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Drew Hunt: The show was ridiculous, there’s really no other way to describe it. And I mean that in a positive way as much as I mean it in a literal way. I’ve yet to see Kanye give anything less than 100 percent at one of his shows (this is the third time I’ve seen him live). The dude just doesn’t stop moving—even when he stands still, he’s standing still very aggressively. It’s hard not to be in awe. He ripped through two dozen songs like it was nothing. As a hip-hop performer, he’s essentially peerless. Amid all the music is, of course, the spectacle, punctuated by a multitiered mountain and that screen you mentioned. It wouldn’t be a Kanye show without such theatrics, but I grew increasingly impatient with the various interludes of masked nude women, monsters, and, of course, “white Jesus.” It seemed like there was something of a narrative, and I’m sure it all made sense in his head, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was actually happening. I was mostly perturbed by the hordes of objectified women (he uses them as a chair at one point) who seemed to alternately represent evil, hope, passion, danger, and, uh, sex in equal measure.
LG: Yes, the rant—I was wondering if he gave the same spiel both nights, or if he hit all the same notes. When I saw him jumped from talking about his fall-out with Nike and Adidas; his idea that people are either “dreamers” or “haters” (a black-and-white concept that, in a way, reminds me of the “you’re with us or against us” attitude of the post-9/11 George W. Bush-era politics); breaking down the facade of awards shows; wanting to bring smiles to peoples’ faces (which is extremely interesting to hear given the confrontational nature of Yeezus); being made out to be a bad guy even though he just wants to make people smile; wanting to speak his mind despite the fact that others want to quell him, which he compared to a plantation owner shooting his runaway slave as an example to the other slaves; wanting to outsmart the media, a phrase he repeatedly sang in Auto-Tune as he exited the stage; oh, and that he’s from Chicago and is with Kim Kardashian, another theme he repeated a few times.
BW: Yeezus as an album has a particularly dark edge to it that obviously shaped the mood of the performance, and the minimalism of the material is perhaps why Kanye felt the need to add so many visual stimulants. When he got into songs like “All of the Lights” and “Homecoming” (which was just perfect) the moodiness melted away and it felt more like a spontaneous Kanye instead of the meticulously staged piece of performance art.
