Kanye West: Graduation from what exactly? Narcissist to full-blown egomaniac?
By all accounts, Sunday night in Las Vegas was one long car crash of uncomfortable situations and awkward exchanges. God damn it, I wish I'd been at the MTV Video Music Awards!
Aside from Kid Rock trying to get Tommy Lee in a headlock and host Sarah Silverman trying to get a positive reaction from her audience, there was Britney. Poor Britney, with her slightly rotund tummy (how dare she) and her zombie-like performance. The critics were quick to pile on her spectacularly unspectacular performance, and it soon became the main talking point of the event.
But while Spears has been getting it from all sides, to my mind it's Kanye West who's emerged as the night's true prat. The self-confessed "insecuuur" rapper lost his head yet again, apparently over not being asked to open the ceremony on Sunday evening. Witnesses to Spears' performance might be inclined to agree that he would have been a better choice, but he was also apparently infuriated at not having won anything on the night. "That's two years in a row, man," he said. Give a black man a chance. I'm trying hard, man. I have the... No 1 record man."
At first look it's just another case of Kanye West's massive ego running amok, tinged with paranoia and self-pity. But it's a statement that's especially infuriating given the last time he made such a well-documented remark about race it was a brave and admirable move.
The idea that West suffers from moments of self-doubt will be familiar to fans of his music. His raps often reflect a psyche not unlike a swinging pendulum: his insecurities, self-doubt, guilt and questions of religious morality alternate with boasts about how many albums he's sold and how much he's spent. It's the creative way in which he projects these two sides that have always kept me interested in what he's got to say. But his behaviour recently has become a little like bearing witness to the drunkest person at the party, demanding attention and apparently impossible to embarrass.
On his latest album Graduation, West displays his contradictory traits. "By himself he's so impressed," he says on Good Morning, before going on to list a catalogue of his own failings. But then comes the savagely paranoid line "you say he get on your fucking nerves, you hope that he gets what he deserves" halfway through the laid-back I Wonder, four songs in, and it's begins to sound as if the internal dialogue in West's head is turning into a row.
Most critics have given Graduation (released on Monday and on its way past 50 Cent to number one) the thumbs-up, the general consensus being that it's a "grower". I have to say that, several listens in, my original opinion of "pah" still remains.
The content of Graduation matched with his recent MTV outburst show a man who suffers an almost chronic need to win the approval of others, and he may well be the first person to suspect he's in danger of losing his midas touch.
"If they hate then let them hate and watch the money pile up," he raps on forthcoming single Good Life. If you're thinking you've heard these words before, they're from 50 Cent's In Da Club. Recycling lyrics from 50 Cent? Now that's desperate.
