In 2009, when Taylor Swift walked out on stage to accept the VMA Award for Best Video, she was interrupted by a notably intoxicated Kanye West. He wasted no time expressing his opinion about Swift’s success when he pointed in the crowd at Beyonce and insisted that it was her who should have won the award, not Swift.
Following the incident, numerous articles, humorous parody videos, and anti-West statements followed. West apologized; however, it did not seem to impact the chaos his behavior had caused. He was labelled “arrogant” and “rude.” However, it is not a secret that West suffered these labels long before his VMA interruption.
West has long boasted that he is the best hip hop artist around. He has even went so far as to compare himself to Jesus Christ more than once. His personality type is one that is either loved or hated.
People commonly focus on the negative acts of a person and allow it to blind them to the positive, and vice versa. At this year’s VMA’s, the rapper made another show of protest by walking off the stage when Beck appeared to accept his award for album of the year. Once again, he stated that Beyonce deserved the award more, which leaves some people to wonder if he is biased toward Beyonce or just displaying outlandish behavior.
West does not only interrupt other people’s acceptances, but has on more than one occasion given his own award away to people he thought deserved it more. In 2008, he gave his award of Best Hip Hop Artist of the Year to Lil Wayne, stating, “I want to give this award to Wayne for this year. If this was last year, it would be my award, this year it’s Wayne’s award, we’ll see what happens next year.”
His award for best video was given to Big Boi & UGK. At the 50th Grammy Award’s, West won Album of the Year. On stage, he proclaimed that both Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson deserved to win just as much as he did. West does not only interrupt other people’s glory, but he is also happy to share his own among those who he feels deserves it. In fact, he has stated that he doesn’t keep any of the awards he wins, and actually has no idea where they end up when he doesn’t give them to someone else.
West may be arrogant, and he may be rude at times, but he is also a man who is not afraid to speak his mind. Not everyone agrees with his decision to interrupt Swift or to walk off the stage when Beck was presented with his award. In fact, future protests should take place off stage.
It is no secret that Kanye West is arrogant, he has rude tendencies, and his blatant honesty is not a fan favorite. However, some would agree that having one honest voice in the music industry is valuable, especially when the voice belongs to a powerful name.
Opinion by Atreyu Addams
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Photo by NRK P3 – Flickr License