West was born in Atlanta to Ray West, a photojournalist, ex-Black Panther and counselor, and Donda West, an academic. The couple divorced when Kanye was three, and Donda raised him during school years in Chicago's South Shore suburb. Kanye spent a year in college but dropped out to pursue a musical career. He began making hip-hop beats for local acts before moving on to placing tracks on Top Ten albums by Jermaine Dupri, Foxy Brown, and Lil' Kim. West's big break came when West put together the beat for Jay-Z's "This Can't Be Life," from the Roc-a-Fella co-founder's 2000 The Dynasty: Roc la Familia album. The following year West handled production on a third of the 15 tracks on Jay-Z's The Blueprint (2001, Number One), including the smash "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)" (2001, Number Eight) and the Nas dis track, "Takeover."
West's hot streak as a producer continued apace with his "chipmunk soul" style — sped-up vocal snippets of old R&B records — inspired, according to West, by the RZA's production for the Wu-Tang Clan and their associates. His signature sound helped make him one of the most in-demand producers. In the two-and-a-half years between The Blueprint and his own debut, West contributed tracks to two-dozen albums, among them: Cam'ron's Come Home with Me (2002); Talib Kweli's Quality (2002); Nas's The Lost Tapes (2002); T.I.'s Trap Muzik (2003); Beyoncé's Dangerously in Love (2003); Ludacris's Chicken-N-Beer (2003); The Diary of Alicia Keys (2003) featuring the smash "You Don't Know My Name" (2003, Number Three); Kamikaze, by fellow Chicagoan Twista, featuring the hit "Slow Jamz" (2004, Number One); and Jay-Z's The Blueprint 2.0: The Gift and the Curse (Number One, 2002) and The Black Album (Number One, 2003).
In the midst of this hubbub of activity, in October 2002, West was in a near-fatal car crash. He had to have his jaw wired shut and wrote the song "Through the Wire" (2004, Number 15) about it, rapping his lyrics (yes) through the wire. The track helped build the buzz for West's first album. After several delays, The College Dropout was issued on February 10, 2004 and yielded two more hits in "Jesus Walks" (2004, Number 11) and "All Falls Down" (2004, Number Seven). That year West won three Grammy Awards, including Best Rap Album and Best Rap Song ("Jesus Walks).
West garnered headlines in early 2006, when he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone wearing a crown of thorns in a shot inspired by the Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ. After concentrating on producing albums by John Legend (Once Again) and Common (Finding Forever), live performance (with a DJ, live drummer, backing singers, and string section accompanying him), West announced his third album, Graduation, to be issued September 11, 2007 — the same date as 50 Cent's Curtis, prompting a rivalry between the MCs. 50 Cent swore he would stop making music if he didn't outsell Kanye, which he didn't: Graduation sold nearly a million copies its first week (an increasingly rare event in the mid-2000s) and maintained a consistent chart presence thanks to the singles "Stronger" (Number One, 2007), "Good Life" (Number Seven), and "Can't Tell Me Nothing" (Number 41).