Kanye on VH1 Storytellers

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Kanye West performed on VH1 Storytellers last Saturday, and despite my best efforts (devoting my facebook status to the endeavor), I couldn't find someone with cable to watch it with me. Thankfully(?) broadcast television is pretty irrelevant ever since TV networks realized that they can sell ads to play before streaming internet content.

So hop over to VH1.com for the first time since you were 12 and check out some of these videos of Kanye. They are totally dope. Most of the songs are from 808s and Heartbreak, which I pretty much despise, but the production value and arrangements are so meticulous that I can't help but love it. The stage is completely amazing. Makes me wish I had thrown down 60 bucks for the Glow in the Dark tour.

Sure, Kanye acts like a fucking idiot the whole time, but that's a given. My favorite bit of monologue is when Kanye declares that his greatest pain in life is never being able to see himself perform, and that the audience is lucky because they are experiencing something he'll never be able to experience. And he says this with a totally straight face, it's priceless. In the Flashing Lights video that I embedded he also threatens to kill the doctor who is writing a tell-all book about the surgery that caused his mother's death.

The whole affair is the most indulgent show you can imagine. It's pure Kanye. But the thing is, the musical arrangements (we're talking 20 piece band here) are beautiful. I'd bet a few dollars that Jon Brion was tapped to arrange this. It's surprisingly heavy on electric guitar, strings, and timpani drums, which totally works. And unlike some of his previous live vocal performances off Heartbreaks (SNL in particular), his singing actually sounds good.