The future has landed
Chicago rapper Kayne West came to New York this week, playing MSG (left) and a private party (right).
America’s biggest rapper arrived in America’s biggest city this week to make the case that he’s fully transcended rap to become the Nu Prince. New York is the place to gauge where an artist is on the pop culture index, and Kanye West’s week in New York (as detailed below) proved he’s definately pop’s coolest act, if not its biggest and best.
On Tuesday Kanye played Madison Square Garden—a show that sold out (20,000 tix) in 7 minutes. The Times’ chief pop critic Jon Parles gave the MSG show a rave review, headlined, “Ego-Fueled Hip-Hop Sci-Fi Space Odyssey”:
Mr. West’s set was the most daring arena spectacle hip-hop has yet produced, and in some ways the best, even as it jettisoned standard hip-hop expectations. It is a show of stamina and lonely self-determination that takes on its own obsessive momentum, like a Samuel Beckett scene staged by Robert Wilson and George Lucas.
After MSG, Jay-Z hosted Kanye’s after party at 1Oak, a new club on W 17th that feels like an orgy/80s Armani ad shoot on a Spanish island but with everything bathed in pink light. In the bldg: Jay-Z, Diddy, Marbury, and Russell Simmons.
Fab and Kanye at 1Oak…
I caught Kanye Wednesday night at a G-Shock/Timex sponsored event underneath the Queensbourgh Bridge. The free show, attended by 1500-2000, was at Guastavino’s, a 25,000 sq ft beaux-arts room with roman columns. What a space! The ceiling is a web of white-tiled vaulted-arches, like a meta-version of the ceiling at the Oyster Bar beneath Grand Central, all connected to the bridge’s steel girders. The stage was placed underneath the bridge’s granite arch, in front of a glass wall looking across the river to Queens’ refracted orange glow.
The crowd was the usual media, fashion, PR, downtown mish-mash. All perfectly dressed, of course. The only Wall St/suit dude there was my neighbor Sean, an accountant. DJ Cassidy, Puffy’s personal DJ, was spinning the warm-up, doing the usual Jay-Z verses into old school then back to Biggie or Snoop/Dre. The bar was open top shelf—Knob Creek, Patron, etc. The food: everything from lamb chops to cupcakes. By about 10pm the whole crowd was drunk and dancing—a rarity at a corporate sponsored after-work event, though I suppose Kanye-anticipation was to blame.
When the lights finally went down, keyboard strains rang out. Soon a retro-future light show began, neon green and fluorescent blue. Then a live band started jamming the second song off Graduation. But I couldn’t see Kanye, so I moved to about 10-ft from the stage. Oh, there he was, sitting in an egg-shaped chair in white jeans, an alligator skin vest, and 80s shades with a pink glow-light across the top. He stayed in the chair for the next few songs. “Wow, next level arrogance,” a girl from T Magazine said. Kanye had two Prince-esque back-up singers, a guy and girl, but, like the rest the backing band, they were kept in the dark. Only Kanye was light-worthy.
Kanye’s in-chair performance lacked energy until a sextet of topless space chicks came on stage. “Just like The Box,” someone said, referring to a high-end downtown sex club, adding, “He didn’t have the titty dancers last night at MSG.” This mesmerizing, site-specific titty show saved the first half of Kanye’s set.
By song six Kanye was out of the chair and forgetting lyrics. But he made up for it by breaking into a freestyle—”I wrote this shit at 8 am this morning, I thunk it!”— about wanting to making babies with a Swedish girl and how he was number 1 and met girl who was a 10, and that makes 11, but her friend was a 7 so he sent her to 7-11 to buy condoms and soda. That verse happened, yes indeed…
By this point the whole crowd was dancing. He closed with all the hits (Golddigger, Flashing Lights, “Wait til I get my money right…”, the Daft Punk Jam): bouncing across the stage, jumping up and down, slapping his face with a white-gloved hand, dripping sweat, wooing the crowd with finger points—arms in the air—even crying during one emotional verse. This was a man at his peak. Selling out MSG then getting 2000 of New York’s most uptight, seen-it-all taste makers dancing and waving their hands in ecstasy. Well done.
Can you see the breasts? My finger…
PAGE 6 reports Kanye was payed $1million for the show, though I heard from sources the number was $300,000 and the overall event cost was $1 million. But this is just part of an overall G-Shock/Kayne deal that’s probably worth at least $2 million:
May 16, 2008 — KANYE West made a quick $1 million helping Casio promote its G-Shock watch at Guastavino’s Wednesday night. After keeping such guests as Lindsay Price, Caridee English and Spike Lee waiting for an hour and a half, West performed with four topless dancers, their faces hidden behind space helmets. Earlier, the swollen-headed rapper complained about the green room, which was last occupied by designer John Galliano when he threw a Dior show in the restaurant under the 59th Street Bridge. West sniffed, “It smells like a dirty French boudoir.”
I don’t know, maybe in June when Kanye returns to play before 80,000 at Giants Stadium he’ll up the ante again, but Kanye’s already proved this week he’s pop music’s prince in an egg shaped throne. Now, the real Prince needs to do a week in New York on par with what Kayne just pulled off. Maybe start with a 5-night stand at The Box, then a one off at MSG or something. Otherwise the Purple One best admit Kayne’s got him beat on the ego/pop front.
One last look: Weds show (left) and Tues show (right)…
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