Complex lists 50 little known facts about Kanye

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in The Reason
Childhood
Kanye lived in China for a year in 5th grade, he would get the kids to trade him sheep skewers for brakedance performances. He made his first beat in 7th grade, the beat was for a sexual Mario-style video game that he programmed, where "the ghosts were vaginas."When he was 13, he cried when his dad didn't let him get his hair cut often enough to keep up a high top fade.

Pre College Dropout
After dropping out of school, he worked as a telemarketer to pay his mom the $200 a month in rent she demanded.He sold his first beat to local Chicago rapper Gravity for $8,800 and used the money to buy a Jesus Piece and Polo clothes, a year later, he sold the chain to No I.D. to help finance his move to NYC. No I.D. briefly fell back from helping Kanye when he took him to label meetings and 'Ye jumped on tables shouting that he was the next Michael Jackson, he'd "leave meetings crying all the time" before he got signed.

College Dropout
He shot the video for "Through The Wire" with $35,000 of his own money. When the Hezekiah Walker Chorus didn't deliver, he drove to the Hamptons and paid the Harlem Boys Choir $10,000 to get on "Two Words." He thought The College Dropout "fell short of the actual Fiona Apple or Portishead sound" he was going after.

Late Registration
Rick Rubin, who Kanye's called the "Hollywood Yellow Pages," hooked him up with Late Registration co-producer, Jon Brion. The picture in the slideshow has him alongside A-Trak in 2005 who now owns Fools Gold Records.He originally planned a theatrical release for all of the music videos from Late Registration. While working on Late Registration, he kept a side-by-side tracklisting of Common's Be in the studio to make sure his own album was just as good.M.I.A. was supposed to be on album cut "Drive Slow."

Graduation
Timbaland helped with the drums on "Stronger." A lesser known fact is movie director Michael Gondry helped with the drums on "Diamonds.". Graduation's "stadium" sound was inspired by touring with the Rolling Stones and U2."Stronger" took 50 mixes and eight engineers to complete.Micheal Jackson called him to ask about the jacket he wore in the "Stronger" video.He wrote a personal letter about his dad to Donald Fagen of Steely Dan to get the "Kid Charlemagne" sample cleared for "Champion."

808s & Heartbreaks
While recording 808s & Heartbreak, he saw Hawaii's 808 area code as a sign that the album was meant to be.He booked a flight to Minnesota to work with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver but it was canceled because of snowstorm. He invited Vernon to work on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in Hawaii instead.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Kanye made Pusha T re-write his "Runaway" verse four times and pushed him to be more of a ? each time.While getting his hair cut, he rapped "Power" to Pete Rock before he even laid vocals.Q-Tip said Kanye would even ask people who delivered food for their opinion on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.Nicki Minaj's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy intro is based on writer Roald Dahl's "Cinderella.

Random Kanye Facts
He doesn't keep his Grammys or any other awards in his house. He said: "I TiVo rap videos so I can study them. To learn what steps to take to crush them all."He says that Drake was the first artist who actually scared and put pressure on him. Some of his unreleased music includes a record with Jay-Z and Jack White and a song that samples music from Broadway musical Wicked.

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