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Biography

Kanye West’s Former Assistant Sues Him for Sexual Assault

Biography.com Editors, Catherine Caruso
25 min read
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Kanye WestBellocqimages/Bauer-Griffin - Getty Images


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1977-present

Kanye West News: Rapper Accused of Sexual Assault and Battery

Kanye West’s former assistant Lauren Pisciotta is suing the Grammy winner, whose name is now Ye, for drugging and sexually assaulting her during a studio session co-hosted by Sean “Diddy” Combs. Pisciotta initially filed the lawsuit in early June, accusing her former boss of sexual harassment, breach of contract, and wrongful termination. She claims she was subjected to explicit calls, texts, videos, photos from him before being fired. On October 8, Pisciotta amended her civil complaint to include two new allegations of sexual battery.

The amended version alleges that before she began working for the rapper in 2021, Pisciotta was invited to Combs’ studio session in Santa Monica, California, where she was served a drink “laced with an unidentifiable drug” at Ye’s instruction and felt disoriented after “a few small sips.” She claims she woke up the next day with no memory of the night before, feeling “physically ill and confused.” According to the filing, the rapper and producer admitted years later that they “did kind of hook up a little” on the night of the alleged assault.

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The other alleged incident took place in a San Francisco hotel room in July 2021 while he was working on his album Donda. The complaint accuses Ye of attempting to “forcefully thrust his naked body” on Pisciotta despite “her pleas to stop” before eventually leaving her room. The 47-year-old hasn’t yet responded to the allegations.

Who Is Kanye West?

Kanye West, whose legal name is Ye, made his mark on the music industry as a producer before launching his own massively successful hip-hop and rap career. He first showcased his abilities as a rapper with his 2004 debut, College Dropout, and cemented his place atop the hip-hop world via the chart-topping albums Late Registration, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Yeezus, and Ye. Some of his most popular songs are “Gold Digger” with Jamie Foxx, “Stronger,” and “All of the Lights.” The winner of two dozen Grammy Awards, Ye is also known for his controversial public outbursts, forays into fashion, and previous marriage to reality TV star Kim Kardashian.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Ye
BORN: June 8, 1977
BIRTHPLACE: Atlanta, Georgia
SPOUSES: Kim Kardashian (2014-2022) and Bianca Censori (2022-present)
CHILDREN: North, Saint, Chicago, and Psalm
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Gemini

Early Life

Ye was born Kanye Omari West in Atlanta on June 8, 1977. He became famous under his given name, which is how many people still know him today. However, in October 2021, the rapper legally changed his name to Ye for “personal reasons.” He had been using the nickname publicly since 2018. “I believe ‘ye’ is the most commonly used word in the Bible, and in the Bible it means you. So it’s I’m you, I’m us, it’s us,” he said in a 2018 interview. “It went from being Kanye, which means the only one, to just Ye being a reflection of our good, our bad, our confused, our everything.”

donda west and kanye west smile and embrace while posing for photos
Donda West managed her son’s career until her 2007 death.Getty Images

His father, Ray, was a photojournalist for the Atlanta Journal newspaper (today, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) and was also politically active in the Black Panthers. He later became a Christian counselor. Kanye’s mother, Donda, was a teacher who became a professor of English at Chicago State University and, eventually, her son’s manager before she died at age 58 from heart disease and cosmetic surgery complications in 2007. Her death profoundly affected Kanye musically as well as personally.

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Ray and Donda divorced amicably when Kanye was 3 years old. After that he was raised on Chicago’s middle-class South Shore neighborhood by his mother and spent summers with his father. At the age of 10, Kanye moved with Donda to China, where she taught as part of a university-exchange program; he was the only foreigner in his class. After returning to Chicago a year later, Kanye was drawn to the South Side’s hip-hop scene, and he befriended the DJ and producer No I.D., who became his mentor.

Kanye graduated from Polaris High School and won a scholarship to study at Chicago’s American Academy of Art but dropped out of college altogether to pursue music, a decision that influenced the titles of his first few albums years later.

Music Career

After spending time producing for local artists, Kanye developed a signature style, dubbed “chipmunk soul,” characterized by sped-up soul samples. He then moved to New York in 2001. Here, he got his big break handling the production for the Jay-Z track “This Can’t Be Life,” which appeared on the 2000 album Dynasty: Roc La Familia. The following year, Kanye cemented his burgeoning reputation by producing four songs on Jay-Z’s The Blueprint, widely regarded as one of the greatest rap albums of all time. Kanye went on to produce for other stellar talents, including the rappers Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Ludacris, and the singers Alicia Keys and Beyoncé.

But Kanye wasn’t content as a backroom player. He wanted to be the headline act but initially struggled to be taken seriously as a rapper. He pleaded with Roc-A-Fella Records to let him rap, but as co-founder Jay-Z later told Time: “We all grew up street guys who had to do whatever we had to do to get by. Then there’s Kanye, who to my knowledge has never hustled a day in his life. I didn’t see how it could work.” West got a similar response from other labels. “I’d leave meetings crying all the time,” he recalled.

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With reluctance, Damon Dash signed Kanye to Roc-A-Fella in 2002, but he did so mostly to retain him as a producer. That October, as Kanye was driving home from a recording session in a California studio, he was involved in a head-on car collision that left him with a shattered jaw. He wrote and recorded a song about the experience, “Through the Wire,” with his jaw still wired shut following reconstructive surgery. He then wrote much of the rest of his debut album while recuperating in Los Angeles. But once the album was complete, it was leaked online. In response, West decided to make it better: He revised and rewrote songs and refined the production, adding stronger drums, gospel choirs, and strings. He paid for orchestras out of his own pocket.

kanye west sings into a wireless microphone he holds in one hand as he stands on a stage, he wears a white suit jacket, argyle sweater, and khaki pants
Kanye West released his debut album in 2004 after years of working as a respected music producer.Getty Images

Shortly after his debut album was released in 2004, Kanye founded his record label, G.O.O.D. music, in conjunction with Sony BMG. G.O.O.D. is an acronym for Getting Out Our Dreams. He eventually put out music by John Legend, Big Sean, Common, Pusha-T, and more as his own career skyrocketed.

His highly successful career has resulted in multiple hit songs and 24 Grammy Awards. Five of the rapper’s tracks have hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100: “Gold Digger” featuring Jamie Foxx; “Stronger,” which won a Grammy Award; “E.T.” with Katy Perry; “Slow Jamz,” a collaboration with Twista and Jamie Foxx; and “Carnival” with Ty Dolla $ign, Rich The Kid, and Playboi Carti. Seven of his Grammys are for Best Rap Song, recognizing beats like “Jesus Walks,” “Good Life,” “All of the Lights,” and “Jail.”

In early 2019, Kanye debuted his Sunday Service, performances of the rapper and associates singing gospel versions of his hit songs from various locations. Little was known about these invite-only sessions, with the public getting glimpses via social media clips. Kanye then brought a larger-scale version of his new project to Coachella that April for a special Easter Sunday show, in which he and a large contingent of singers and dancers, dressed in matching mauve robes, performed atop a man-made mountain.

Albums

To date, Ye has released 10 solo albums, nine of which have topped the Billboard 200. Nearly all of his records have individually sold at least 1 million copies, earning platinum-certified status. Ye’s albums, in order, are:

The College Dropout (2004)

Kayne’s debut album was finally released in February 2004. Titled The College Dropout, it broke the gangsta-rap mold, with themes including consumerism (he was critical of it back then), racism, higher education, and his religious beliefs. It sold 2 million copies by June and made him a star.

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The College Dropout peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, and Kanye received 10 Grammy nominations, winning three awards including Best Rap Song for “Jesus Walks” and Best Rap Album. Today, the multiplatinum album has sold the equivalent of 4 million copies


Late Registration (2005)

Kanye spent a year and $2 million on his sophomore album, hiring an orchestra and working with the composer Jon Brion, who had never worked with a rapper before. Kanye, the restless bourgeois-creative, wanted to “see how far he could expand” hip-hop, he told The New York Times. The results arriving in August 2005’s Late Registration were spectacular and yielded another three Grammy wins: Best Rap Album, Best Rap Song for “Diamonds from Sierra Leone,” and Best Rap Solo Performance for “Gold Digger.”

Late Registration debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, a feat Kanye has repeated with every subsequent solo album release. “On Late Registration, the Louis Vuitton Don doesn’t just set out to create pop music—he wants to be pop music,” wrote Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone’s five-star review of the album. “So he steps up his lyrical game, shows off his epic production skills, reaches higher, pushes harder, and claims the whole world of music as hip hop turf.”


Graduation (2007)

After touring with U2 in 2005 and 2006, Kanye was inspired to make hip-hop more anthemic, to be performed in stadiums and arenas. He began to draw influence from both rock ’n’ roll—including the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and the Killers—and house music, which originated in his hometown of Chicago. This led to his third album, Graduation, released on September 11, 2007.

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Graduation dropped the same day as 50 Cent’s album Curtis, in what was hyped as a battle for hip-hop’s soul—the erudite showman versus the bullet-scarred street thug. But with Graduation’s groundbreaking (for hip-hop) palette of layered electronic synthesizers and sloganeering wordplay—“I’m like the fly Malcolm X/Buy any jeans necessary,” he smirked on “Good Morning”—there could only be one winner. Kanye’s album sold 957,000 copies in its first six days, going straight to No. 1 on the Billboard 200. It also marked his third consecutive nomination for Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards.

With the music industry beginning to wring its hands about the effect of the internet on its profit margins, Kanye simply embraced the change with his video for the single “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” for which he hired the comedian Zach Galifianakis to lip-sync along to the lyrics on an alternate version, creating a viral sensation on YouTube. To date, Graduation has sold the equivalent of more than 7 million copies.


808s & Heartbreak (2008)

Just as Kanye was on top of the world, tragedy struck when his beloved mother, Donda, died from a heart attack following cosmetic surgery in November 2007. During his first concert following the funeral, he dedicated a performance of “Hey Mama” to her.

His next album, 808s & Heartbreak, released 12 months after his mom died, was shot through with grief, pain, and alienation. Kanye even abandoned rapping altogether, preferring to sing through an Auto-Tune vocal processor, which lent his voice a robotic tone. The technique is now ubiquitous in hip-hop. He classified the new album as “pop art” and announced: “Hip-hop is over for me.” (It wasn’t—he won two Grammys for guest raps he made that year, on Estelle’s “American Boy” and T.I.’s “Swagga Like Us.”)


My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)

Kanye returned to music in November 2010 with his fifth album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Paranoid celebrity and rampant consumption were the dominant themes. It was a bombastic and towering monument to self-aggrandizement that sounded “like an instant greatest hits” according to Pitchfork. It was the best and worst of the rapper rolled into one: a magnum opus that bordered on the delusional.

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My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy yielded four singles, including “Monster,” on which Kanye, Jay-Z, and Rick Ross were memorably battered into runners-up spots by a blistering guest verse from Nicki Minaj.


Yeezus (2013)

Anyone listening to Kanye’s sixth album, Yeezus, which came out in June 2013, would hear little evidence that the rapper was living an idyllic existence. Sonically the album was abrasive, raw, and almost entirely melody-free. Kanye had enlisted the producer Rick Rubin to make wholesale changes just days before the release. Lyrically, Kanye sounded paranoid and narcissistic to the point of banality, especially on “I Am a God,” which contained the immortal line “Hurry up with my damn croissants.”

Kanye claimed the album was an “attack on the commercial,” and certainly it contained little that was radio-friendly barring the magnificent glam-rock-inspired song “Black Skinhead,” the first of only two singles from the album. Still, Yeezus was well received among critics, including rock legend Lou Reed who told Rolling Stone that “Each track is like making a movie... The guy really, really, really is talented.”


The Life of Pablo (2016)

There was more controversy in the run-up to his seventh album, The Life of Pablo. Before its release on February 14, 2016, Kanye made headlines for a series of controversial tweets including one that proclaimed Bill Cosby, on trial for drugging and raping women, to be innocent. He started a beef with the rapper Wiz Khalifa, whom he mistakenly believed to have criticized his then-wife, Kim Kardashian (“I am your OG and I will be respected as such,” Kanye tweeted.). He also apologized to Michael Jordan for appearing to diss the basketball legend in his lyrics.

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The day after his album came out, Kanye bizarrely urged his followers to lobby Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to invest $1 billion into Kanye’s “ideas.” He also claimed to be $53 million in debt.

The album, itself, was another change of direction and another triumph. The Life of Pablo covered a much broader sonic sweep than Yeezus, incorporating a vast array of sounds, styles, and influences. Trap, gospel, Auto-Tune crooning, avant-pop, classic soul, and dancehall could all be found in some way. Guest vocalists included Frank Ocean, Chance the Rapper, Rihanna, Desiigner, and Kid Cudi. It became Kanye’s sixth consecutive solo album to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.


Ye (2018)

On June 1, 2018, Kanye debuted his new studio effort, Ye. The seven-track album, which included contributions from Kid Cudi and Nicki Minaj, touched on issues ranging from the sexual assault accusations facing Russell Simmons to the Tristan Thompson-Khloé Kardashian cheating saga to the rapper’s own controversial comments about slavery and being bipolar.

Kanye expanded on the bipolar topic in a subsequent interview, confirming that he had recently been diagnosed. Echoing his track’s lyrics about how it is his “superpower,” he insisted that the condition fueled his creativity but also admitted that it led to unfortunate consequences. “Think about people who have mental issues that are not Kanye West... think about somebody that does exactly what I did at TMZ, but they just do it at work,” he said. “Then Tuesday morning, they come back, and they lost their job.”

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On June 12, it was revealed that Ye had debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200; it marked West’s eighth consecutive chart-topping album (including one collaboration LP), matching the record held by the Beatles and Eminem. Additionally, all seven tracks from Ye had cracked the mainstream Top 40, with “Yikes” charting highest at No. 8.


Jesus Is King (2019)

Meanwhile, the artist continued working on a new album. Titled Yandhi, with a planned release date of September 29, 2018, the album was pushed back to November 23, before being delayed indefinitely.

In August 2019, it was announced that another studio project, Jesus Is King, would be released on September 27, though that date also passed with no sign of the promised album. The gospel-tinged Jesus Is King was finally unveiled on October 25, 2019, the same day as a 35-minute IMAX film of the same title that documented one of the artist’s Sunday Service sessions.

At the Hollywood Bowl in November, Kanye debuted Nebuchadnezzar, an opera featuring Sunday Service–style choir singing with its creator reading Bible passages from off to the side of the stage. He followed with Mary, an opera based on the nativity story, before releasing the 19-track gospel album Jesus Is Born on Christmas Day.

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Kanye dropped the five-track Emmanuel EP on Christmas Day 2020, consisting of “ancient and Latin inspired new music,” according to the press release.


Donda (2021)

In August 2021, Kanye released his 10th solo studio album Donda, which he named after his late mother. The 27-track record hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart and was nominated for Album of the Year and Best Rap Album at the Grammys the following year. The songs “Hurricane” and “Jail” earned him two Grammy wins, taking home the trophies for Best Melodic Rap Performance and Best Rap Song, respectively.


In addition to his solo albums, Ye has released several collaborative efforts. He and Jay-Z released Watch the Throne in 2011. It yielded seven singles, including “Otis” and “Ni**as in Paris,” and added three more Grammy wins to each artist’s respective hauls. Kanye teamed up with Kid Cudi to form the duo Kids See Ghosts, which released a self-titled album in 2018. Most recently, Ye has worked with Ty Dolla $ign on two 2024 albums, Vultures 1 and Vultures 2. The latter album is the first of Ye’s records not to top the mainstream albums chart since his debut, The College Dropout.

Fashion Designer

In late 2009, Kanye took a break from music to focus on fashion. He had already been collaborating with labels including A Bathing Ape and Nike on limited-edition sneakers since 2006. He even reportedly interned at Gap in 2009, and later Fendi, to gain experience.

He launched his first collection in Paris in 2011, but it was widely panned. “You can’t just dump some fox fur on a runway and call it luxury,” sniffed Long Nguyen, style director of Flaunt magazine. Kanye gave a wounded-sounding speech at the show’s after-party. “Please be easy,” he said. “Please give me a chance to grow.” After his second collection a year later received a lukewarm reception, Kanye announced he would no longer be showing in Paris.

However, Kanye’s joint ventures in the fashion world have been much more profitable. He collaborated with the French label APC on a capsule collection in 2013 and signed a $10 million deal with Adidas, launching his first apparel collection Yeezy Season 1 with the brand in October 2015. The line has had a mixed reception, though his Season 5 collection in February 2017 won praise from fashion icon Anna Wintour. “I liked it a lot,” she told the New York Post. “A little bit more focus than sometimes we’ve seen from him.” The rapper’s partnership with Adidas ended in October 2022 following anti-Semitic comments he made.

Public Outbursts and Controversies

Throughout his stardom, Ye has been at the center of several controversial moments in pop culture. One of the first was in September 2005, a month after Late Registration’s release, when he appeared on an NBC broadcast to raise funds for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The rapper caused a national media storm when he opined live on air that “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people,” articulating widespread criticism of the then-president for not visiting the devastated city of New Orleans right away. Bush was deeply stung by Kanye’s comment, later calling it a “disgusting moment.”

Taylor Swift Feud

The fragility of Kanye’s state of mind was called into question at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. At the ceremony in New York City, he invaded the stage at Radio City Music Hall during Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for the Best Female Video Award (for “You Belong to Me”) to protest that Beyoncé should have won instead.

The reverberations from that moment are still being felt. Kanye apologized then retracted his apology in a New York Times interview in 2013. By 2015, he and Swift had become friends and were even spotted at dinner together. Then in 2016, on his song “Famous,” Kayne rapped “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that b–– famous.” Swift hit back from the stage at the 2016 Grammy Awards: “I want to say to all the young women out there there will be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments... Don’t let those people sidetrack you.”

Jimmy Kimmel Beef

A Twitter spat erupted in September 2013 between Kanye and Jimmy Kimmel after the talk-show host mocked an interview the rapper had given to the BBC. Kimmel hired child actors to recite some of Kanye’s more bombastic quotes on his show, but the rapper was far from amused. “Jimmy Kimmel is out of line to try and spoof in any way the first piece of honest media in years,” read one of a series of angry tweets from Kanye. Kimmel gleefully read out Kanye’s tweets during his next show, sparking more contempt from the rapper who shared a link to a Slate article titled: “Kanye was right.”

The following month, Kanye appeared in person on Jimmy Kimmel Live! His interview lasted most of the episode and featured several free-flowing Kanye monologues about his career, his thoughts on the paparazzi, Steve Jobs, Jesus, and more. “I don’t know if you know this, but a lot of people think you’re a jerk,” joked Kimmel, though he went on to praise the rapper’s character. It turned out the two had known each other prior to the spat, which was why Kanye had been hurt by Kimmel’s portrayal of him. Kimmel admitted that considering a celebrity’s feelings was “not something that comes to mind when I’m cooking up a comedy sketch.” By the end of the show, they had cleared the air.

Outbursts at the Grammy Awards and Concerts

February 2015 brought another Kanye-led award show disruption, this time at the Grammys. He objected to Beck winning the Album of the Year award. “Beck needs to respect artistry, and he should have given his award to Beyoncé,” Kanye said after the ceremony. Months later, he retracted his statement in an interview with the English newspaper The Sunday Times. “I was inaccurate with the concept of a gentleman who plays 14 instruments not respecting artistry,” he said.

His many controversies had blowback among fans. In June 2015, he headlined the Glastonbury Festival in the United Kingdom, despite a petition of 135,000 signatures asking for him to be removed from the bill.

In late November 2016, while on his Saint Pablo Tour, Kanye stopped a concert in Sacramento, California, to embark on a garbled rant about radio playlists, MTV, President Barack Obama, President-elect Donald Trump, Beyoncé, and Jay-Z (“Jay-Z, call me, bruh... I know you got killers. Please don’t send them at my head.”). It was the second time within a week that he had ranted onstage and voiced support for Trump, and this time it sounded like a public breakdown. He didn’t complete the show. The following day, he canceled the remaining 21 dates of his tour citing exhaustion and subsequently spent eight days hospitalized at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Support for Donald Trump

The artist caused a stir when his tweets veered toward his support for President Donald Trump, calling him “my brother” and noting how they shared “dragon energy.” He even posted a selfie in which he wore a Make America Great Again hat, a signature of Trump’s campaign. Kanye later sought to clarify things by saying he loved 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, too, and didn’t agree with everything President Trump said. “I don’t agree 100% with anyone but myself,” he wrote.

Comments About Slavery

In an interview with TMZ in early May 2018, Kayne revealed he had been addicted to opioids prior to his November 2016 onstage meltdown and hospitalization, which he began taking after undergoing liposuction because “I didn’t want y’all to call me fat.” He also raised eyebrows by describing the history of African American enslavement in the United States as a “choice,” his words again inflaming social media outrage and prompting another attempt at a clarifying explanation later. “When you hear about slavery for 400 years… For 400 years? That sounds like a choice,” Kayne said. “You were there for 400 years, and it’s all of y’all. It’s like we’re mentally imprisoned.”

Anti-Semitic Remarks

After wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt to a Paris fashion event in October 2022, Ye went on a very public anti-Semitic rant, airing conspiracies about Jewish people and their supposed control of the entertainment industry. This prompted brands like Adidas to cut ties with him and end their business partnership. A month later, Ye attended a dinner with Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier, at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

In December 2022, he tweeted an image of a swastiska interlaced with the Star of David, causing him to be temporarily banned from the platform. The following year, Ye claimed that watching actor Jonah Hill in the 2012 movie 21 Jump Street “made him like Jewish people again” and issued on apology on Instagram in December 2023, which was written entirely in Hebrew. “I sincerely apologize to the Jewish community for any ‘unintended outburst’ caused by my words or actions,’” Ye wrote, according to Google Translate. “It was not my intention to hurt or demean, and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused.”

Ex-Wife Kim Kardashian and Children

As he rose to fame, Kanye had a years-long relationship with Alexis Phifer. The couple were engaged but broke up in 2008 in the wake of the rapper’s grief over his mother’s death.

kanye west and kim kardashian west smile at each other
Kanye West and Kim Kardashian were married for nearly seven years before separating.Getty Images

Come 2012 the public clamored for information about Kanye’s emerging relationship with reality TV star Kim Kardashian. The pair began dating that April and got engaged in October 21, 2013, after he proposed at the AT&T baseball stadium in San Francisco.

Kanye and Kim married on May 24, 2014, in the historic Fort di Belvedere in Italy. Andrea Bocelli sang as she walked down the aisle in front of guests that included designer Rachel Roy, tennis champion Serena Williams, movie director Steve McQueen, and music stars Legend, Q-Tip, Rick Rubin, Tyga, and Lana Del Rey. After the wedding, Kim took the rapper’s last name, which was still West at the time.

Prior to their nuptials, Kayne and Kim had their first of four children. Their daughter North West was born in June 2013. Next, their son Saint arrived in December 2015 followed by Chicago, another daughter, in January 2018. Like Chicago, their youngest child, a son name Psalm, was born to a surrogate, in May 2019.

In February 2021, Kim filed for divorce from Kanye. Their divorce was finalized in November 2022.

Wife Bianca Censori

kanye west and bianca censori walk hand in hand outside, he wears all black, she wears a white sports bra and gray leggings
Ye and his wife, Bianca Censori, have largely stayed out of the public eye.Getty Images

Ye married Bianca Censori, an Australian model and architect, in a private ceremony in December 2023. News of their wedding wasn’t made public until January 2024 when the pair made their first public outing. While the two haven’t spoken about how they met, a friend of Censori reportedly claimed that the rapper direct messaged her on Instagram, asking her to work for him.

In October 2024, TMZ sparked rumors that the couple were heading for divorce. Soon after, photos surfaced of the couple walking arm-in-arm in Tokyo.

2020 Presidential Run

On July 4, 2020, Kanye tweeted that he was running for president: “We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future. I am running for president of the United States.”

He held his first campaign rally on July 19, 2020, in Charleston, South Carolina. With “2020” shaved into his head, he spoke about Planned Parenthood, marijuana, and slavery, among other subjects, in a speech that lasted over an hour.

On October 12, he dropped his first campaign video urging voters to write his in on their ballots. The rapper eventually conceded and alluded to a presidential run in 2024. In October 2023, his lawyer announced that Ye would no longer be seeking a presidential bid.

Net Worth

As of June 28, 2024, Ye has an estimated net worth of $400 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. Once a billionaire, his net worth took a hit when Adidas terminated their partnership in 2022; he reportedly lost $5 billion as a result.

In addition to his music sales and fashion brand, Ye is the founder of the record label and production company G.O.O.D Music, which has signed artists like John Legend and Pusha T. He is also a co-owner of the music-streaming service Tidal, along with Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Madonna, Chris Martin, and Nicki Minaj.

Quotes

  • I am Warhol. I am the No. 1 most impactful artist of our generation. I am Shakespeare in the flesh.

  • I liberate minds with my music. That’s more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

  • Fashion breaks my heart.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us!

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