Kanye West's 25 Greatest Car Moments

From his humble beginnings to his current position on the throne, Kanye West has always had raps that complemented his acute taste for the finer things. While his stunting topic of choice is mainly fashion, Yeezy is a connoisseur of all things expensive, and his whip game gets more proper with each passing year. As we celebrate 10 years of legendary status since The College Dropout, Complex has picked out his 25 Most Important Car Moments, from his real-life whip collection, to rap bars, and all of the definitive vehicular experiences that affected his life and career.

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Car: '93 Cadillac Fleetwood

The visual to the standout track off of 'Ye's 808s and Heartbreak employed rotoscoping techniques for the animation, producing striking attention to detail. The Fleetwood parked on the curb looks detailed to perfection, serving as background eye-candy while a lovelorn Yeezy languishes on the streets.

Car: Porsche Panamera

Back in 2010 one of Kanye's Porsches was involved in a serious car crash in Honolulu, even though he himself was absent from the island at the time. The whip was reportedly in the care of his cousin when it was stolen and then crashed into a garage attached to a neighboring, multi-million dollar residence.

Car Reference: "'I know Kanye a jerk' How could you say that?/He rode me and my mama around in his Maybach" - Big Sean

G.O.O.D. Music member Big Sean frequently quells the unfortunately widespread opinion that Kanye's a pompous asshole with this anecdote. Also mentioned in his verse on "See Me Now," he talks about how Kanye graciously lent Sean and his mom a Maybach, back when the Detroit MC hadn't blown up on his own yet. Kanye, the (big-hearted) Louis Vuitton Don.

Car: Limousine

The beginning of one of Yeezy's greatest videos features the rapper-as-Kanyevel arguing in the backseat with his girlfriend (Pamela Anderson) while en route to his latest stunt.

Car Reference: "Good morning and look at the valedictorian/Scared of the future while I hop in the DeLorean"

'Ye continued to push rap soundscapes with his third album, Graduation, so it's only fitting that the intro to the sonically advanced disc features a reference to pop culture's most classic tool for time travel, the DeLorean DMC 12.

Car Reference: "New crib, loftin/Where it's at? Austin. Where is that? Texas/What's in front? Benzes. What else? Lexus/Well who's Maybach is this? Mr. West's"

Kanye's opening verse on the second installment of Rick Ross' "Maybach Music" series was a hard act for the Boss and Weezy to follow, full of stunteriffic bars that display the breadth of his bank and garage.

Car Reference: "Don't be reaching, don't be touching shit/We in Kanye West's Benz/Cause I will turn you back to a pedestrian"

Yeezy casually warns his girl not to let the idea of rolling with a man of his celebrity go to her head. Act up and she can just as easily end up back on the sidewalk hoofing it. Of course, that attitude is curbed when your girl is Kim Kardashian, who hoofs it on her own terms and even paid for her beau's best whip. With gift game and looks like that, we'd let her push our SLR whenever and wherever she wanted to.

Car Reference: "Nah, you can't come through flying in a, in a Bentley shining/I'm in the back/Backseat driving screaming on a nigga like I'm actually driving"

Kanye and Cudi hold T.I. down on one of the standout cuts from his 2010 effort No Mercy, where 'Ye closes out a verse that laments the extra police attention successful black males receive with one of the dopest references to backseat driving that we've ever heard. The best part is, we can easily picture 'Ye succumbing to road rage from the back of his 'Bach despite being chauffeured.

Car: BMW Race car

In November 2006 Kanye participated in the Formula BMW World Finals, sponsoring this BMW race car to compete in the event held in Valencia, Spain. Backed by the Kanye West Foundation and the United Nations World Food Program, the Beamer was tricked out with images of the iconic Bear Mascot.

Car Reference: "Y'all pop the trunk, I pop the hood - Ferrari"

Of course, an ode to the components of the good life must feature an exotic car reference. Kanye opts for the Ferrari Testarossa, as depicted in the colorfully vibrant, pop-art music video.

Car: Mercedes G550

A little over a year ago a clip of Kanye receiving this G-wagon fresh from the Benz dealership surfaced on the net. Believed to be filmed in 2002, on the same day Kanye laid his verse for Blueprint 2, Benz dealer Lance Stern is hilariously grilled by one of 'Ye's homies, after Stern suggests Kanye has to get up to "the new car we're just getting, the Maybach." We wonder if Lance conducted that sale too a few years later...

Car Reference: "We talking CIA/I'm talking George Tenet, I seen him the other day/He asked me bout my Maybach, think he had the same/Except mine tinted and his might've been rented"

Former CIA director George Tenet's brief run-in with Kanyeezy is immortalized on wax when he becomes a tool for the socially observant rapper to bluntly examine the behavioral differences between white and black people with money. A rental, really son? Apparently government perks have their limits, while 'Ye doesn't share Jay's affinity for curtains over tint.

Car Reference: "1985 white Lamborghini Countach. Two of em."

That ill line kicks off the Watch the Throne bonus song that most rappers would thirst to put on the album proper. We're still waiting for the accompanying slow-motion video with one of these for each Throne member plus Cudi to ride around in.

Car: MTX Tatra V8

In the opening scene of the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy accompanying short film, protagonist Griffin (West) is driving his Tatra through a forest in Prague at the same time that a beautiful, mythical phoenix (Selita Ebanks) crash lands on Earth. Griffin carries her away from the wreckage while the Tatra explodes behind him, because as we know, cool guys don't look at explosions.

Car: Mercedes SLR Gullwing

On the non Hov-assisted version of "Diamonds from Sierra Leone," Kanye reminisces on the days when he couldn't afford a Ford Escort. The change in tax brackets is on clear display in the video, which features Ye driving through Prague in the SLR Gullwing. At this point Kanye has a reputation for delivering avant-garde music videos, but we sometimes feel like this particular one doesn't get due props as one of his best.

The clip puts a Twilight Zone type spin on the African conflict-diamond controversy, also drawing inspiration from horror films like The Grudge and The Ring. The malevolent spirits of children who lost their lives mining for diamonds are shown exacting revenge on those who purchased the rocks, and toward the end, they come for the college dropout himself, which leads to the awesome stunt depicted above.

Car: Mercedes Benz McLaren SLR Stirling Moss

'Ye's freshest, non-Maybach Mercedes moment occurred in 2011 when he pulled up to the Cannes Film Festival with his ceiling missing, behind the wheel of this gorgeous McLaren SLR with longtime clique member (and Pyrex designer) Virgil Abloh riding shotgun.

Car Reference: "This the fast life, we are on a crash course/What you think I rap for, to push a fucking Rav-4?!"

In what is widely considered as one of his best guest verses to date, 'Ye actually manages to best his mentor on Jigga man's Blueprint 3 single. The potent bars include this merciless ethering of the Rav-4 Toyota SUV.

Car: Ford Mustang Bullit

The polarizing official (but third to be produced) "Flashing Lights" video is short but sweet. Filmed entirely in slow-motion, the Spike Jonze-directed clip, stars the ridiculously easy-on-the-eyes Rita G as a woman scorned, who drives a Mustang out to the Nevada desert and gets out to scorch her fur coat.

After a visually glorious walk back to the car, Yeezy finally appears—when Rita pops the trunk to reveal him bound-and-gagged in it. She plants one last kiss on him before bashing his brains in with a shovel off-camera. The moral of the story: Don't cheat.

Car reference: "Killin y'all niggas on that lyrical shit/Mayonnaise-colored Benz, I push miracle whips"

Back when everyone doubted if 'Ye could indeed kill niggas on that lyrical shit, he kicked a freestyle to Jay and others while hanging out in the studio that ended with the clever bar above. In "Last Call," the comprehensive College Dropout outro that details Yeezy's rise, he says that "Jay's eyes lit up" at that line, before admitting that the rest of the raps were whack. Perhaps they were, but this is one of the earliest documented moments of 'Ye's slow, but sure, ascension from producer to rapper.

Car: Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4

Last summer the Kim-Kanye union was still relatively new, and 'Ye's $750,000 birthday gift was big news. The Louis Vuitton Don showed his appreciation that his girl did better than a new sweater multiple times on Cruel Summer by going into the LP 700-4's specific details and specs: "Best way to describe my new whip—Yeeaeaaalmp."

The first video for Watch the Throne is also among the best clips 'Ye and Jay ever produced, together and solo. Matching the casual opulence detailed on the album, the instant-classic video features the Throne hollowing out a Maybach 57 then rebuilding and customizing it into a $350,000, flame-spitting go kart.

Basically, two of the game's richest rappers destroyed a car most would kill to have, just to do doughnuts in a lot with racially ambiguous models and Aziz Ansari riding shotgun. Why, you ask? Because they could.

This is without a doubt Kanye West's definitive car moment, arguably the most definitive moment of his career. As immortalized in "Through the Wire," on October 23, 2002, Mr. West endured a near-fatal accident while driving in a rented Lexus in California. He received extensive facial reconstructive surgery "in the same hospital where Biggie Smalls died" and had his jaw wired shut for the following weeks.

The near-death experience resulted in Kanye expressing his feelings about the event on his breakthrough single, recorded with his jaw still wired shut. The emotional track served as the de facto introduction to Kanye the rapper, prompting both his peers and record execs to finally consider him as something more than a "producer-rapper." The rest is history.