There is Kanye West before 2008 and Kanye West after 2008. We're not sure which version rap fans got when he headlined a stacked show in the Quad-Cities that year, but it's impossible to understate just how significant this tour was. The year prior, he released "Graduation," a multi-platinum record that served as the third in an album trilogy with "The College Dropout" and "Late Registration.
" All three were nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards. Kanye West on Sunday, Aug. 28, 2016, at the MTV Video Music Awards at Madison Square Garden in New York.
"Graduation" was the 12th-best-selling album of 2007. Its singles — "Stronger," "Good Life," "Can't Tell Me Nothing" — were everywhere. It was West's second album to top the Billboard album charts.
With each of his seven solo albums since, he's hit No. 1. By all measurements, this was just the beginning of West's reign at the top of hip-hop.
But something about West's persona was slipping. In the early 2000s, he was the innovative sample-spinning producer behind some of Jay-Z's best songs, a master of hooks who cleverly rapped through a metal wire after shattering his jaw in 2002. By 2008, controversies crept up on his creative output.
His mother passed away, he broke up with his fiancée and he gave magazines a new polarizing quote almost every week. Kanye West, left, and Kim Kardashian West arrive at the MTV Video Music Awards at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Aug. 28, 2016, in New York.
(Photo by Chris Piz.
