Kanye West gets a lot of flack from everyone. They say he's too arrogant. He's too unfiltered. He's too rude. He's too crazy. He's just too damn much in general.From his Twitter rants to his IRL outbursts, he's always been a loose canon in the music industry. Only now, he has successfully stationed himself as a permanent fixture in not only the world of hip-hop and gospel (!) music, but also in the worlds of fashion, television, and even technology (he hopes).He considers himself a Michael Jordan-type, a Pablo Picasso-esque, Steve Jobs kinda guy. He's extremely self-motivated and he's deeply in love with himself. And Kim Kardashian. He's confusing as hell.But remember the old Kanye I'm talking about the one fresh on the scene in 2004, releasing his debut album College Dropout. He started recording songs for the album in 1999, when he was 22, and has come a long way since then. But he's been confident since day one, rapping on one of his first tracks, "Last Call," "And I was almost famous, now everybody loves Kanye / I'm almost Raymond."He's turning 39 on June 8, and it got me thinking about all of the times he actually made sense. When his nonsensical statements were suddenly, piercingly accurate. So far, it appears that most of his best points and incisive lyrics come from his "old Kanye" days, as he would say.It's not really fair to judge someone at their worst, it's better to judge them at their Kanye best . Who knows, you just might have a thing or two in common with the old Ye.And now, here are the most important points to remember when you're trying to be your own Kanye best, better than all the Kanye rest.