Kanye West is officially the owner of his childhood home in Chicago.
According to a report from Chicago's WGN 9 on Friday (April 24), Ye recently bought the home, which was previously owned by his late mother Donda West for $225,000. (You know, chump change now that Kanye is a billionaire)
After Kanye's mother sold the home in 2004, the property went "through a lot of trouble after that,” real estate reporter Dennis Rodkin told WGN 9. “It’s on South Shore Drive in the South Shore neighborhood. It went through foreclosure and several years ago a foundation that Kanye was involved with, but Rhymefest — one of Kanye’s collaborators — bought it," he explained.
Dennis said the plan from there was to build an “arts incubator,” but at some point that plan fell through. “Then they announced ‘we’re going to have to tear the house down, because it would cost less to build a new one than to rehab this because it’s been empty for years,’” he shared.
As fans know, Kanye and Rhymefest got into a very public feud over funding for the incubator. While the two planned to convert the home into a center for Ye's Donda House program, the plans never came to fruition. Instead, their private issues went public in May 2018 when Rhymefest posted several tweets, accusing Ye of abandoning Donda House, their shared non-profit named after Kanye's mother.
"We ask that as you boycott and protest Kanye West, that you not forget that we are a non-profit organization that like other non-profits needs donations, corporate support and volunteers," the organization, headed by Rhymefest, said in a statement at the time. "We do not want your rejection of Kanye West, to be a rejection of Dr. Donda West and the thousands of lives she impacted including her own son."
While their feud continued for weeks, Ye's wife Kim Kardashian even got involved at one point, the two later squashed their beef both publicly and privately.
Last month, permits were reportedly taken out for renovating Kanye's childhood home. The business mogul is looking at about $60,000 in repairs, said Dennis.
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