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Comment by acron0 | Hacker News Reader

I feel like he has the right idea but the concept of "risk", I feel, is pretty worthless when you've probably got a few hundred million in the bank. In fact, it upsets me in general when filthy rich people talk about risk, because I have a mortgage and a family so for me, "risk" means maybe not being able to put a roof over my son's head.

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Do you think he was born with a few hundred million in the bank? He eschewed all the standard hip hop trappings and didn't go all 'gangsta' when that's how people made money. When he produced The Blueprint (one of the greatest hip hop albums ever made) it was backed by soul beats which just weren't a thing in ~2000. He's always done his own thing, his latest album is a prime example of that. He's still just putting out shit he wants to listen to, not necessarily putting out what's successful at any given time in the industry.

It's easy to look back and say, you're filthy rich now so you aren't actually taking risks, but taking risks is how he got there.

+1. He could have churned out album after album in his trademark 'soul' style but he places it all on the line with each album just to mix it up and push boundaries. He's a great artist.

When you have more it is more scary to take a risk as you are risking everything you have. How I relate to it is this way, I have a fairly good paying job (equivalent to Kanye releasing albums what's popular) versus I solve a hard problem and quit my day job to build it (similar to Kanye sticks to what he believes in). Now you do the math who has more to loose?

Having said that, I'm going through a stage in my life where I am getting to see the real character of people in terms of their risk appetite. Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur but when it really comes to doing it people chicken out. May be it's my circle but again that's my experience.

It is mere coincidence, however, that the music he wanted to make was also the music people wanted to hear. It's hardly laudable to do something you enjoy...

Also... Media Hype Machine. He's made himself into a symbol. For all most people (who follow his antics) care his next album could be 'Pip farting on a snare drum' to take a line from Air Heads.

I don't think thats really true at all. His music is looked at very critically, because he pushes a lot of boundaries and he is such an outspoken character. People love to hate him, so the fact that his music is so acclaimed is evidence of just how good it is, that many people like it despite his antics.

I think you're counting a vocal minority and discounting a large pop music buying populace.

Also his music is pretty derivative if you've heard the music he is 'biting' or 'paying homage to' or what have you. I'd hesitate to call it pushing boundries as much as it is introducing it into the pop music lexicon.

Also people like The Kardashians despite their antics does that make them good... What is it they do again?

For the record there were 'soul beats' long before Kanye. Ghostface has been using that style since the 90s. In fact Kanye has been biting off Ghost since the beginning and has been called out for such.

Lots of artists didn't 'go all gangsta' to make it. He isn't the first or the last.

The Blueprint being one of the greatest hip hop albums ever made is also highly debatable.

His newest album is an example of this as well. Ghostface has had a cult following but limited wide appeal. Death Grips gained a cult following in the past 1.5 years, and much of Yeezus sounds like a bad Death Grips album.

Claiming that soul beats weren't a thing in 2000 hip-hop is silly. Released in '99: Mos Def's Black on Both Sides, the Roots' Things Fall Apart. Hip hop started with soul beats, and soul has always been a part of hip-hop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop_music

Mos Def is also a great example of someone who 'didn't go all gangsta' to make it. The statement that 'going all gangsta when thats how people made money' is really illustrative of a certain ignorance about hip hop and sadly one that is widely held. It was one route yes but many artists did not follow it.

Edit: Removed part of comment that may have sounded overly negative.

Read the interview. You've got it all wrong. He actually says the risky thing for him to do is to not to anything. It has nothing to do with money. I'm sure he fully understands that he could sit on his bank account for the rest of his life, check out and not do anything. His risk isn't losing his home. It's a different kind of risk.

He stresses that the most important thing to him is actually having ideas and sharing them with the world. He says this over and over again, and I can't help but believe him.

> The risk for me would be in not taking one — that's the only thing that's really risky for me.

So how does that compare to start ups that usually require vast actual risks from their founders?

His risk is sort of a philosophical/existential risk. Not what many would consider an 'actual' risk to himself. This really does seem to be a function of the fact that he is rich and a celebrity.

>>important thing to him is actually having ideas

Kanye's very fortunate that "having ideas" are "the only thing that's really risky for me."

Personally I don't find a lot of value in his "ideas" nor do I agree that he's risking very much. For all his nonsense about liberation from evil, he seems hellbent on integrating himself with the fashion world.

He wasn't born a celebrity millionaire. He dropped out of college (scholarship, and his mother was a professor there who didn't approve) to pursuit a career in music, took him a decade to break out.

If his mom was a professor at a college that sounds like an indication of at least an upper middle class upbringing.

Edit: Wikipedia says, "middle class" and the college he dropped out of was an art school so it isn't like he was giving up a sure thing to take a course that was more risky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanye_West

> If his mom was a professor at a college that sounds like an indication of at least an upper middle class upbringing.

Knowing what college professor's salaries are like, "at least upper middle class" is way optimistic, though "probably solidly middle class" is likely.

Single mother in Chicago working at a state college? Straight up middle class.

I don't buy the premise that you need to be poor to have an appreciation of risk. Risk isn't just financial, there is also career and personal risk. Think of all the well-off kids who didn't follow in their fathers footsteps or what their parents wanted and pursued their own dreams, at the risk of being alienated, disowned etc.

He wasn't at risk of being disowned. He also wasn't at risk of going hungry. He may have been at risk of having to work a boring 9-5 for the rest of his life. But that's a risk shared by so much of the public that it seems pretty minimal.

I don't think it matters how you make your money, just that once you've accrued a certain amount of wealth the concept of risk starts to fade...

True.

The interesting thing though about most successful rappers is that, while almost all of them come from poverty, they tend to achieve success early in life such that by the time they hit middle age they've been rich longer than they've been poor (Nas notes this in one of his songs)...

A guy like Jay-Z talking about hardship increasingly sounds out of touch :)

http://rapgenius.com/Nas-loco-motive-lyrics#note-880957

acronO that's the trap that a LOT of people fall into so you're not alone. But don't go to the grave realizing your decisions were based on making a mortgage payment or a 401K payment or a retirement payment or a college savings plan or a something other very "sensible" sounding. Trust me, your boy is going to love and remember his Dad way more if he saw him doing something he was passionate about and lived in a rental than living in a mortgaged house with a bigger room and a Dad with no spark.

Besides what others said about him not always being rich, there is more to risk than money. Doing something crazy on TV or coming out with an album nobody likes could make hundreds of millions of people think differently of him, say he is going downhill, whatever. That is pretty risky as far as I'm concerned.

sigh... You are a bit naive if you believe that money is the be all end all risk here.

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