Today is a Kanye day in my house, as I’ve been watching old public appearances and performances of the Grammy Award winning artist on Youtube.com as well as listening to more than a few of his songs on my iTouch. For all of his zaniness, I totally respect Kanye’s artistry and appreciate his contributions to art, fashion, music and pop culture. Sure, he gets a lot of flack  for his emotional outbursts (some of it completely well deserved), but we all know people just like Kanye, prone to wearing their hearts on their sleeves and speaking exactly what’s on their minds- and we love them anyway.
And really, doesn’t Kanye just say what everyone has been thinking but knows better than to say aloud? Take, for example, his assertion that “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” spoken during a live benefit concert for the victims of Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. As images of the devastation flooded our airwaves, didn’t we all wonder why so little was being done to save people desperately trying to survive? Though his speech was disjointed and not as eloquent as his some of his lyrics, I totally felt where he was coming from and wondered why there was more outrage over his comment than there was over the impossibly slow relief efforts.
Kanye has been known to disrupt many an award show, interuppting acceptance speeches when he felt he should have been the recipient of a particular honor. He’s been doing it for years and when esteemed organizations such as Billboard, the Grammys, the VMA’s and the EMA’s continue to invite Kanye to their presentations, they know full well the risks and secretly count on Kanye making a spectacle of himself. When is the last time anyone cared about what happened at the VMA’s or anything else the sleepy, so-called music network produced? Kanye’s public outbursts bring in much publicity and his appearance at last year’s production failed to disappoint. When Taylor Swift beat out Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” for best female in a video category, I was flabbergasted. Sure, Swift’s syrupy sweet video for “You Belong With Me” was deserving of an award, but most certainly not for the same award “Single Ladies” was up for! I could be more than a litle biased, as I’m a REALLY BIG fan of Honey B, but I really think Kanye just said what most sane people were thinking, albeit rudely and ill-timed.
In honor of such a dynamic and unique individual, check out his most recent music video for the single “Coldest Winter”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6rjQ9VVLDI
