Kanye West

As one of the most successful and controversial figures in popular music, Kanye West has had a basket load of both headlines and hits. Surging to solo prominence with his 2004 debut album The College Dropout, Kanye revealed a dexterous rap style with plenty of ego and attitude.

The follow-up, Late Registration, debuted at #1 on the Billboard chart as did his next eight albums. Rolling Stone magazine described West as "a rapper who mastered, upped and moved beyond the hip-hop game, a producer who created a signature sound and then abandoned it to his imitators, a flashy, free-spending sybarite with insightful things to say about college, culture, and economics, an egomaniac with more than enough artistic firepower to back it up."

With a constantly newsworthy personal life and a mastery of image manipulation, West is a skilful self-promoter. It is often difficult to distinguish between stunts and sincerely held values. His tilt at the 2020 US Presidency, for example, was a statement (of some kind) that quickly fizzled out. (He came seventh out of the eight candidates). Still, the man has kept fans and the media thoroughly entertained for almost twenty years, something that shows little sign of changing.