He gave us a real performance, realer than anything else that happened last night. The most important thing is that we’re talking about him.
(It’s like when The Artist won Best Picture.) People who hate him will see an Ego Driven Maniac Who Is Very Angry Indeed. People who love him will say he’s rightly pointing out that the Best Album of the Year went to an album that is perfectly fine and totally unmemorable. People will seize on West’s rant after the show and make of it what they will. (I’ve got it ranked fifth, behind Odelay!, Sea Change, Mutations and Midnite Vultures.) Morning Phase wasn’t the best album of last year. This time he was upset that Beck’ Morning Phase won the Album of the Year over Beyonce. Then came the moment that will grab all the headlines this morning, when Kanye went onstage briefly and faked the world out, making us all think he was going for Taylor Swift round two. We all slept on 808s and Heartbreak when it came out, and we’re sleeping on “Only One.” This is a song that we will appreciate for a long time. The performance was heartfelt and earnest and unexpected, and I understand that it made some people uncomfortable. He was up there singing a song about his daughter, a song that’s really about his deceased mother, one that’s dripping with sentimentality. He got Paul McCartney to play keys on it. “Only One” is more-or-less a standard ballad. If there’s one thing we can know about West, though, is that he is always going to zag when we expect him to zig. Diehard Kanye fans might wonder why he’s swung back to the Auto-Tune harmonies he explored on 808s and Heartbreak. For fans who hated Yeezus, well, they’re probably still mad at him and waiting for him to speed up soul samples again like he did on College Dropout. I understand why some people are a little perplexed by “Only One.” It’s such a wild shift away from Yeezus that it’s jarring. (I’d argue the second best performance was West, Rihanna and Paul McCartney playing their new song, “FourFive Seconds.”) I know not everyone agrees with me on this.
It was the best performance of the night, by a mile.
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