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There are two things here for you. The first is Kanye apologizing on the Jay Leno show last night for the Taylor Swift incident. And whatever you think about the guy, especially right now, you can't tell me he's not really sorry. It's pretty obvious. That doesn't make it right what he did, but it does show that there is a human underneath the ego and impulsiveness. Just like any other person, he makes mistakes and unlike a lot of people, he owns up to them and quickly I might add. He just does it in bright lights.
As I say over and over again to people, it is fairly obvious that Kanye, for all his talents, has never learned a few key social skills. And that seems to be his blessing and his curse. It's the thing that makes him highly watchable, but highly cringe-worthy at the same time. And the cringe shouldn't be surprising, the man is an outlier. He's creatively above most of what's out there, he is always trying to push himself and other people and because of that, or maybe as his mind's way of maintaining that, we get cocky Kanye, arrogant Kanye, and boisterous Kanye. But, that side is the same thing that makes him such a great performer, or willing to take artistic leaps of faith, or even willing to yell crazy shit in public. It's all wrapped up in the same bag and to get one side, we must accept the other. Well, accept might be the wrong word, maybe understand is better.
In the end, he's just as flawed as any of us. And to me, it's easier to forgive a person, its harder to forgive the character, most stars will put in front of us. In Kanye's case, the man is the music is the person out there talking. And that level of give to the world makes him both the Kanye that pushes/inspires people and the Kanye that Obama calls a jackass. And with Kanye, we don't get the drug fueled mess we get with other celebrities, we get the personality mess (sometimes) and people find it easier to give sympathy to an outside force like the drugs than an inside force like our own human faults. Most people would rather judge them, than forgive them, because they wouldn't know how to tell someone to fix them if they wanted to. And this latter point is what I'm seeing right now out there. Getting calls saying how its so outrageous, like Kanye can only be defined by one incident. I'm not shocked, but I wish our culture didn't like to shoot first and ask questions later sometimes. Diatribe over, moving on.
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The second video is of Jay-Z, Rihanna, and Kanye performing "Run This Town." Here we get to see why we like Kanye in the first place and how a man can go from almost breaking down a few seconds before to delivering a raw and engaging performance seconds later. It feels like we get a window into the man/artist all in a very short amount of time. I found it captivating to watch. Final note, I'm sure Jay-Z really loved Kanye out there stealing what should have been his Blueprint 3 press with his antics. But hey, Kanye is Kanye and we've all known that for some time now.