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3,033 words · no email, no account
No. 042 · Music · Hip-Hop
The Wyoming Sessions
a biography of Ye (born Kanye Omari West)
What the book is
On November 10, 2007, Donda West died on a surgical table in Beverly Hills. Everything that follows is the long aftermath — the records, the marriages, the breakdowns, the public ruin — of a son who could not bury his mother.
Reggie Trayton traces the arc of the twenty-first century's most influential and most destructive artist across fifteen albums, from the chipmunk soul stitched out of Donda's record collection to the slurred provocations of his late period. Trayton writes about the music with genuine sonic literacy: how the beats are built, what the sampler is doing under the vocal, why a snare in 2010 reorganized the sound of pop radio for a decade.
He writes with the same precision about everything else. The Kardashian years and their reality-television logic. The bipolar diagnosis and the refusal of medication. The MAGA hat, the White House visit, the Hitler song. The slow loss of collaborators, of a marriage, of a public.
The question running underneath is older than any of it. What does a man owe the dead? What does grief produce when it is given a hundred-million-dollar budget and no one left to say no? Trayton offers no verdict, only the closest reading we have of an artist who built a cathedral and then, with the same hands, set it on fire.
At a glance
- Subject
- Ye (born Kanye Omari West)
- Shelf
- Music · Hip-Hop
- Written by
- Reggie Trayton
- Chapters
- 19 across 166 pages
- Narrated by
- Nadia Kerr
- Editions
- Paperback · Hardcover · EPUB · Audiobook
- Authorisation
- Unauthorised — no subject, estate or label had approval over the text.
Contents · 19 chapters
- 01The MotherRead free
- 02Atlanta to Chicago2,420 words
- 03Donda's Curriculum1,930 words
- 04Polaris2,799 words
- 05Chipmunk Soul2,068 words
- 06The Blueprint2,474 words
- 07Through the Wire2,196 words
- 08The College Dropout2,038 words
- 09Late Registration / Graduation2,332 words
- 10November 10, 20072,591 words
- 11808s and the Exile2,469 words
- 12My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy3,139 words
- 13Yeezus and Watch the Throne2,625 words
- 14Kim5,308 words
- 152016 / The Hospitalization2,810 words
- 16MAGA2,127 words
- 17October 20222,016 words
- 18Bully3,645 words
- 19The Apology2,106 words
The opening chapter is published in full — read it here.
Editions
- Paperback · $19.99
- 6 × 9 in · 166 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback
- Hardcover · $24.99
- 6 × 9 in · 166 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · case laminate on the same text block
- EPUB · $3.99
- EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books
ISBN 979-8-90470-029-4 - Audiobook · $5.99
- Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Nadia Kerr
ISBN 979-8-90623-010-2
The printed edition has no ISBN registered yet. It affects library and retail listing, not your order.
Questions
01Who is The Wyoming Sessions about?
Ye (born Kanye Omari West). The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Wyoming Sessions — and the name goes on the line underneath.
02Is this an authorised biography?
No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented.
03Can I read some of it before buying?
Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 3,033 words of the book.
04How long is it?
About 51,500 words, 19 chapters, 166 pages in the paperback.
05What is the printed book like?
6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf.
