Reaction to Kanye West’s Outburst at the VMA’s

Since the goal of our website is to bring music that is unheard of to the mainstream audience, and most everyone – for better or worse – knows who Kanye West is, I was hesitant to voice my opinion on his recent outburst at MTV’s Video Music Awards on Sunday night.

However, being a (former) big Kanye West fan, I felt the need to voice my opinion on the subject anyways. After all, I don’t hate all the music that is in the mainstream. Some of it isn’t bad. However, a decent amount of artists (Soulja Boy, whoever those idiots are that have the Stanky Leg song, many other examples – feel free to list yours in the comments section) are setting their entire genres back light years. Instead of going on a rant about this right now, I am going to save that topic for a future post.

Getting back to the issue at hand, Kanye West has turned into one of the biggest idiots in the world. Possibly in the universe. Reminds me of the South Park episode that aired a few seasons back. If they remade that episode, I am sure that after this outburst Kanye would be the winner of the award.

For those of you that didn’t watch the show, don’t look at any entertainment articles online, and don’t have any communication with anyone who has a pulse, what happened was this:

Taylor Swift had won the award for Best Female Video for her song ‘You Belong With Me.’ As she took the stage to accept the award and began her acceptance speech, Kanye stormed the stage, and said something along the lines of:

“Excuse me Taylor, congrats on your award, but let me say that Beyonce had one of the best videos ever!”

The crowd, then finally coming to the realization that West is one of the most inconsiderate crybabies alive, pretty much booed West off the stage. Everytime after this that Kanye was nominated for an award of any kind – or had his name mentioned at all – the crowd erupted with boo’s. And rightfully so.

After his outburst, Swift was so shocked she couldn’t even finish her speech. Later, when Beyonce won Video of the Year for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)”, she said:

“I remember when I was 17 years old and I got nominated for an award with Destiny’s Child. I remember how excited I was. I want Taylor to come back out here.”

Taylor Swift took the stage, and finished the acceptance speech she had started more than an hour before.

As for my thoughts, I used to love Kanye West. He had originality in his rhymes, he didn’t just rap about money, killing people, weapons, and nice cars. He was confident – maybe too much for his own good at times. But over time it became clear that he was egotistical, self-centered, and – more recently – a huge baby.

What he did was not only unexcusable – one fan said that he ‘acted like a bully’ – but just downright rude. I could care less about what you think of Taylor Swift, even if it was someone horrendous up there winning the award – 3OH3! comes to mind – while I would have laughed, afterwards I would have still muttered to myself “Wow….what a complete joke.”

Katy Perry described the incident not unlike ‘kicking a kitten.’ Another fan,Oscar Velasquez, in an article with ran on Yahoo! and can be seen in full HERE said:

“I thought that was very disrespectful. He’s a great musician, but as a person, he’s not a role model or anything. And I think that not only are his fans disappointed but his mom would be disappointed. I don’t think she raised him like that, to be like that. I think he needs to remember that. I’m getting kind of tired of it. There comes to a point where you know what? That’s how you are, but you can change. And he needs to change.”

Jay Leno, in the debut of his new show on NBC, even asked Kanye if his mother would approve of his actions. He was greeted by silence while West mulled over the question, so he followed up by asking if West’s recently deceased mother would have given him a lecture after his actions. Kanye agreed that she would have let him hear about it. West then announced that he needs to take a break from everything to get his life back in order and regain a grip on his life. Yeah, no kidding buddy.

In short, Kanye West needs to grow up. Quickly. He can’t win every award. And if he continues to act like this, I would snub him on purpose. There are plenty of artists out there that handle themselves a lot better than he does, and never get a chance to win these major awards.

Remember when Metallica was snubbed a Heavy Metal Grammy in 1989 and lost to, of all people, Jethro Tull? That’s one of the biggest goofs in music history (since when is having a flute in your band considered heavy? ‘Aquaaaaaluuuuuung!!!’). They may have been upset in interviews afterwards (I don’t remember, to be honest) but they didn’t rush the stage and ruin the moment. This award didn’t even have anything to do with West, yet he still couldn’t keep himself out of the limelight.

Bottom line: As a former Kanye fan, and one that put up with his tantrums in the past, my patience has now run thin. He needs to concentrate on music and keep his mouth shut. Maybe then he won’t release another complete piece of garbage like 808′s and Heartbreak.

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