Kanye West: Hip hop's David Bowie

^{Perfectionists: Kim Kardashian and Kanye West}

It is easy to make fun of West as he lurches from absurd proclamation to furious meltdown, courting controversy with every outburst, a modus operandi that either makes him the greatest self-publicist of a self-obsessed age or a hapless victim of his inflated ego and poor impulse control. Or maybe a bit of both. 'If I was more complacent and let things slide, my life would be easier but you all wouldn't be as entertained,' he has sadly noted. 'My misery is your pleasure.' The truth is, whatever West is doing, it's working. And the bottom line is that none of this would matter without the music.

From the moment he definitively announced himself as a solo artist in 2004 with The College Dropout, West has been a sensation. Over ten incredibly productive years, he has written, produced and performed on seven fantastic albums (including his 2011 collaboration with Jay Z,Watch The Throne),sold 21 million albums, 66 million downloads, scored 17 top ten UK singles and won 21 Grammy awards. Most impressively, he has done it with a boldness that has continually shifted the musical, lyrical, presentational and even philosophical and moral parameters of the most prevalent pop genre of our times.

At a time when rap was moving towards a generic bouncy clubbing format, West was originally acclaimed for restoring 'old school' sampling, concocting tracks from short sound-bites of other recordings. From King Crimson to Shirley Bassey to Aphex Twin, the vast and eclectic range of his influences lend him a particularly expressive palette, creating a colourful, multidimensional sound incorporating rock, gospel, lounge, soul, funk, Broadway tunes and epic Wagnerian strings. West doesn't just take a pre-recorded hook and plug it to death, he manipulates multiple apparently incompatible tracks, speeding things up, slowing them down, weaving disparate elements together into constantly shifting and mutating grooves with his own recorded elements, programmed drums, chordal synths and live instrumentation.

His subject matter, too, has been refreshingly wide-ranging, fearlessly addressing any topic that engages his prodigious intellect, from his complex relationship with faith on Jesus Walks to the tragedy of black on black crime on Everything I Am. In a genre that has relentlessly romanticised criminality and anti-social behaviour whilst aggrandising the superficial pleasures of ostentatious consumerism, West has proudly asserted his own middle class values.

His mother was an English professor, his father a photojournalist and Christian counsellor, and West was an A grade student, attending the American Academy of Art and studying English at Chicago State University before dropping out to pursue his musical ambitions. When he raps about drug dealing, it is not from the perspective of an aspiring hoodlum but from a socio-political observer with a sharp, satirical wit. 'Drug dealer buys Jordans, crackheads buy crack / And the white man gets paid off all of that' he snaps on the dramatic Crack Music. His intelligence, imagination and daring make even his most blatantly ridiculous nonsense worth paying close attention to ('I'm like a fly Malcolm X: Buy Any Jeans Necessary'). Packed with punning word play and tight multiple rhymes, West is funny, provocative, fantastically articulate (what other rapper would rhyme 'sarcophagus' with 'oesophagus'?) and capable of shifting seamlessly from astute political comment to comically rampant braggadocio to introverted sensitivity. West's most minimalist offering, 808's And Heartbreak (2008) is the hip hop equivalent of a break-up album, drawing on 80s synth pop to sing tremulously about misery, guilt and longing. The rapper can barely hold a note but with the inventive use of Autotune and Vocoder he transformed himself into a robo-soul crooner on a dark, brooding and genuinely touching set.

This kind of brilliance doesn't come about by accident. West has a reputation as a competitive workaholic with a hands on ethic and relentless perfectionism. Fascinated by art, fashion, film, design and technology, he has launched clothing lines, marketed his own shoes, opened chains of restaurants and hinted at extending into different product areas, from water bottles to architecture. 'I believe that the world can be saved through design, and everything needs to actually be architected' he has said, apparently with a straight face. And if he lacks formal training in any of these disciplines, well, it never held him back in his chosen field.

West doesn't play any instrument or read music. But he is adept in the use of modern computer recording technology and he certainly has an ear for melody and arrangement. West's maximalist style reached a peak on his 2010 masterpiece My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, a flamboyant yet emotionally resonant piece of work that (to quote a five star Rolling Stone review) 'goes for the grandeur of stadium rock, the all devouring sonics of hip hop, the erotic gloss of disco. all of it, all of the time.' Yet West jettisoned all the warmest and most accessible elements for 2013's , delivering a head-spinning blast of digital electro packed with provocative lyrics. West proclaimed his divinity on the outrageous I Am A God, a song revelling in contrariness ('Soon as they like you make 'em unlike you / Cause kissin' people ass is so unlike you!') before descending into a screaming fit about being made to wait for his damn croissants in a fancy French restaurant. As you do.

Anyone who gets upset by West's messianism is surely taking pop music way too seriously. It is funny, blatantly ridiculous, and, most importantly, it sounds like an absolute monster. Yeezus has a futuristic wallop that will almost certainly be imitated by plenty of other artists on records to come. By then, presumably West will have moved on.

Some critics have questioned West's sanity, and his pitched mood swings certainly seem to suggest some level of mania. West, typically, sees it differently: 'I sit back and see shit and think 'Am I the only one that's not crazy?' But since when did we want our pop stars well-balanced? If West reminds me of anyone, it is David Bowie in the Seventies, a decade when Bowie went from impersonating an alien to giving fascist salutes whilst producing an astonishing body of work that sent ripples far beyond his own actually rather limited commercial appeal. Decades on, we celebrate Bowie's visionary achievements at the Victoria & Albert Museum. I suspect that is exactly the kind of place West would envisage being displayed. So perhaps it is time to show the world's zaniest, most controversial and ground breaking pop star a little respect.

'They want you to accomplish these great feats, to pull off these David Copperfield-type stunts,' West has noted. 'You want me to be great, but you don't ever want me to say I'm great?'

Kanye West plays Wireless Festival July 4-6 July. For tickets, see Telegraph Tickets