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Kanye West tires himself out shouting, goes home

By | Published on Monday 21 November 2016

Kanye West

Hey, are you all looking forward to Kanye West running against Donald Trump for the US presidency in 2020? Because he’s still talking about running for president in four years time. In fact, he’s been inspired by Trump’s campaign model. “[It’s] the same model I’m gonna take in 2020”, he says.

He’s been showing off what sort of president he might be with his first shows since the US presidential election. And they’ve certainly been eventful, with West first coming out in favour of Donald Trump, then ranting against everyone from Jay-Z to Hillary Clinton, and finally cancelling his remaining US tour dates.

In one of his traditional long rambles at the first show back after a two week break, West told a crowd in San Jose: “I told y’all I didn’t vote, right? But if I would’ve voted, I would’ve voted on Trump”.

Unsurprisingly, there were no shortage of boos to this statement. Though I think West won them back round by going on to say that “black people [should] stop focusing on racism” and that Trump’s way of speaking at his political rallies was “very futuristic”.

“Sometimes things that you might think are bad need to happen, in order for change to fucking happen”, West went on. “Sometimes you might have to not get your way to really understand what to do in the future, to be able to get your way”.

The main thing West seems to have drawn from Trump’s style of oration is barely making sense half of the time. And if that’s what he was going for, he’d really nailed it by Saturday in Sacramento. Mid-way through his third song, he launched into a ten minute rant in which he took aim at radio, MTV, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Drake, DJ Khaled, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Google, Facebook, Shia Leboeuf and Q-Tip.

The general jist of the speech was that everyone is playing a political game, and if we just threw off these shackles we could live in a utopia where everyone is considered equal.

Well, I think that’s what he was saying, anyway. In his stream of consciousness speech he blurted out things like this:

“A lot of people here felt like they lost. You know why? Because y’all been lied to. Hulu lied to you. Facebook lied to you. Radio lied to you. Radio, fuck you!”

“Oh yeah, I’m on my Trump shit tonight”.

“I know there’s gonna be a lot of conversations after tonight. Khaled, I love you. I know you’ve got killers in Miami, please do not send them at my head. I just wanna have a conversation about how we playing radio’s game”.

“Obama couldn’t make America great, because he couldn’t be him to be who he was … He had to be perfect. But being perfect don’t always change shit. So when I talk about MTV, let me explain something. I was hurt”.

“Fuck winning! Fuck looking cool. Fuck looking cool. Fuck being cool. Fuck all that, bruh. I’ve been sitting here to give you all my truth, even at the risk of my own life”.

“Jay-Z, call me bruh. You still ain’t called me. Jay-Z, call me. Hey, Jay-Z, I know you got killers, please don’t send them at my head. Just call me. Talk to me like a man. I’m not trying to be The Man, I just am a man”.

“It’s a new world, Hillary Clinton. It’s a new world. Feelings matter. Cos guess what, everyone in Middle America felt a way, and they showed you how they felt. Feelings matter, bruh. It’s a new world. It’s a new world, Barack. It’s a new world, Jay-Z. Hey, don’t send killers at my head, bruh. This ain’t the Malcolm X movie. We growing from that moment. Let Ye be Ye”.

“If you keep following old models, your ass is gonna get Hillary Clintoned”.

“Do I got the vision, Mark Zuckerberg? Was I wrong when I said I was $53 million in debt and you didn’t call me? Was you wrong? You ate dinner. You asked my friend Anthony Schiller to have dinner with me. I told you about Kanda. You said you would help. And you didn’t. Then you went to look for aliens”.

At the end of all that he stormed off stage. Which wasn’t as easy as it sounds, because the stage for West’s current tour is suspended on a crane above the audience. So he had to wait for it to be slowly carried back and placed down on the main stage. But he filled the time by tying his shoe.

Before dropping the mic, he concluded the evening’s 30 minute, music-lite performance by saying: “Right now, press get ready to write your passive aggressive, LeBron James, racist comments – Season 4 racist comments. Get ready to have a field day, press. Get ready! Get ready! Cos the show’s over”.

A show in LA, which had been rescheduled from earlier in the month, was then cancelled last night. And all of the rapper’s remaining US dates have now reportedly been called off too. No word yet on next year’s European dates.



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