Did you download Kanye West’s new album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy? I did. And I’m really into it. Haven’t been able to go through it over and over again yet, but on first play it’s good. Some would even say it’s great. Even the critics. Almost unanimously. Which is an accomplishment in and of itself since, well, he’s not exactly Mr Popular with the media. At least not in that way.
So Mr West is swaggering hard right now. Sales are big. They’re projected to be very big. I gave an interview to the Toronto Star last week about how big they’d have to be for him to keep face. I was thinking he would, at the very least, have to be bigger than Drake’s debut at 450,000 copies. According to Kanye, he’s projected to come in at around 600,000. You know he watches that sh-t obsessively too. You know he CARES about the numbers.
And this is why, last night at a secret show in New York, Kanye, buoyed by the numbers, decided to talk sh-t from his ass again.
As I’ve said over and over again, how can you not love when Kanye talks sh-t from his ass? When Kanye talks sh-t, WE ALL WIN. Even Taylor Swift wins. You don’t think that incident with him jumping on her stage contributed a little to her success? Please.
Kanye is amazingness and joy. And Kanye last night was on full f-cking tilt – ragging on Swifty (again) and not ragging (I think) on George W Bush and totally sucking his own dick.
Here he shows some remorse. And then takes it right back.
"When you do things like what happened last year (with Taylor), it's disrespectful for everyone that's creative. It's a smack in the face to everyone who tries to do something real. If I wasn't drunk, I would have been onstage longer. Am I the only one who's not crazy here?"
Then he analyses his own vernacular, contradictorily:
“But the nuances of my words, because I am very particular with my words, and they're an emotion I felt at that time. It wasn't worded exactly right, but everybody came and said ... 'Oh my God, Kanye, I love you so much. I hated you until you said that. Yeah, now you're speaking for me, but now you said something that represents me.' And the whole time, I'm thinking in my mind, that's not exactly what I wanted to say, I was emotional. That was not exactly how I wanted to word it. But I rode it. I rode it. Just as Taylor never came to my defense in any interview and rode the wave and rode it and rode it. That's the way that I rode the wave with the Bush comment. It's not about popular opinion."
But my favourite part is when, like a true master diva, he turns to his band and instructs them to:
PLAY THE CHORDS LOWER
Don’t drown out the Kanye!!!
It’s at 2:50 – video below.
Love it so much. Right?
And please, chill your sh-t about what’s coming next. This is NOT a comparison but simply a train of thought. For some reason, when Kanye demands that they PLAY THE CHORDS LOWER, it reminded me of some of her live recordings – if you haven’t had the pleasure of a Nina Simone live recording, DO THIS NOW – and she’d do this all the time, she’d yell at her band all the time. Of course Nina Simone yelling is like sex. That voice...it was magic. But the yelling and scolding, these are some of my favourite moments of her performances. She was so... unfiltered. I can’t find a video of it that really captures what she could be like except at the end of the one here. After Young Gifted and Black. And she pretty much tells the audience she wasn’t appreciating that their applause was so muted. Nina was Drama for many, many reasons, including bipolar disorder, but she was drama all the same.
Also, Kanye gave me an excuse to write about Nina Simone. See? He’s a giver.
I like this recording better.
