West, the restless bourgeois-creative, wanted to "see how far he could expand" hip hop, he told the New York Times. West spent a year and $2 million on his sophomore album, hiring an orchestra and working with the composer Jon Brion, who had never worked with a rapper before. He would put out music by John Legend, Big Sean, Common, Pusha-T and more. Shortly after the album was released, West founded his record label, GOOD music - an acronym for Getting Out Our Dreams - in conjunction with Sony BMG. 2 on the Billboard Hot 200 chart, and West received 10 Grammy nominations, winning three awards including Best Rap Song for "Jesus Walks" and Best Rap Album. On the single "Jesus Walks" he rapped, "They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus/That means guns, sex, lies, videotapes/But if I talk about God, my record won't get played." The College Dropout peaked at No. Titled The College Dropout, it broke the gangsta-rap mold, with themes including consumerism (he was critical of it back then), racism, higher education and his religious beliefs. The album was finally released in February 2004 - it sold 2.6 million copies and made West a star. In response, West decided to make it better: he revised and rewrote songs and refined the production, adding stronger drums, gospel choirs and strings (he paid for orchestras out of his own pocket). But once the album was complete, it was leaked online. He then wrote much of the rest of his debut album while recuperating in L.A. He wrote and recorded a song about the experience, "Through the Wire," with his jaw still wired shut following reconstructive surgery. That October, as West was driving home from a recording session in a California studio, he was involved in a head-on car collision that left him with a shattered jaw. With reluctance, Damon Dash signed West to Roc-A-Fella in 2002, but he did so mostly to retain him as a producer. "I'd leave meetings crying all the time," he recalled. I didn't see how it could work." West got a similar response from other labels. Then there's Kanye, who to my knowledge has never hustled a day in his life. He pleaded with Roc-A-Fella records to let him rap, but as co-founder Jay-Z later told Time magazine, "We all grew up street guys who had to do whatever we had to do to get by. He wanted to be the headline act but initially struggled to be taken seriously as a rapper. But West was not content to be a backroom player.