4. Kanye West is not just a great, influential, and fashionable artist, he is an intellectual and has lectured at Oxford. West briefly attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago before rising to fame and becoming a college dropout. He received an honorary doctorate on May 11 (2015), from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Kanye was recognized for his “transformative, genre-defying work,” and he even gave a peculiar acceptance speech, during which he poked fun at his unapologetic behavior in the past and said, “I am a pop artist, so my medium is public opinion, and the world is my canvas.”