Kanye West, one of the most accomplished and influential hip-hop artists of the past decades, has been outspoken about his diagnosis of bipolar disorder, offering a rare opportunity to examine his work through a psychiatric lens. Here, we aim to describe the overarching mood across his studio career and relate it to key moments from his public persona through examination of three of his albums.

While his first three solo albums show a generally optimistic mood, consistent with that of a newborn hip-hop artist, his 2008 album 808s & Heartbreak was released in the aftermath of the passing of his mother and the dissolution of his engagement, which led to a notorious change in tone within his work. West’s fourth album marked a stark stylistic change in his music: AutoTuned lyrics that denote sadness, self-deprecation and constant rumination, over slower tracks with moodier melodies and stripped-down instrumentation, interlaced with long, repetitive and gloomy passages. The opening track, ‘Say You Will’, exemplifies this tone through its sparse structure and prolonged repetition, ‘Amazing’ presents a cacophony of achievements, delivered in an apathetic and affectively muted manner, while ‘Coldest Winter’ showcases longing, loneliness and insomnia, within the pervasive sadness that characterises the album.

West’s turbulent public persona reached its most infamous peak yet when he interrupted Taylor Swift at the 2009 Video Music Awards, after which he went on a self-imposed exile. The product of this was the critically acclaimed My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010), in which the music’s scope was as large as the events that preceded it. Recorded in Hawaii, it is opulent, ornate and contradictory in every sense: its artwork consists of interchangeable images framed by a striking thick red border; the music is maximalist in production; and one of the tracks was accompanied by a 35 min music video. The album is layered with feelings of grandiosity, excess, self-loathing and ruminative guilt, in a nearly chaotic fashion, and slides between extremes of euphoria and dysphoria. ‘Monster’ is an aggressive, horror-themed track where he compares himself to the monster of the title, asserting dominance and competing with other artists. ‘POWER’ is a boasting, expansive, chant-like song with triumphant horns that portrays grandiosity and invulnerability (‘I embody every characteristic of the egotistic’) while simultaneously alluding to self-destructive ideation.

The follow up, 2012’s Yeezus, reflects an irritable manic state. Throughout the album, West compares himself to a god through aggressive, industrial and stripped-down instrumentation that amplifies its sense of grandiosity. The album favours raw enactment over the symbolic excess of Dark Fantasy, with markedly explicit sexual and drug-related content, alongside a harsh, abrasive musicality. Any traces of doubt or self-deprecation are replaced in Yeezus with attacks on critics and a god complex.

The following years were characterised by a chaotic and fragmented artistic output, aberrant public appearances and political stunts, a divorce and a legal name change. This case showcases how psychiatric disorders and the associated deterioration can show through an artist’s work, and adds a layer of complexity to the debate regarding separation of art from the artist.