With rap being one of the most popular music genres of our generation, discussions about who you think are the best rappers of all time are a dime a dozen. You might go with individuals like Kendrick Lamar or Eminem, or groups such as the Wu Tang Clan or Public Enemy, and while I was never really into the genre, I cannot deny the impact they have had on the music industry as a whole. Of course, there is one, Kanye West, that really caught the eye of not only me, but many others recently, and it is not because of his music.

West was born in 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia to Ray West, a former Black Panther and Donda West, a professor of English at Clark Atlanta University. He began producing sometime around the mid 90s, primarily for those in his local area around Chicago. In 2000, he took advantage of a great opportunity and started producing for artists on hip-hop record label Roc-A-Fella, and can also be credited with revitalizing Jay-Z’s career with the 2001 album, “The Blueprint.” He began recording his debut album, “The College Dropout”, in Los Angeles around December 2002, which was released around February 10, 2004. It received widespread critical acclaim, many publications such as Billboard, Time and Rolling Stone calling it one of the best albums of the century. Nearly all of West’s albums afterwards saw some form of critical acclaim. Of course, rapping was not his only venture, as he decided to try his hand at American politics at a rather intense time.

Kanye announced his 2020 campaign on Independence Day of that year as an independent, with views that could fall between Democrat and Republican. However, he really had no chance of winning, only receiving votes in 12 states, which ranged from three votes in Vermont to 10 in Minnesota. Not only was he unregistered in a vast majority of states, the states he was registered in were not nearly as valuable as needed. He either submitted an application, but missed the required amount of signatures in 9 states, and missed the deadline altogether in 29, which could be attributed to him announcing his campaign so late. He did not get a lot of votes in the states he was registered in, so I feel like he would not have gotten far anyway. This time around, he announced his run much earlier on November 20 while answering questions the paparazzi had for him. Whilst last time he was an independent, he suggested that maybe this time, he will run under the colors of a major political party. A few days later he visited Trump at his Mar-A-Lago residency about possibly running as Trump’s running mate, to which the former president responded with screaming, stating  “help a seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black… who has been decimated in his business and virtually everything else.”

The only question is if West even has a shot at the presidency in 2024. Personally, I do not think so. Kanye has no political experience outside of his aforementioned 2020 run, compared to DeSantis’s governorship, and Biden’s and Trump’s presidency. He cannot just rely on popularity alone to run. As of now, electionbettingodds.com estimates that DeSantis has roughly a 29% possibility of winning the presidency, and roughly 18% for both Biden and Trump each. Numbers like these don’t seem to give him much of a chance, although it still is funny seeing him try.