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Kanye West Covers TIME Magazine

blame it on Meka April 16, 2015
kanye-west-time-magazine

Let’s be honest: unless you’ve been stuck at either the dentist’s office, the doctor’s office, or a Pep Boys waiting room, chances are that this will be one of the very rare times some people will have ever picked up an issue of TIME Magazine.

Because, #Influence.

Anyways, ‘Ye is on the cover of the long-running American weekly news magazine, being deemed one of their “100 Most Influential People In The World” alongside the likes of Lee Daniels (while he’s won Oscars for movies such as Monster’s Ball and Precious, some people just know him for his TV show Empire), Lorne Michaels (Saturday Night Live), clothing designer Alexander Wang, funnyman Kevin Hart, Apple head Tim Cook, ballerina Misty Copeland, poet/speaker/author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, President Barack Obama, and more.

Watch a video on the cover man, as well as read the brief excerpt on him, below.

Kanye West would be the first person to tell you he belongs on this list. The dude doesn’t believe in false modesty, and he shouldn’t. Kanye’s belief in himself and his incredible tenacity—he performed his first single with his jaw wired shut—got him to where he is today. And he fought for his place in the cultural pantheon with a purpose. In his debut album, over a decade ago, Kanye issued what amounted to a social critique and a call to arms (with a beat): “We rappers is role models: we rap, we don’t think.” But Kanye does think. Constantly. About everything. And he wants everybody else to do the same: to engage, question, push boundaries. Now that he’s a pop-culture juggernaut, he has the platform to achieve just that. He’s not afraid of being judged or ridiculed in the process. Kanye’s been playing the long game all along, and we’re only just beginning to see why.

The complete irony of this? If you want to read the entire list you may have trouble doing so, as their site keeps going “down for routine maintenance.” Because, #Influence.