The sounds of gunfire cut through the song, then West fell to the stage floor, writhing in an over-the-top display of pain. Onstage, he likened the emotional impact of receiving bad news, in his song “Bad News,” with the violent act of being gunned down. In pure Kanye fashion, though, these raw moments were matched by the melodrama we’ve come to expect from a man who’s showing his line at New York Fashion Week one moment, posing for the paparazzi with his Kardashian bride the next (and all in the wake of his VMAs announcement of a presidential bid). The cast of men dispersed into the crowd, roaming the aisles as if human embodiments of West’s restlessness.
The glowing white lights above turned red, reflecting his increasingly impassioned delivery.
Young Jeezy and Kid Cudi joined him onstage at intervals (as they did on the album), bolstering West’s confidence as he embarked on songs that likely brought back times he’d rather forget.īy “Love Lockdown” and “Paranoid,” at least 60 shirtless men - all of color, all rubbed down in white powder - stood behind West on a stage-set of stairs. The performer gradually became more animated with each number, which corresponded with the album’s tonal shifts. At the Bowl, however, West’s reservations rendered him uncharacteristically endearing. The artist’s demeanor was somber in contrast to his recent frenetic set at the FYF Festival or his made-for-social-media ramble onstage at the MTV Video Music Awards. He moved carefully from number to number, pouring himself into songs such as “Welcome to Heartbreak” as women in white, ghostly shrouds orbited the stage in a slow march that resembled a sort of pilgrimage. Usually a man of many words, West said relatively few as he concentrated on performing the album in its entirety. Much like the rapper himself, the production was a mix of attention-grabbing bombast and biting realism, filled with austere beauty and high school melodrama.
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