Kim Kardashian and Kanye West were interviewed at the Grammy Awards after-party on Sunday. Photo by Colin Young-Wolff | Invision
Early in Sunday night’s Grammy telecast, we we observed that, despite the jokes about Kimye and North West, marriage seemed to have calmed Kanye West down. He seemed to be more of a colleague and less of a rabble-rouser. The focus shifted from his antics back to his music.
And that played out during the evening. He gave a good, understated performance of his song Only One and participated in one of the evening’s true highlights, performing with Paul McCartney and Rhianna on her new single FourFiveSeconds. Twitter lit up with photos of him arm-in-arm with Taylor Swift, whose 2009 MTV Video Music Award win he had famously interrupted, demanding that the award instead go to Beyonce.
Bygones. Nice Kanye.
Beck accepted the award for album of the year for Morning Phase at the Grammy Awards. Photo by John Shearer | Invision
Then Beck’s Morning Phase won album of the year, and Kanye again took the stage uninvited, apparently once again advocating for Bey, whose self-titled album was expected to win. But he simply grinned and stepped back.
Maybe it was a joke? Maybe new Kanye was having fun at the expense of old Kanye?
No. His interview with E! after the show cleared things up. Beck was his new Taylor.
“I just know that the Grammys, if they want real artists to keep coming back, they need to stop playing with us,” West said on the entertainment network. “We ain’t gonna play with them no more. And Beck needs to respect artistry, and he should’ve given his award to Beyoncé.
“Because when you keep on diminishing art and not respecting the craft and smacking people in their face after they deliver monumental feats of music, you’re disrespectful to inspiration. And we as musicians have to inspire people who go to work every day, and they listen to that Beyoncé album and they feel like it takes them to another place.”
You’d think Morning Phase was a collection of cookie-cutter covers played by a marginally talented hack, instead of an inspired album by one of pop’s most accomplished musicians of the past quarter-century.
Maybe West should have said that to Beck’s face, although according to Rolling Stone, Beck took the high road in response, saying West is an amazing artist and he had expected Beyoncé to win.
And there was reason for that. The award is called “album of the year,” not “best album,” and if you want to talk about an album that had a resonant impact in the span of the weird calendar the Grammys keep, Beyoncé is it. The surprise digital release of the album in December 2013, with videos for each song, has already altered the way albums are released and marketed. And it was a terrific album — serious, fun, sensual and engaging — all things we expect from Beyoncé.
But as Prince said in presenting the award, “albums still matter,” and really, in that field of nominees — which included Sam Smith’s In the Lonely Hour, Ed Sheeran’s X and Pharrell Williams’ Girl — Beck’s Morning Phase was the most accomplished album. It took the artist — yes, Kanye, Beck is an artist, too — in directions far afield from his previous work and tied together disparate styles for an enveloping mood. Certainly it hasn’t had the chart impact of some of Beck’s 1990s output, notably Odelay. But it is a fantastic album, and that West chooses to denigrate Beck’s artistry says a lot more about him than it does about Beck.
And Beck is right. Kanye is extremely talented and has put out some of the best music of this century. But antics like this and a myopic obsession with the idea that only people from his circle of friends rate honor and respect — can we point out that Beyoncé is married to one of the most powerful men in music, who could easily speak up for her if he thought it was warranted? — really threaten his legacy.
I want to like Kanye, but he makes it really, really hard.
