Kanye West is not pissed; he's just in problem-solving mode. Right now, the problem is production costs. "I want to be the No. 1 artist," he says to a member of his crew. "How am I gonna do that with muthafuckin' bad lighting?"

It's a different backstage scene from the one that has haunted West since September, when a secretly taped tirade he threw at MTV's Video Music Awards lit up YouTube and deepened his rep as a sour-grapes hothead. In his dressing room at Boston's TD Banknorth Garden arena, West forgoes scenery chewing for a bag of chips -- fuel for tonight's show. He's topping an all-star lineup at Monster Jam, a radio station event that, the night after the Red Sox win the World Series, brings 17,000 fans to a fever pitch without a single note of "Sweet Caroline."

Not that West would be above biting that Neil Diamond hit. On Graduation, the 30-year-old producer turned rapper has sampled nearly a dozen superstar and indie-chic acts -- including Elton John, Michael Jackson, kraut rockers Can, and French disco giants Daft Punk -- and spliced them into one of the year's best-selling albums, a lean, genre-leveling tour de force of hard beats and whopping pop hooks. It's a calculated departure from West's more sprawling The College Dropout (2004) and Late Registration (2005), a blatant move to go mass.

And it seems to have worked. West came out on the winning end of his release-date showdown with 50 Cent when Graduation debuted at the top of Billboard's pop chart with sales of 957,000. That same week, Graduation's first three singles -- "Can't Tell Me Nothing," "Stronger," and "Good Life" -- were dominating the Hot 100, with "Stronger," West's muscular remake of Daft Punk's 2001 "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," in the peak position (see sidebar on page 65). An international smash, "Stronger" is the triumph West hopes will help fulfill his excruciatingly earnest dream to be "the No. 1 artist." The pouty flip side of that yearning gets exposed every time he is denied another career-validating moment on TV. His fantasy of pop glory, it seems, and his underdog's craving for respect won't be complete until he hoists an Album of the Year Grammy in front of his peers and a viewing audience of millions. He has lost in that category twice.

But even less coveted prizes have eluded him. At the 2006 MTV Europe Music Awards, West's ambitious "Touch the Sky" video lost top honors to a scruffy clip for Justice Vs Simian's "We Are Your Friends." In reaction, West drifted onto the stage and began his now infamous "Oh, hell no" rant -- a public embarrassment he partly exorcised by parodying it this past September on Saturday Night Live.

A little too late, it turned out. Three weeks earlier, his backstage outburst at the VMAs (ten F-bombs in a minute and eight seconds) may have irreversibly damaged his relationship with the network. It was motivated, he says, not by an ongoing denial of VMA love but by MTV's decision to relegate his on-air performance to a suite far removed from the show's main stage.

Getting his fix of high fashion and fine art on Boston's Newbury Street the day of Monster Jam, the "Louis Vuitton don" is anything but crazed -- even though we first meet at the Martin Lawrence Gallery. In fact, he's unaffected enough that virtually no one on the sidewalk recognizes him, despite the five-strong posse and trailing black Suburban. He's perusing some of his favorite artists today -- Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren, Andy Warhol, and Takashi Murakami, the Japanese visionary who did Graduation's cover.