Kanye West: Hip-Hop’s Motivational Speaker

“Let up the suicide doors. This is my life homey, you decide yours.” – Can’t Tell Me Nothing

… and out from the ego creeps a voice of reason. A liaison for personal justice; an inspiration to help silence the negativity and continual bullsh*t, that could possibly curb your path towards garnering personal success. When it comes to Kanye’ West and his overstated ego, amidst what some would consider a blinding arrogance, rests a dedicated soldier who went from dreams to reality and onto a Graduation of excellence even when his critics thought he couldn’t do it and opted to push him not to try.

For most musicians, art surely imitates life. So when it comes to Kanye’ West and his music, most of it serves as a personal testimony to his walk through the struggle to go his own way- from a self proclaimed college dropout and onto a multimillion dollar media impresario.

“Old folks talking bout back in my day, but homey this is my day.” - Can’t Tell Me Nothing

Anytime you go against the grain, the opinions of the world always line up to dish a bit of criticism in your direction pertaining to your will to make personal choices. For most of us budding entrepreneurs, writer’s, dreamers, musicians, or jacks of all trades, quite like Kanye’ West many years ago before he copped a deal, it can be hard to sift through the scrutiny and negativity, when you wish to be blessed with unconditional support and understanding.

“When it feels like harder than dyin’, for me givin’ up’s way harder than tryin’”. – Champion

Life in itself can be a challenge for a lot of people when it comes to fighting off our inner critic. We already expect a lot from ourselves, so the last thing one ever needs is someone else working to bring them down or darken their rose colored vision. Anyone who ever set out with a plan knows that the road will be full of bumps and hurdles. The easy part is getting behind the wheel. The challenge is going the distance and staying the relentless path.

Rather than listening to the harmonic praises from your peers when giving your business plan a healthy try, you can sometimes get caught between the vocal throes of dream killers and passion extinguishers. For them it’s either right or left; their way or the highway. They don’t see the beauty in walking in between the lines.

“You see, if you ever wanted to ever be anything, there’d always be somebody there to shoot down any dream. There’ll always be haters, that’s the way it is.” – Bring Me Down

Life gets harder when your support system challenges the esteem behind your passion. Negativity is the perfect poison to kill a beating heart engulfed in a tangible dream. If your surrounded by a watchful scrutiny or the suffocating comments behind an endless stream of other peoples opinions, it can steal the breath from a lifelong passion and cause your confident stature to wilt into a garden of personal suicide. Of course the dream in itself will always be mentally blooming, but after being cultivated by the weeds of negativity, its growth gets hindered and then your dream loses its beauty and never blossoms to its greatness even after your winter has faded and gone. If enough people tell you that your plan is waste of time, over time you may begin think that your plan doesn’t deserve another second of time to waste in it.

Dream killers…

“I’m a champion, so I turned tragedy to triumph, make music that’s fire, spit my soul through the wire.”- Through the Wire

When you think of Kanye’ West and compare his drive and dedication to your own path towards success, you can easily pick up a will to stay the storm even if the world continues to test your strength and ability. The critics of the world couldn’t stop Kanye’ West from pursuing a career as a rapper, and even a car accident couldn’t end the life of a promising dream.

Motivation comes from a number of places, so when I’m trying to drown out the opinions of the world pertaining to my own plan in life, I fill my ears with a soundtrack that can inspire me towards greatness not the clashing melody of the “You’re wasting your time,” song. For some of us you don’t even need an MP3 player to tune into the madness, the deafening noise behind your dreams worst enemy might reside around the corner or as close as the next room.

So, for people who are on the same path in life, that Kanye’ West was on and need motivation to keep them going the distance while in pursuit of their own dreams, living a day plugged into The College Dropout, Late Registration, or Graduation could give you that extra steam needed to drive your goal from a mere thought and into a positive conclusion.

“Last year shoppin my demo, I was tryin to shine. Every motherf*cker told me that I couldn’t rhyme. Now I could let these dream killers, kill my self-esteem. Or use my arrogance as the steam to power my dreams. I use it as my gas, so they say that I’m gassed. But without it I’d be last, so I ought to laugh.” - Last Call

Sure, we all have our opinions on Mr. West, and that can be easily addressed in another article. But when it comes to the words he spits so cleverly that ride politely over every orchestrated beat, his attitude fades into the backdrop, and his lyrics serve as a motivational accelerant to ignite that extra fire that burns in the soul of every dreamer. If you listen carefully to his lyrics, they surely don’t go by unnoticed, rather they serve as an inspiration for others who need a guiding light to bring them out of the pressure driven world of other people’s expectations.

My teacher said I’s a loser, I told her why don’t you kill me, I give a f*ck if you fail me, I’m gonna follow my heart.” - Get ‘Em High

The great thing in life about being an individual is that you’re allowed to follow your own path even if at first others criticize you for opting to go down that different road. The most important thing to remember with any dream, is that it can only be killed by another if you give it away. Hold it tight and believe and don’t allow anyone to sway your confidence.