We’re not all destined for musical stardom like Kanye West but I believe we all have a mission, that is, a unique expression of how we can use our talents and interests to benefit others. Along the way, if we are disciplined and persistent enough we achieve a level of mastery in our field. There are many benefits to being mission-driven and achieving mastery, watching jeen-yuhs I felt as though Kanye and Coodie embodied this in many of the things they said. I’m passionate about all things purpose, mission and self-development, so naturally, I had to break down these quotes into principles that we can all use on the journey to mastery.
“I been trying to produce [music] since 7th grade, dawg. You know what I’m saying, I put my time in.”
You don’t become a celebrity overnight (I know🙃). The narrative on people who achieve stardom at a young age always seems to revolve around some unique and rare genius that the person was born with, but when you dig deeper, more often than not, they just started out earlier than everyone else.
Kanye West would have been around the age of 12/13 in the early 90s when he first started producing music in the seventh grade. His professional music production career didn’t start until the mid-1990s presumably around the age of 17/18. Then it wasn’t actually until 2000 at age 23 that he got his big break and started producing for Roc-A-Fella artists. Clearly starting early was a huge benefit for Kanye. People don’t see or remember that 5-year gap between him producing his first track and when he started his career. Five years of intense focus on a craft will already propel you to a place where many will never be able to reach. The benefit of being young is that there is no pressure to monetize the skill so you can just focus on practising as much as humanely possible. He also notes the mentors and peers that helped him along the way, Dug Infinite, No ID & Just Blaze. This would have undoubtedly sped up his learning process more so than if he had been learning by himself. The importance of mentorship can’t be overstated, especially in something as niche as music production in the time he was coming up. Fast-forward another five years of working with smaller artists and working his way up, his work began to speak for itself. This takes us to a grand total of ten years of focus on his craft before he really hits it big as a producer. So when you hear this man talk with confidence please understand that he had really put in the hours. He had mastered his craft and he knew it, that wasn’t overconfidence it was just confidence. This is the part frequently left out of success stories, the ten years of practising your craft only seeing slow, incremental progress and the mental toughness required to stick through these times. When the breakthrough eventually comes after ten years of hard grind all of a sudden they’re just a genius and overnight success. Break down the story of anyone successful at their craft and you’ll see the same patterns, I’ll bet you real cash money.
The moral of this story is if you are in years 1–2 of whatever craft you are trying to excel at, stop being impatient and stop looking at the scoreboard. Focus on your daily incremental improvement. There is no substitute for time. Make time work in your favour through dedicated and disciplined practise each and every day. Robert Greene in Mastery approximates the time for mastery at between 7–10 years. If it takes 7–10 years to master something it better be aligned with your overarching mission. If you are going to have to commit to something for that long it better be something you love, are good at and interested in otherwise you probably won’t last the test of time. Furthermore, mentorship in your early days is critical, surround yourself with mentors and peers who push you to be better and accelerate your learning progress.
Kanye: “Yeah, can you believe it?”
Donda: “I can believe it, the way you are. You play tracks like Michael Jordan shoots free throws. Anybody that does something that much, that long and is that good. It’s gotta payoff. You can’t go over there and do nothing but blow up.”
“I don’t give a f*ck about the industry, man. What you need to understand is, when I do this album, it’s gonna be the realest sh*t you ever heard because if I f*cking brick, I could still eat. I can still make a way for my family. So I’m gonna do MY album. I’ll do it the way I f*cking want to.”
What sounds like overconfidence to many is to a master a mere acknowledgement of the progress they’ve made in their craft. Kanye had transcended to a point where he recognised due to his mastery he could afford to take the jump into becoming a rapper. He knew that he was already so good as a producer that he would always be able to fall back on that skill to make a living. If he didn’t blow as a rapper he would have just gone back to making beats. This is powerful because at this point you could sense he felt fully in control of his destiny. He didn’t want to become a rapper for a paycheck he was doing it because he truly believed it was a talent that he had to share with the world. It may have still been a money move but he knew he wasn’t relying on it as a foundational source of income. This allowed him to be much more authentic in what he was doing. When you can focus on authenticity and creating the best work you can rather than what will make you the quick paycheck what you produce will be of better quality and ironically will be what takes you where you want to be financially.
The takeaway is that a benefit of achieving mastery is financial security and this financial security allows you to express yourself in ways that you would struggle to if you were only working for a paycheck. The focus on the quality and value of his first albums was what set him apart, when this is the focus we can produce amazing authentic work.
“N*ggas don’t even realize I ain’t nowhere near yet. I might be living y’all American dream, but I’m nowhere near where my dream is dawg. Man, I got aspirations. I got big dreams, motherf*cker.”
“Most people just saw Kanye as a young producer who could hook ’em up with cheap beats… But he told me the only reason why he made beats was so that he can rap over them”.
“Roc-A-Fella just wouldn’t take him seriously as a rapper. It was like they only looked at him as a producer.”
“Even though the A&R at Capitol wanted to sign Kanye, the heads of the label had the power to make that decision, and they didn’t think a producer-rapper could sell records”
“Imma start making up new beats, like with my guitar player and my singer that sings exactly what I want to say. People [are] gonna be like, “Where did you get that sample?”… That’s the next level, where I’m gonna push the game.”
“I’m a rapper, I’m a motherf*cking MC, dawg. I’m a storyteller, man. I’m a song maker. I create it, man. The music, dawg, is me, man … I’m a motherf*cking rapper dawg.”
Kanye West was undoubtedly a man on a mission with a vision so infectious that he convinced a young Coodie with an already popular TV show to abandon his venture and follow him around New York as he tried to make it as a rapper. It’s evident that to himself Kanye West existed to tell stories through his music, that was his mission. Without acknowledging this mission there is no Kanye West the rapper today, it’s only someone with the deepest sense of mission who can withstand the failure, rejection, embarrassment and humiliation that comes with being that ambitious. Any normal person who is not mission-driven quits before they can see the payoff. To Kanye West, he was already a rapper even when everyone else told him it wasn’t possible for a producer to turn rapper. People didn’t see the vision of producer turned rapper but the fact he was a producer gave him an edge over other rappers, he could be innovative in ways they couldn’t. Sometimes it’s the reasons people think you will fail that are actually the reasons you’ll succeed. The list of things everyone says can’t be done is a great place to start if you’re looking to do something big with your life.
What should we take away from this? The world won’t recognise your talents before you do. We all know how talented Kanye is and even then he still faced rejections so we should all be prepared to face rejection in this harshly competitive world. Just don’t let it stop you. Rock-A-Fella messed this guy around but he persisted because that’s where he wanted to sign but someone with more pride never would have gone back. Come to think of it he showed incredible humility. The rejections and doubt will come but you have to have the self-belief to rise above it and stick to what you believe is possible.
It’s important to note here that although self-belief is certainly necessary to be successful, Kanye shows us that much, it’s not sufficient. The line between self-belief and delusion is thin and is separated by a combination of natural talent and disciplined practice over time. Another reason to be mission-driven is that by definition your mission will be a reflection of what you love, are good at and find interest in. You have to be well-suited to what you choose to dedicate your time which takes a healthy dose of trial and error and introspection over time. Talent is evenly distributed across humanity but everyone’s talents differ, you have to find what plays into your strengths the most.
Kanye’s vision is embodied in this quote:
“Before I had my car, I used to be walking to the train, practicing my grammy speech”
“If I wanted to make this documentary it was now or never. So when Kanye said he was down, I left my career behind, took a leap of faith and moved to New York” — Coodie
To round off, a quote from Coodie, the man who made the whole documentary possible. This one is a lesson in taking action even when things are uncertain. Knowing your mission is worthless if you don’t take action. It may happen that you’re required to make a risky move that seems crazy to everyone else. When the opportunity presents itself are you going to be willing to take it even if doesn’t look like an easy home run?
Props to Coodie for catching onto the vision and recording the journey from when he did because it shows (in 4K) that the path to success is far from straightforward. He captured Kanye’s journey at the perfect time whilst he was still a relatively normal guy just trying to live out his dreams. People will look at Kanye’s life now and think it all came easy but to get to where he is most people wouldn’t have done what was required of them, hustled the amount he had to, believed in themselves the amount he had to, dreamt as big as he did or overcome rejection and failure as much as he did.
Something to remember with these stories is that we will only ever see the success stories. Back in 2002 there were probably many other rappers and producers just as talented and as driven that didn’t make it to Kanye’s level of success. The cold reality of the world is that you can do all the right things and still not make it but you can’t let that stop you from trying.
Survivorship bias is real and something to be wary of here but both Coodie and Kanye did a lot of things right. There are a lot of things they both did to improve their chances that 99% of people wouldn’t do. Life is a game of chances and the choices we make increase or decrease the probability of us getting what we want, they did a lot to maximize their chances.
