Kanye West made a surprise appearance at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom Tuesday night where he put on a full fledged show for his fifth album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The star-studded concert included guest appearances from Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, Pusha T, Swizz Beatz, Ryan Leslie and several others. While audience members were treated to ‘Ye’s performance of all the album’s tracks, the highlight of the evening was the controversial artist’s 9-minute rant about Taylor Swift, George Bush, and most prominently, the media.
“Everybody needs a villain, don’t we?” he posed to the crowd, referring to his infamous comments about George Bush during a Hurricane Katrina benefit. “We need to blame someone at all times. I was emotional. That was not exactly the way I wanted to word it. But I rode it, I rode it. Just as Taylor [Swift] never came to my defense in any interview and rode the wave and rode it and rode it. That’s the way I rode the wave of the Bush comment.”
Kanye’s main gripes seemed to be with the media, and he expressed his disillusion by highlighting how the media handled George Bush’s recent statements regarding his past presidency. In an interview with the Today Show’s Matt Lauer, Bush said one of the lowest points in his presidency was Kanye’s branding him a racist.
“When you look in your heart, look at what the media did. Look at how they exploited [Bush],” continued Kanye. “They said that he said it was his lowest moment. And America, we took that as a fact. When you look at that interview, he said it was one of his lowest moments. And he said it about 10 different times. But because of the popularity of me, they exploited that…to make you watch the interview, and make you feel that he was stupider than ever to think that a rapper’s comment could be his lowest moment. That’s not what he fucking said! That’s not what he said! He said it was one of his lowest moments. But it shows you the way they try to villain-ize!”
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Below is the video, where he also talked about the success of his newest album.
