Kanye's Second Coming

THREE YEARS AFTER A CANCELED TOUR, HOSPITALIZATION AND CLAIMS OF $53 MILLION IN DEBT, HIP-HOP SUPERSTAR KANYE WEST HAS ONE OF THE BIGGEST HITS OF THE DECADE—AND IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MUSIC. HIS BILLION-DOLLAR YEEZY SNEAKER EMPIRE IS THE BEST BET IN A GENERATION TO TOPPLE AIR JORDAN. SOMETIMES IT PAYS TO BE A CONTROL FREAK.

- Zack O’malley Greenburg

You know when Kanye West is coming. His matte-black Lamborghini SUV rumbles up his gated driveway on the outskirts of Los Angeles like an earthquake, and when he steps out, in a white T-shirt and dark sweats, the obsessiveness kicks in immediately.

First, there’s the house: The lushly landscaped exterior of the property he shares with his wife, Kim Kardashian West, and their four children (North, Saint, Chicago and Psalm) serves as stark contrast to the unadorned alabaster walls within. Nearly every surface is a monastic shade of white. The floors are made of a special Belgian plaster; if scuffed, the delicate material can be repaired only by a crew flown in from Europe. “The house was all him,” Kardashian West later tells me. “I’ve never seen anyone that pays such attention to detail.”

As I step into the foyer, a handler asks me to wrap my black-and-gray Air Jordan high-tops in little cloth booties. To my leftis West’s library, its shelves stacked with the likes of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty and Takashi Murakami: Lineage of Eccentrics. He fiddles with the positioning of a few books that seem off-kilter. Settling into an armchair opposite me, he surveys his interviewer closely. “The first shoe I remember sketching was the Jordan One that you’re wearing right now,” says West, 42. “God does have a way of lining things up.”