Kanye West SoFi Stadium Concert: No Apologies In Comeback Show
Kanye West
Hector RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images
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Kanye West was on top of the world Wednesday night, or at least that’s the image the ever-controversial rapper projected for his comeback show at SoFi Stadium, where he spent the entire night atop a dome lit up with a projection of the earth spinning beneath him.
It’s a stark metaphor for a man who not even a full a year ago released “Heil Hitler” — one of the most openly antisemitic songs an artist of his prominence has ever recorded — just months after using a Super Bowl ad to direct viewers to a website to hawk swastika-emblazoned t-shirts. And yet, it’s hard to completely dismiss the assertion as nonsense, as a year later on the first night of Passover, he’s at one of the largest and most prestigious concert venues in the country, basking it in amidst the release of a heavily-streamed new album as a nearly sold-out crowd of tens of thousands erupts into screaming cheers as he starts his show.
West’s years-long spree of hate speech steered his career in a direction few thought could lead to a mainstream platform ever again, but Wednesday certainly made the notion that he faces a real cancellation feel distant. Gamma, the indie music company whose roster includes Usher, Mariah Carey and Snoop Dogg, chose to partner with West on Bully. The album will likely debut in the Top 5 on Billboard’s 200 Albums chart next week. And clearly, there are still stadiums in this country that will book him, as well as fans to fill their seats.
As for the fans themselves, several who spoke with The Hollywood Reporter on site before the show seemed ready for West to enter a new era, saying that Bully was the closest they’ve felt West has been to “the old Kanye” in years. West’s controversies, meanwhile, are nothing new, and nothing longtime fans didn’t face before. The consensus among some who spoke amounted mainly to their own tolerance to separate the art from the artist.
“We know his medical history and why he has his rants, he talks about being bipolar,” 32-year-old Chris Gutierrez said before the show started. “We’re coming here more to appreciate the music.”
Gutierrez says a lot of people he knows stopped listening to West amid the controversies in recent years, which he understands. “It’s hard, I get it. I come from a psych background. I don’t know if he was lucid enough or he wasn’t. But we’re here more for the music.”
Gutierrez’ friend Max, who asked to only used his first name, replied: “I mean, he’s a musical genius.”
32-year-old Ingrid Sandoval said that she is a behaviorist who works with autistic people, and that after West said in an interview that he was diagnosed with autism, she’d become more sympathetic over his behavior. When asked if she had any hesitation about buying tickets when they went on sale, she said that “I feel like now it’s ok, but I would say that if I did this like a year ago, I’d probably be more judged.”
While West apologized for his antisemitic claims earlier this year in an ad in the Wall Street Journal, he didn’t address the controversy any further in what was his most public appearance since then, barely addressing the crowd at all Wednesday.
In typical Kanye fashion, the show started two hours later than its advertised 7 p.m. slot, getting going at just past 9 p.m. when the dome was revealed. The show itself wasn’t totally polished, as several times during the set, West had directed the show staff to change visuals, leading him to start over several songs. Early in, he told the lighting team to “make the earth move slower.” In the latter half of the night, while performing “Good Life,” he started over twice, giving notes in real time to change the lights on him that he thought were “corny.”
“Is this an SNL Skit,” West quipped into the mic. “Stop with the vibrating Vegas lights.”
His live vocals were a bit muddy at times as well, making it hard during some songs to differentiate when he was performing versus when it was just his recorded vocals from the backing tracks.
None of that bothered the crowd though, particularly when West went through his deeper back catalog of rap classics. West started the night with a few Bully tracks, but the crowd only fully erupted when the first “la la las” from “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” started to play.”
Don Toliver came out with West to perform the Donda track “Moon” as well as is own song ̶