Kanye West’s Insane Week
Bonnaroo
If there’s one group of fans you don’t want to piss off, it’s the fans who have just spent hours waiting for you in 100 degree heat, grinding up against coked out frat bros and unwashed croc wearers.
In 2008, Kanye West managed to earn the ire of an entire Bonnaroo audience when he showed up hours late to his own show, only to perform an unenthusiastic and clearly abbreviated set. This past weekend West returned to Manchester, Tennessee, to find port-a-potties and fences sprayed with “Fuck Kanye” and “#Gay Fish.” The good news: he got through his headlining act. The bad news: kinda. Kanye repeatedly stopped songs halfway through the opening hook to deliver speeches and start impromptu chants. At one point, he interrogated the audience with cries of “where the press at?” which even the thousands of potheads in the crowd probably thought was a bit on the paranoid side.
In one of the most misguided speeches of the night, he proclaimed, “I ain't going after nobody on the radio. I'm goin' after Shakespeare. Walt Disney. Mozart. Henry Ford. Howard Hughes. David Stern. Elon Musk. You can only achieve as high as your dreams.” He then went on to describe himself as “humble,” leading us to believe that the rapper could use both a dictionary and a watch (and maybe a biography of Walt Disney?).
North West’s Diamonds
People are (gasp!) criticizing Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s parenting techniques. After a crop of recent pictures showed 1-year-old baby North West rocking some serious diamond studs, the kontroversial duo faced a barrage of backlash. Apparently, the public (aka some people on Twitter) believes that 1 is too young for pierced ears. Of course, they could also just resent the fact that someone who can’t wipe themselves after they go to the bathroom is sporting the equivalent of a Goldman Sachs starter salary in their adorable earlobes. We’re with Kanye on this one; while this story (and this marriage?) might only last a couple of news cycles, diamonds last forever.
Chappelle’s First Time Story
Dave Chappelle is coming out of hibernation to gift Radio City Music Hall with his comedic genius for the first time in over a decade. Along the way, he’s dropping tiny magic bombs of funny on the late night circuit, including the absolutely magnificent story of his first Kanye encounter. According to Chappelle, the first time he met Kanye was when he came on as a Chappelle Show musical guest in 2003. This was before all the hype and critical acclaim, back when Kim Kardashian was still Paris Hilton’s assistant, and fish sticks were still just a poor man’s chicken nuggets. Chappelle explains how West took an epic call in the editing room, saying, “‘Hello? No, I can’t. Because I’m at the edit for the Dave Chappelle Show, watching sketches that no one’s seen before.’” West then paused for a moment before declaring, “‘Cause my life is dope and I do dope s–t,’” before hanging up the phone. Chappelle’s full recollection of this early encounter is well worth a watch.
The Instagram Wedding Photo
For Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, pulling off the perfect Instagram isn’t as simple as choosing between X-Pro II and Valencia. In Cannes this week, West regaled listeners with the tale of the Instagram liked ‘round the world (no, not that one), explaining that the snap wasn’t quite au natural (quelle horreur!). We’ll let Kanye explain just how it went down. “Let me tell you something about that kiss photo that my girl put up…this was pissing my girl off during the honeymoon, she was exhausted because we worked on the photo so much because Annie Leibovitz pulled out right before the wedding. I think that she was, like, scared of the idea of celebrity.” According to West, no Annie Leibovitz was no excuse for social media slackery: “We worked on that photo for, like, four days because the flowers were off-color.” The image quickly became the most-liked image on Instagram, a helpful reminder to teenage girls everywhere that with the right apps and editing techniques, Instagram really can make you popular.
Making Instagram Better
After chronicling the genesis of the Kimye wedding Instagram, Kanye truly hit his crazy stride, explaining how he asked Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom: "Why don't you let us redo Instagram? Now, you know, Instagram is nice. It's nice looking—I'm not knocking it. But in general, everyone spends all of their time looking at their screens or their phones. And just as a simple task, we could clean that up." Kanye West: God’s gift to Instagram and interviewers everywhere.
The Yeezus Tour
Entire discussion threads have been devoted to proving that Kanye’s current Yeezus tour, with its ominous sets and heavy masks, is directly inspired by Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1973 avant-garde film The Holy Mountain. Wednesday morning, West fulfilled an extremely niche group of Kanye conspiracy nerds’ collective wet dream, meeting with Jodorowsky and posing for some cute pics (did Kim collaborate on the filters?!) The director then tweeted, “The reunion with Kanye West was very pleasant. I saw an honest being, with a beautiful child-like soul. He puts on a big show. I read him his Tarot.” Kanye West gets his tarot cards read by a radical Chilean filmmaker is practically a fully formed SNL sketch. If only they had a diverse enough cast to perform it…
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