News

Kanye West Gets Engaged

People reports today (August 11) that rapper Kanye West is engaged to his longtime girlfriend, Alexis. The Chicago rapper/producer is famously tight-lipped about his private life, so details are sketchy, but apparently "sources close to Kanye" say that he popped the question while the couple was on a two-week overseas vacation recently -- presumably sometime before West rocked crowds at San Diego's Street Scene Festival and Chicago's Lollapalooza in a single weekend (on August 4 and 5, respectively).

People couldn't even confirm the last name, age, or occupation of Kanye's new fiancee -- but they did confirm that she was his girlfriend for several years leading up to the near-fatal 2002 car accident that inspired West's first hit single, "Through the Wire."

By 2004, the couple had parted ways, with West telling Blender magazine in an interview that year that he was living the single life again. "The thing is, I always had a girlfriend," 'Ye said at the time. "Now it's like some property opening up on the beach that no one could get into until now."

That property was occupied as recently as April by another romantic interest, 24-year-old model Brooke Crittenden. No word on why Brooke is so abruptly out of West's world and Alexis is back in, but maybe he'll rap about it on his next album, which he says he's already working on and which he plans to call Graduation.

--The ARTISTdirect Staff
08.11.06