From a profile of Kanye West in the new GQ, which isn’t online:

[In October 2002, d]riving from the recording studio at four in the morning, Kanye fell asleep at the wheel and had to be cut out of the car–an experience he described in his first hit single, “Through the Wire,” his rap supposedly recorded while his mouth was still wired shut. This story, told over and over, became a central part of the Kanye West mythology as his first album, The College Dropout, took off, and Kanye was quite open about the fact that it added a little rapper toughness to his allure–something somewhat lacking in a middle-class Chicago boy who had met some resistance making the leap from rap producer (most memorably on Jay-Z’s The Blueprint) to artist. What was rarely mentioned, until detailed this year in Raising Kanye, a book by his mother, Donda, was that West was not the only person injured that night–that, as he lost control, his Lexus swerved across the road into an oncoming vehicle. The other driver broke both legs. (Kanye points out that he did acknowledge that someone else was involved within the song itself–”I swear to God driver two wanna sue/I got lawyer for the case to keep what’s in my safe safe”–though he now concedes “the line was kinda bogus.”)

It gets better:

“I’m blessed I didn’t kill him,” he says today. When I ask him, just confirming, whether it was his fault, he says “Yeah.” He tells me at the time he was counseled to lie about it: “It was really my fiancee that influenced me not to do that, to be honest about it. She’s the one who told me you shouldn’t do that….” And with that, he abruptly changes flow, midsubject, to admire the way the late-afternoon Lower Manhattan light, as seen through his gauzelike blinds, plays on the nearby buildings. “Wow man, this really looks pretty through this,” he says. “I never really noticed this. It turns into a painting.”

Lots of great things here. West pulls a move that would put most people in jail. Then he lies about it. Then he blames it on his fiancee. (!) Then he changes the subject.