Rapper, singer, poet, producer, fashion enthusiast: if you were great at all of these things wouldn’t you be confident? Kanye West is a household name nowadays and many people think negatively of him.

The most common conception of Mr. West is that he is too confident and cocky. However, I’m here to argue that he has every right to be as confident as he wants to be.

First, let’s go over some of the rather bold things Kanye has said. According to marieclaire.com, Kanye has said the following:

“But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.”

“I will go down as the voice of this generation, of this decade, I will be the loudest voice.”

“I am so credible and so influential and so relevant that I will change things.”

“I am the number one human being in music. That means any person that’s living or breathing is number two.”

“I feel like I’m too busy writing history to read it.”

There are many more quotes said by him that are similar to these and I can see how people think he’s over confident but I think that his success does nothing but back up these quotes.

First let’s look at his wildly successful music career. He has won a total of 21 Grammy Awards, 11 BET Hip-Hop Awards and four Billboard Music Awards. In total, Kanye was won 92 awards and has been nominated for different awards 380 times. His debut album, ‘The College Dropout’, won 10 Grammy nominations by itself.

Kanye has not only been recognized with awards here in the U.S, but in other countries. He’s won two music awards in Japan, three BRIT Awards and two World Music Awards.

Aside from his success as a solo artist, Kanye has also seen  success  producing music. The very first album he produced was ‘The Blueprint’ for award winning rapper Jay-Z, which sold 420,000 copies in the first week.

He’s also started his own label called GOOD Music. This label has housed many, many artists like Big Sean and 2 Chainz and has released 10 albums certified gold or higher.

Now let’s consider Kanye’s success in fashion. The man is a walking hype machine. It seems like anything he wears, touches or even just gazes upon, people follow and pay staggering prices in order to own it.

For example, when Kanye came to Adidas, their sales went up 10 percent according to fashionista.com. That’s roughly 18.5 billion dollars.

In his debut collection with Adidas, Kanye had people digging as deep in their pockets as they could just so they could get ahold of those $575 sweatpants or the $1,690 wool sweater or the $625 black hoodie. Despite these high prices, many items sold out within hours, according to dailymail.com. People aren’t paying sky-high prices for clothing, they’re paying for a piece of Kanye.

His hours of award winning music and his influence in the fashion industry makes him one of the most successful people on the planet. He may have a loud mouth, but in my book, he’s earned his right to run it.