The End of Kimye's Wild Ride

She thought he was an artistic genius. He wanted to “dip her ass in gold.” And now it’s over.

- By Allison P. Davis

Kanye west always knew his fate, it seemed. And this fate was Kim Kardashian. He knew in 2003, when they encountered each other for the first time. He was recording a song with Brandy when her friend Kim came by—then in her era of smoky eyes, nude lip gloss, flat irons, and less ass. Kim was married to producer Damon Thomas, though, so she and Kanye stayed squarely in the friend zone. But as the years passed, the more smitten he became, he explained later in an interview with Ryan Seacrest. By 2006, he was basically in love. He would see pictures of Kim on vacation with Paris Hilton and ask his friends, “What’s up with Kim Kar-dijon?” or “Kim Kardi-shawn?” “I just dreamed about being next to her,” Kanye told his future mother-in-law, Kris Jenner, on one episode of Kris, her talk show. In the segment, he admitted to using Photoshop to insert himself into the Kardashian-Jenner Khristmas cards and emailing the images to Kim.

Maybe it was because he kept mispronouncing her name and the universe only manifests what you ask for clearly, but it took almost a decade’s worth of other relationships and Kanye’s steady, increasing persistence—which included dropping little lyrical love crumbs in his songs—before the two of them finally got together in 2012. They had been dating only a year when Kanye gave an interview to Hot 97 declaring the immensity of their relationship, expressing to host Angie Martinez that they had a big meant-to-be type of union: “I felt like our love story is like a love story for the ages. I felt like when we first got together, it was like a Romeo-and-Juliet kind of thing.”