement of four albums in four years, each of which entered Rolling Stone magazine's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list is enough - looking at the entire American music industry, how many people can do it? Like Kanye West, achieve a commercial, musical and even artistic triple harvest?

There is no doubt that although he is not a prince that everyone admires, he is the most eye-catching black pearl bred by hip-hop culture under the wave of gentrification.

American society is a steaming plate of lasagna that requires at least eight or nine layers to form a complete dish, but each layer is blocked by a rich cultural sauce that never blends together.

Think about it, the reason why Taylor's parents gave her the unfeminine name Taylor is because they both loved James Taylor, a white folk singer who was active in the 1970s, and Kanye. The reason why he is called Kanye is because Tang Da hopes that he can remember his cultural and national attributes and become "the only one who shines" just like his Swahili ancestors who lived in the East African prairie and spoke Bantu language expected.

Born in the same continent and active in the same field, the differences between Taylor Swift and Kanye West are as huge as the ethnic groups they each represent. What is the intersection between a small-town girl who carries forward white traditional culture amidst waves of applause and a downtown boy who uses black trendy style to blaze a trail while his relatives sigh?

Except they're all going to the awards show?
In the countless complicated fragments of time in the past, maybe Taylor heard a remix version of "Stronger" or "Love Lockdown" at a party, and twisted his waist a few times casually. Maybe the radio station happened to jump to "Love Story" and "You Belong With Me" while Kanye was driving at high speed, and he and his followers jokingly sang along...

These details, which will not be recorded on video or make headlines, most likely actually existed. After all, the two people's career explosion periods are very close, and the most active time is also the stage when each other is exposed most frequently. Recognition, disdain, admiration, contempt, ridicule, indifference, all the emotions that humans have when they appreciate music and read words, may be the labels they put on each other in their hearts.

But it will never be these secret inner activities that write history and shape popular culture, but the communication hot spots visible to the public eye, and the light that bursts out after the orbits of two stars intersect.

From this perspective, the only time Kanye West and Taylor Swift crossed paths was at a much-anticipated awards ceremony.

2009 9 Month 13 Day.

The scene of the 25th VMA Awards Ceremony.

The moment that started all.

(End of this chapter)