The Life of Kanye West

The topic of the project is the evolution of Kanye West. Kanye West has experienced many ordeals throughout his life but perhaps the greatest ordeal was the passing of his mother due to complications from surgery. This death occurred during the middle of his career. The guiding question is: How was Kanye West’s music affected by the death of his mother? We believe Kanye West became much more aggressive and explicit after the death of his mother because he had to cope with the deep sadness and he dealt with is by taking a narcissistic approach to his music. We will investigate this thesis by first outlining Kanye West’s life. A timeline will be created to pinpoint exactly when Kanye West’s mother passed so there is a before and after that can be analyzed. To do most of our investigation we will compile the lyrics of every single song from Kanye’s 7 solo albums and analyze them through digital technologies. Only the 7 solo albums will be looked at and not 2 collaboration albums because the 7 solo albums represent the thoughts of just Kanye West. Text mining will be used to gage the explicitness of Kanye’s music before and after his mother’s passing. Every lyric, even the lyrics sang by features in Kanye West's songs, will be analyzed because Kanye West had the final say on whether or not the lyrics would be part of the final product and therefore represent him in that time period even if he is not the one singing the lyrics. Once specific words are analyzed, the songs in which those word appear in with the greatest frequency will be analyzed to help gain context behind the usage of the words which will better help us determine the impact of Kanye's mother's death on Kanye's music.