Kanye West’s Human Design: Projector OR Manifestor
My reading of Kanye West’s Human Design chart started with the book his mother, the late Dr. Donda West, wrote called “Raising Kanye.” As a single mother, I hope even to be half the mother Dr. West was. She wrote with love yet firmness. She spoke of how proud she was.
She chose Kanye every single day.
To complement Kanye’s Human Design reading, DeShaun and I watched Jeen-Yuhs, a Netflix documentary on Kanye created by Coodie. We also binge-relistened to some of Kanye’s albums (Dropout and Late Registration went on repeat).
But let’s dive into his chart.
⚠️ Trigger warning: A mother almost lost her son in a car accident.
❗️There is no confirmed public record of Kanye’s birth time, so I went with the consistent parts of his chart.
Kanye West is a Projector OR Manifestor type.
Kanye’s birth date is made up of Projectors, with a small window where he could’ve been a Manifestor.
In both instances, he has the channel of surrender (44-26), which is a projected channel. If you have this channel in your chart, it doesn’t matter what your type is. You have to be “invited” to work that energy. More on this in the next part.
Projectors are told to “wait for recognition/invitation” for opportunities to open up.
Kanye knocked on every door, dialed every number, and made whatever connections he could to make people recognize him.
All he needed was one person.
A clip from Jeen-Yuhs that stood out to me is when he walked around Roc-A-Fella’s building, into offices, and played his tracks uninvited. The audience looked uncomfortable and didn’t respond to him, barely giving him a twitch in their facial expressions. People came and went, but no one acknowledged that he was standing there.
Manifestors have a closed, pushing aura. They make impactful statements that can move mountains.
Projectors have a sharp, piercing aura. They stare into your core but require an invitation for the “impact” to happen. Otherwise, people get mad because who wouldn’t get mad when someone tries to pierce their boundary without an invitation?
If I were to guess Kanye’s type, I’d lean towards Projector because of how people walked by him. People would’ve felt threatened when trying to push a Manifestor on paper, but Projectors can become invisible when uninvited.
He was also rejected by Sony, Def Jam, Arista, and Capital, but he kept knocking on doors anyway.
It’s wild to watch a Projector reach success (Projector signature) while doing this much. It goes against what the “wait” part of their strategy seems to be about. For Kanye, he was going to put his backpack on and walk into every building until invitations came.
Kanye’s Channel of Surrender (26-44)
Kanye has The Channel of Surrender (26-44), the only channel that stretches the ego’s (willpower, material world, commitment) hand to the splenic (instinct, survival) center. Simplified, this is “do or die.”
The core of this channel is transmitting messages to your community. The community repays by creating opportunities.
The channel of surrender is persuasive. People with this channel are incredible marketers (or manipulators). He had to market himself by relentlessly pursuing anyone who would give him a chance.
When someone with this channel, regardless of type, isn’t permitted to speak, doors get slammed in their face.
A foot in the door isn’t enough. Kanye struggled to be taken seriously as a rapper. Channel of surrender people need to sell themselves.
When Rhymefest in Roc-A-Fella praised Kanye as the best “producer-rapper,” Kanye was offended. He felt his accomplishments were diminished by being called a “producer-rapper” instead of just a “rapper.” He compared it to women being called a “female rapper” instead of just “rapper.”
This can be a destructive channel. The splenic center is concerned with keeping you (and your people) alive to the point that it’s willing to break things to create something new, something better.
They need a community to back them up so momentum can build.
Gate 48: Depth + Fear of Inadequacy
Human design has three centers of fear: the splenic center, the ajna center, and the solar plexus (emotional) center.
The splenic center is primal fear, life or death.
Kanye West has gate 48, which deals with the fear of inadequacy. If you’re not good enough, do you belly up and submit?
The word inadequacy is misleading because it implies a mental “I’m not good enough.” Imagine climbing a mountain. You’re not close to the top but can’t safely get to the bottom. Are you adequate to keep going, or do you give up?
“I’m not good enough to go back to school” is mental anxiety that belongs to the ajna. There’s no immediate health-concerning consequence. This is not the type of inadequacy this gate talks about.
On October 23rd, 2002, Kanye got into a car accident because he fell asleep at the wheel.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but we’ll call you when we get more information. I’m trying to cut your son out of his car!”
“But where is he?” I asked. “Where’s my son? Where exactly is he right now?”
[...] He said he had to hang up. Kanye was still pinned in the car.
-Raising Kanye, Dr. Donda West
In Jeen-Yuhs, Coodie said that Kanye’s career finally gathered momentum, but he lost it in the accident.
His jaw was wired shut.
The question posed by gate 48 is: what is more important- the survival of your career or your health?
For Kanye, that was never a question. He was determined to rap. He refused to lose his progress. The fear of inadequacy was a push, not a deterrent.
His defined ego center answered. He just signed a contract with Roc-A-Fella; he had a promise to himself and his mother, and he wasn’t willing (ego = center of willpower) to let it go.
Once defined ego center people say yes, they’re unstoppable. Just get out of their way.
It wasn't long before Kanye was back at work—right in the W Hotel. That's where "Through the Wire" was written. He'd started it even before he left the hospital, thinking of the lyrics and rapping them through jaws wired shut.
-Raising Kanye, Dr. Donda West
Here’s a video of Pharrell listening to part of “Through the Wire” and recognizing Kanye as one of his “favorite artists.” This was before Kanye had an album out and was still struggling to get Roc-A-Fella to release one. Pharrell also said, “You’re gonna make it, and when you make it, keep the same perspective.”
That’s the recognition Kanye needed.
Gate 48 is also the gate of depth. Kanye has a need to understand the totality of his craft. His mother wrote that Kanye saved up money to buy his first keyboard. He realized that if he wanted to rap, he needed beats. So he made beats.
If we look at the two meanings of 48: depth and fear of inadequacy, we see they work together. If he’s willing to keep going, his depth of knowledge carries him towards “safety.”
Gate 32: Continuity + Fear of Failure
Kanye has the “fear of failure,” but this is based on the splenic center (fear related to survival.)
Without the context of the splenic center, the fear of failure can seem like a mental loop of what if I fail, what if I can’t do this? what if? what if? That’s the realm of the ajna center.
Gate 32 is the fear of being unable to provide for yourself and your family. Without basic human needs met, people die. The energy of this gate is, "I have to do this to stay alive, but I may fail and die.” It’s not a fear that goes away. Fear gates are permanent, just like any other gate. But authority comes into play because authority tells you when to move and when to stay.
Kanye famously spoke on Hurricane Katrina’s impact (though his GWB comment often overshadows it):
Dr. Donda West wrote about how proud she was that Kanye “spoke the truth” even though she was scared that he would meet the same fate as Eartha Kitt.
Kanye flew to Houston with his parents (his father’s name is Ray West). He didn’t allow any cameras to follow him because “I’m doing this as a regular citizen, not a celebrity.”
“What do the people need most?” Kanye asked.
“I can’t do as much as I would like to, but I can do something. I want to talk to the victims myself and ask them what they need.”
- Kanye West arriving at Houston
This is what “fear of failure” means. If you fail, you/people die.
Gate 32 is also the gate of continuity. It’s centers around adaptability. When someone with this gate sees something is going on, they quickly “adapt” to the situation so they can “continue” doing what needs to be done. Remember, the splenic center is primal and concerned about health/survival. It’s like a pride of lions moving because that’s where the herd went.
Instinctually, these are people who are “quick on their feet.” But these decisions are on the spot, in the moment. It’s not asking whether that decision is sustainable long-term. The statement of this gate is, “I have to do this thing, right now, because if I don’t, there will be no opportunity for sustainability in the future.”
Open G Center OR Channel of Inspiration (8-1)
The G center is the center of love, direction, and identity.
This is a hot topic in Human Design. People come to the system wanting to be told who they are and where they’re headed.
People with the defined G center say, “I’m supposed to have a fixed identity, but I don’t even know what that is!”
People with the undefined G center say, “Am I supposed to go through my life not knowing myself?”
People with the open G center say, “What is an identity even supposed to look like?”
Identity crisis spans across every definition of G center.
Kanye has a completely open G center or a small window where he could have the channel of inspiration (8-1) defining his G center.
Open centers are places where you have no reference of what something means. There’s a difference between an undefined center and an open center.
Undefined centers have gates that could be activated.
Open centers have no gates to activate.
Someone with an undefined center is prone to conditioning from someone with that center defined. But since they have gates in that center, they have a consistent way of navigating that conditioning.
People with open centers do not. It’s different every time.
In January 2024, I spoke in Pilar Lesko’s Eden membership. Someone with an open G center made a major impact on me when she said that she felt God spoke to her through her G center. In my five years of chart reading, I have never had someone with an open, undefined, or even defined G center speak so clearly about how they experienced their identity.
Then there’s Kanye, speaking on the identities he’s been labeled with:
“I miss the old Kanye, straight from the ‘Go Kanye
Chop up the soul Kanye, set on his goals Kanye
I hate the new Kanye, the bad mood Kanye
The always rude Kanye, spaz in the news Kanye
I miss the sweet Kanye, chop up the beats Kanye
I gotta to say at that time I’d like to meet Kanye
See I invented Kanye, it wasn’t any Kanyes
And now I look and look around and there’s so many Kanyes
I used to love Kanye, I used to love Kanye
I even had the pink polo, I thought I was Kanye
What if Kanye made a song about Kanye
Called “I Miss The Old Kanye, “ man that would be so Kanye
That’s all it was Kanye, we still love Kanye
And I love you like Kanye loves Kanye”
It’s a misconception that people with open/undefined G centers have “no” identity. Instead, they experience identity through what other people believe them to be (or project on them to be) or have selections of revolving identities to pull from.
There is a small window where Kanye could’ve had the channel of inspiration (8-1), which is the ability to inspire others without meaning to. This channel jokes that you don’t feel inspired and don’t inspire yourself, but others are inspired.
I hear, “But I don’t think I’m special or inspiring!” That’s nice. That’s for other people to judge, not you 😬
His specific breakdown of this channel speaks of someone “who inspires through service.”
Regardless of the open or defined G center, his identity has strong roots in his representation of God. You hear and feel it in his lyrics.
If open, read it as “projecting God through his identity.”
If defined, read it as “a form of his identity includes being in service to God.”
They sound the same, but those two expressions have a nuanced difference.
And that’s Kanye
“I spit it through the wire, man
It's too much stuff on my heart right now, man
I'll gladly risk it all right now
It's a life or death situation, man
Y'all don't really understand how I feel right now, man.”
- Through the Wire, Kanye West
All Human Design charts in this post were generated using our chart generator. ✨
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