Kanye West (Ye)

The move

Kanye West's first album, The College Dropout (2004), goes against everything hip-hop was doing. At the time the genre runs on hardness, gangster credibility and a look that came from the street. West raps about being middle class, about college, his mum, his ego. Roc-A-Fella doesn't want to release it. He pays for the videos himself.

2008. He releases 808s & Heartbreak. Vocoder ballads about grief, made after his mum died and his fiancée left. Critics call it career suicide. It becomes the blueprint for the next ten years of pop, R&B and rap. Drake, The Weeknd and Frank Ocean all built careers on the door 808s opened.

2015. He starts Yeezy with Adidas. Nike had turned him down and wouldn't give him the royalty deal Jordan had. Adidas would. At its peak Yeezy brings in an estimated $1.7B a year, and on its own puts Adidas back within reach of Nike in lifestyle.

He's changed every category he's walked into. Whatever the headlines say, the work is still standing.

Why it was risky

Every album, West bet against the version of himself that sold the last record. Backpack rap, then vocoder ballads, then huge gospel, then industrial hip-hop. Most artists protect the formula. West has spent twenty years blowing his up. It makes for a bumpy ride. The upside is nobody can catch him, because he's already gone somewhere else.

The numbers

The College Dropout to Donda. Roc-A-Fella to Adidas to a global retreat. The catalogue reads like eleven different careers stitched into one.

The lesson

The album wasn't the risk. Refusing to stay in his lane was. West's catalogue is twenty years of proof that repeating yourself successfully is the most dangerous thing an artist can do. R.I.S.K. is for creatives ready to burn the last hit down and go again.