Cancelled gigs, Trump and the ultimate rant – a timeline of Kanye’s wild week

Ditching gigs, planning a comedy biopic, abusing Instagram, championing Trump and facing off against Jay-Z’s hit squads – most weeks Kanye West resembles the cat from Red Dwarf getting jacked up on a kilo of catnip, but this week has had the likes of Snoop Dogg wondering if he’s totally lost it. Here’s how the last seven days in Kanye’s very public meltdown played out.

Monday, November 14

News emerged that Kanye has been “trading ideas” with Anchorman’s Will Ferrell about turning his life story into a movie.a A ‘friend’ of West told the Daily Star: “He has been thinking about this for a long, long time and he has been trading ideas with Will. Rather than take himself too seriously, he feels it has to be a comedy and not a preachy film.” Since Kanye has previously claimed to feel a kinship with Ferrell’s Elf character. Buddy, expect the film to be about an overgrown child bumbling his way through the music industry.

Kanye has previously appeared on screen alongside Farrell in Anchorman 2, of course…

Thursday, November 17

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Kanye shocks the crowd at his San Jose show by declaring “If I would have voted, I would’ve voted on Trump,” adding, “That don’t mean that I don’t think that Black Lives Matter. That don’t mean I don’t think that I’m a believer in women’s rights. That don’t mean I don’t believe in gay marriage. That don’t mean that I don’t believe in these things because that was the guy I would’ve voted for.”

Once it sank in that he wasn’t using the old Chicago hip-hop meaning of the word ‘vote’ to mean ‘roundly denounce someone as a sexist, xenophobic madman’, Twitter blew up. Some ridiculed his claims that he admired Trump’s debating style for making racists “reveal themselves”. Others believed it was perfectly within his character and an attempt to get Trump voters on his side for Kanye’s mooted Presidential run in 2020. More claimed he’d shot himself in the foot and should be boycotted.

It certainly didn’t help rebuild any bridges with Jay-Z and Beyonce, whom Kanye had called out earlier in the Saint Pablo tour for not visiting him in the wake of Kim Kardashian’s robbery amid growing animosity between the couples. BeyJay had made donations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign… as had Kanye in 2015.

 

 

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https://twitter.com/briannajj/status/800552690149457920

Saturday, November 19

At the start of November, Kanye had cut short a gig in Inglewood, California after 45 minutes stating “turn the lights up. Show’s over. I can’t let you have a show where I can’t perform for you. I’ll give everyone a refund, I’ll do better next time.” When Kanye returned to California on Saturday, though, he did a lot worse. From atop his elevated lighting rig stage in Sacramento he launched into one of his most bizarre gig rants to date: “Beyoncé, I was hurt! ‘Cause I heard that you said you wouldn’t perform unless you won Video of the Year over me, and over ‘Hotline Bling’,” he complained. “We are all great people, we are all equal. But sometimes, we be playing the politics too much and forgetting who we are — just to win. Fuck winning! Fuck looking cool! Fuck looking cool! Fuck being cool! Fuck all that!”

Kanye went on to make some alarming statements about his former friend, Jay Z. “I’ve been sent here to give y’all my truth, even at the risk of my own life, even at the risk of my own success, my own career. I’ve been sent here to give y’all the truth. Jay Z, call me, bruh! You still ain’t call me! Jay Z, call me! Jay Z, I know you got killers, please don’t send them at my head. Just call me! Talk to me like a man!” Then he ditched the gig after only a handful of songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAin15lq1nQ

Among the most bemused at his outburst was Snoop Dogg, who posted a series of videos of himself reacting to Kanye’s speech. “I smoke weed,” Snoop said, “weed don’t make you do that. What the fuck is he on? He picked the wrong night to vent like that. Them Sacramento n***as ain’t feeling that shit. You should’ve had a bunch of weird motherfuckers like you in there when you were talking that weird ass shit. This n***a’s crazy. I can’t believe he’s still talking… I thought he was supposed to be doing a show.”

Sunday November 20

Cancelling his return to Inglewood just three hours before stage time – and possibly the rest of his US tour according to some Twitter reports, Kanye instead spent Sunday night concentrating on his newly-opened Instagram feed, posting 99 largely out-of-focus photos of pages from Maison Margiela lookbooks past and present. Quiet night, then.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BNDUMvjgPAP/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BNDT_zegp_Y

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