Kanye West halted his own comeback show to complain about the “corny” lighting on the opening night of his new world tour.
The controversial 48-year-old rapper and producer released his long-delayed album Bully last week to critical indifference.
West’s tour began with a performance Wednesday at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, his first U.S. concert since 2021, but he was apparently unhappy with the lighting design.
In fan-shot footage of the show, he can be heard repeatedly halting the song “Good Life” to complain.
“I don’t like when the lights move like that,” he says. “It’s disco s***, it don’t go with the stage.” After apologizing to the audience, he resumes the song before stopping it again. “Stop! Stop! You see that? Don’t do that. That s***’s corny.”
Another false start follows, with an increasingly frustrated West asking: “Is this like an SNL skit or something? Stop doing the vibrating Vegas lights, bro! We went over this in rehearsal.”
West’s return to the stage comes just a few months after he took out a full page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal to apologize for years of offensive outbursts and antisemitic remarks.
Critics in attendance at the concert noted that he did not apologize further or address the controversy from the stage, with The Hollywood Reporter noting that he was “barely addressing the crowd at all.”
The show did receive praise for the production and set design, which saw West performing from the surface of a spherical “Planet Earth” in the center of the stadium, but the performance itself was found lacking. A reviewer from Pitchfork noted that West repeated many of the songs from his new album, but let some play out as instrumentals after missing “long stretches of lines.”
West is scheduled to play dates around the world over the next few months, before arriving in London to headline all three nights of Wireless Festival in July.
That booking has been heaving criticized by Jewish leaders, who have pointed out that — in addition to repeatedly making antisemitic statements — West has described himself as a Nazi, released a song called “Heil Hitler,” sold T-shirts emblazoned with swastikas, and spent time with white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
Rabbi Herschel Gluck, president of Shomrim, Stamford Hill, and chair of the Arab-Jewish Forum, told The Independent that the rapper’s scheduled appearance in the U.K. was “deeply, deeply troubling.”
“He's a highly gifted and talented person, and therefore it is very sad that he hasn't managed to overcome his antisemitic attitudes, even though he's tried a number of times, but sadly he hasn't succeeded yet,” said Rabbi Gluck.
“Until he succeeds, I think it's highly inappropriate that he should appear at public events in the U.K., because at present there is a strong possibility that he will be seen as a de-stabilizing figure who will exacerbate antisemitic tensions in the country, sadly.”
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