Last year, stand-up Comic Joe Rogan did a Comedy Central special in Colorado entitled "Rocky Mountain High." One of the funnier bits revolved around how humans would have to explain who the most influential people on the planet are to Alien invaders. His point became clear—it's an embarrassment that the two most famous individuals are a porn star, Kim Khardasian and a narcissistic musician, Kanye West. Nuff Said, Right? Wrong, the reputation of Kanye West keeps going down harder and faster than Bill Cosby's victims. Yes, that is also a slap at both Kanye and Bill...
June 24th, 2016. Kanye holds a screening for the music video "Famous" to a sold out, half crowd at "The Forum" in Los Angeles. There are two portions of this equation that are mildly aggravating—the performance and the screening. Kanye called for people to be there and in their seats at 7:00 p.m. sharp with a tweet earlier that day. No surprise, most people arrived at 7:30 and struggled getting to their seats for a solid half hour (including myself). Here's how it went down...
Kanye sits in a booth above the pit of the crowd with all of the techs, finally starting the video at 8:00 p.m. The video itself revolves around showing many famous/infamous public figures nude, in bed, presumably after having sex with one another. The filming style is straight out of The Blair Witch Project, leaving a creepy taste in your mouth knowing that you paid to watch people sleep. The characters include; Donald Trump, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Ray J, Caitlyn Jenner, George W. Bush (yes, the man Kanye said hated black people), Anna Winter, Taylor Swift, Amber Rose, and topping it off with Bill Cosby. The wax figurines look life like as they're detailed perfectly. The track plays for about two minutes, then cuts away for five extra minutes showing close-ups of each nude person while they're snoring loudly. The video ends and he (Kanye) asks the crowd if they wanted to play it back. Reluctantly sitting there with my girlfriend and bud, we keep silent while the rest of the crowd screams for no reason. Another 15 minutes wasted watching people sleep, Kanye proceeds to plug in his phone (yes, you could hear the man unplug his computer and reconnect to his phone) and play one track from "TLOP", "Panda" by Desiinger, and 2 Chainz. That was it. A two-hour gathering to watch a blooper from a homemade orgy, hear ridiculously loud bass added to any radio stations Top 40, and then to watch dumb fans spend $30 on a T-Shirt that literally said "Famous Video - The Forum Kanye West". Really? I am not even mentioning the uber ride to downtown which was an hour itself, and then the hour ride back.
To put this all in perspective as to why a collective hate should be brewing, Kanye West convinced young fans to drive out of their way and pay money for something you could stream on YouTube and skip the rest. Being realistic, most of the people that showed up were youthful kids wearing Kanye apparel or barely any clothes at all. The issue here is the kids barely have any to no money and they just shelled out $50 to $100 for tickets assuming they'd see a Kanye performance, but got ripped. It's asinine to think he can just get away with highway robbery like this but Kanye managed to hold another release of the video back in New York a month prior. Wake up, people, we are glorifying a man who manages to film a video of nude celebrities backed by a song insulting some of them, and were willing to allow our friends, kids, parents to shell out hard-earned money for that. We are just as stupid as Kanye. Before "Yeezus" and Kanye's downward spiral of insecurity, he was a promising artist who delivered on every album he made. Now, he's a marketing wiz and were are playing right into his ploy. Fuck Kanye West, and save your hard-earned money, America. He even wrote, "I miss the old Kanye." Yeah, we miss the Kanye who didn't publicly endorse and back a well-known rapist (cough ***Bill Cosby*** cough cough). To make matters worse, his response toward this "filmed" after the video release was, "Sue Me." Although I doubt there's anything anyone could do, I'd really enjoy watching Kanye be sued or go to court. Can someone just claim he stole some tracks from them just to make a stir? Till then, Listen to Kendrick, 'least he's respectable.
