It's no secret that Kanye West talks a lot of shit. The well-dressed rapper-producer is as famous for headline-grabbing rants as he is for his gorgeous, soul-drenched beats and gutsy, drawling rhymes. West's more notorious moments have found him bitching at the American Music Awards when he lost the coveted best-new-artist spot, announcing that magazines should pay for the privilege of having him on the cover, taking shots at U.S. President George Bush during a network-televised benefit for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and calling out Toronto radio station Flow 93.5 for censoring the phrase white girl on his recent single "Gold Digger". In between such exhaustively reported outbursts, he's found time to sing his own praises at every possible opportunity. He owns it all on the track "Diamonds From Sierra Leone" off his recently released sophomore Late Registration, when he raps: "What more could you ask for? The international asshole/Who complains about what he's owed/Throw a tantrum like he three years old/You gotta love it, though, somebody still speaks from his soul." Confident? Definitely. Cocky? Um, yeah.

But, as anyone can tell you, the man has a lot to boast about right now. The details of his rise from basement producer to international rap star are well-known. The story of West, who was raised by a professor mother and a minister father, is one of middle-class striving mixed with Everyman angst. After bouncing out of college, and a stint folding T-shirts at The Gap, he sold a beat to Roc-A-Fella Records, and went on to craft some of the most breathtaking scores of the decade for Jay-Z's magnum opus The Blueprint, establishing himself as the go-to beatmaker for urban music. West then convinced Hova to let him rap, crashed his Lexus, almost died, released his 2004 debut College Dropout, sold millions of records, changed the hip-hop game forever by uniting radio-friendly rap with the underground backpack sensibility, picked up a couple Grammys, and got invited on The Oprah Winfrey Show-all the while baiting the press with a never-ending stream of combative comments.

However accurate the "cocky genius" take on West is, though, it's more than a little played out. Ever since his haunting "Through the Wire" catapulted him from behind the boards to the centre of press scrums, journalists the world over have been writing the MC to death. They call him an enigma, clearly fascinated that a hip-hop star could don pink Polo shirts, rhyme about religion, and steer clear of gunplay-yet somehow still exude enough swagger, enough puffed-up braggadocio, to match the hardest of thugged-out rappers. Writers invariably stick to the same script: lead with some slick comment about how conceited West is, move on to marvel at his contradictions (a Benz and a backpack! An iced-out Jesus-piece and a social conscience! Weed, sex, and church!), and then, at some point-either grudgingly or respectfully-admit that West's music manages to live up to the deafening hype that surrounds him. Wrap it all up by making another reference to his arrogance. West, of course, has gleefully provided them with truckloads of quotes to that end.

All of this is why you're hoping, sitting in an office at the Straight waiting for West to call in from Toronto, that he doesn't go off during the interview. But you soon find out that asking Kanye to skip the drama is pretty much like asking Kanye to, well, not be Kanye.

Despite the fact that the conversation gets off to a good start, it doesn't take long to get in a scrap with West. The first round is kicked off when the distracted MC-who's taking other calls while barking at the driver that's shuttling him to MuchMusic-is lobbed an admittedly cringe-worthy query: "What do you want people to know about you?"

"That's a very commonly asked question, and I'm running out of new stuff to say," he scolds. "That's one of the most cliché-'What do you like better, rapping or producing?' 'Did your life change after the [car] accident?' 'If there's one thing you want people to know, what would it be?' 'What's one good thing your mother taught you?' I'll just run them down."

Ouch.

Of course, this doesn't stop West from proceeding to confirm the most clichéd aspect of his personality: that he loves to brag about himself. When Late Registration is brought up, he spits a new, boastful rhyme into the phone: "I didn't do no sophomore slump/I did the sophomore Jordan jump." Kanye explains that he set out to make an album as good as Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life. "You know, people have a real problem with me even thinking like that," he notes. "But that's the type of thinking that makes new music-that makes things special-when you compete against the best. There's so many loser-ass rappers that call me and name all these rappers that aren't really good, and say, 'I'm better than them.' Well, dog, are you better than Jay? Shut up then. Can you compete with Eminem, realistically? Shut up. I'm working on 'Bring Me Down', trying to make a verse that I feel is on the calibre of Emimen-if not better."

But it's not just this mildly irritating competitive spirit that makes West's music so original-it's balls. It's rhyming about Jesus when everyone else is getting their gangster on. And then turning around and releasing the campy, crude "Workout Plan" about chickenhead groupies ("It's a party tonight and ooh she's so excited/Tell me who's invited/You, your friends, and my dick") when folks are expecting another conscious joint from you. It's courting underground, backpack heads, and then calling yourself the Louis Vuitton Don and balling hard. And then criticizing yourself for it ("Always said if I rapped I'd say something significant/but now I'm rapping about money, hoes, and rent again"). It's pushing past the superficial bullshit on "All Falls Down" and revealing what balling is all about ("We living the American Dream/The people highest up got the lowest self-esteem….We shine cause they hate us, floss 'cause they degrade us/We tryin' to buy back our 40 acres"). It's dropping "Drive Slow" ("Fuck all that flirting, I'm trying' to get in some drawers") and "Addiction" ("What's your addiction? Is it money, is it girls, is it weed?/I've been afflicted by not one, not two, but all three") on the same album. It's working with slick pop producer Jon Brion, but sampling old soul legends Ray Charles and Otis Redding. Finally-as XXL magazine music editor Bonsu Thompson puts it-it's West's ability to pump out hot radio singles that opt for the intelligent and irresistible instead of the predictable and catchy.

This heady sense of risk, this refusal to toe a party line, carries over into West's life outside the studio as well. It is this very quality that triggered the rapper's now-infamous shot at President Bush. More than any other public figure, Kanye voiced what a lot of people were thinking at one of the most pivotal times in recent American history. As the world watched horrified by images of black people stranded, starving, and dying, the U.S. media could not bring itself to acknowledge the fact that the profound suffering of Hurricane Katrina was meted out unequally. When Kanye charged that "George Bush doesn't care about black people", he shattered a profound silence in the United States mainstream, forcing both journalists and the public to examine the role that race played in the tragedy. His comments pushed Larry King and others to ask, "Is West right?", and opened up a dialogue in American culture-a space that was quickly filled by reporters like CNN's Anderson Cooper, who broke down on television and refused to put a positive spin on the tragedy.

Almost as impressive, West managed to move the hip-hop generation-the most critical, cynical set conceivable-collectively to tears. Even the cranky blogsphere was won over, with head blogger/music critic Oliver Wang leading the pack: "Kanye...all the talk about your ego trippin', about your diva-like behavior, about whatever... ALL IS FORGIVEN."

West is no longer interested in discussing his stand against Bush, but when pressed, he allows that it was scary. "I went to a bar and had shots [afterward]," he recalls. "I felt like if someone had just hit a bully and ran. Like, 'Ah man, I gotta see this bully tomorrow.'?"

Of course, one of the few people not impressed by Kanye's courage-other than Republican hawks-was 50 Cent, who recently slagged West's comments. But West doesn't want to talk about this either. He states coolly: "I haven't even read or even heard any, like, direct quotes. I'm making new music." So you don't have a response to 50? "That is my response."

And then, just as you begin to ask a follow-up question on Katrina, West blows. "Oh, wow," he exclaims, clearly exasperated. "I thought we were off the Katrina thing. I thought we had moved on. We didn't spend any time on the album. We've spent like five hours on the Katrina thing, the 50 thing. Do you know how cliché these interviews are getting for me at this point?

"The more I talk, I think the less impact I'll have when I do say something," he rants, on a roll now. "When I say something, I want to say something that's important. I'm not trying to sit up here and justify anything I said previously. And you can take all of these as quotes. Take everything I'm saying and write this down: I say what I say, I mean it, and then I move on. There's nothing else to be talked about. That's for other people to do. For other people to scramble and say, 'Wow, did you hear that? What did you think he meant by that?' It's not for me to really clarify. I feel like all of those explanations take away from the power of the original quotes, or the things I do, or the songs."

Without pausing for a breath, West continues with: "It's not you that I'm trying to particularly attack. It's not just you. It's just a matter of-say you were walking down the street and you are an attractive young lady, right, and you get stopped by five people. That fifth person might say, 'Hey, how are you doing today?' or might say, 'Yo, do you know how to get to the mall?' And you say, 'Don't talk to me.' And that's kinda where I am with reporters. It might be just someone asking how do you get to the mall, and I'm just like, 'Yo! I'm just so sick of it.' And especially, if you think about it, every day-every day it's a George Bush question. It's the same shit over and over and over. It's making my life-it's boring to me....Like, 'You've got an interview with Kanye; you have to bring it up. Okay, do this, but don't bring it up at the very beginning.'

"Ten minutes in, say the question," he pushes on, mocking. "Because you know when the time to ask the tough questions is.

"Yeah, I'm just making up shit as I go along," Kanye admits with a laugh. "It's probably 50 percent truth and 50 percent me just ad libbing because it's funny to me."

Kanye is now in the dressing room at MuchMusic, getting ready to host Much on Demand, but he's not quite done. "Well, do you have any more questions?" he asks. Not ones that you won't shoot down. "Aw, try one. Just jump down the page and just see if there's one good one." All right. Do you think that the press frenzy around your Katrina comments overshadowed your stance against homophobia at the MTV Music Video Awards?

"I think that's a good point," he says. "The Bush comment was common opinion. In hip-hop, the homophobia one wasn't. So that's what made that scarier."

"People are so homophobic," he continues. "You bring it up, they think 'Oh, you must be gay for bringing it up.' And because they dislike gays, now they don't like you. They say-and that shows you how messed up our mentality is-'Why would you defend someone, why would you say something like that?' People have asked me that: 'Why would you put your neck on the line for them? What is it? Just tell me.' Like you can't be a straight dude that feels like it's wrong to gay-bash. I'm just happy to have opened that up-just to talk about it and give it some type of dialogue. Something that people are so scared to talk about, but it's in our faces every day."

"These things that I say, I think that they can spark something," he adds. "The people are the gasoline-they are either water or gasoline-and I'm just throwing matches out the window. So it's going to hit some people and spark them and maybe inspire them in a way."

Which brings things back full circle to something Kanye touched on earlier in the interview. "With me, everything is pushed as far as I think it can go," he explains. "As far as I can take it. Every time I have to fight a little bit to get something on-air, to get my point across-that really is who I am.

"I do everything times 10." So we hear, Kanye, so we hear.

Kanye West plays GM Place on Sunday (December 11).