My feelings about Kanye West, or “Ye” as he now calls himself, are pretty well known at this point. While my colleague Wren Graves was able to muster the strength to listen to and write about his latest project, Vultures, I can’t say the same. Truth be told, I’ve found his attempted “comeback” boring, predictable, and mostly pathetic. His non-apology apology for anti-Semitic rantings was akin to Aaron Rodgers’ own recent non-apology apology for own wild conspiracies — both came across as if they were written by a publicist using ChatGPT. His recent complaints about being unable to book concerts is also quite rich considering he has no one to blame but himself. His last full-fledged tour in 2016 was a train wreck and ended with him in the hospital after he allegedly stopped taking his medication and began abusing alcohol. He then pulled out of highly-anticipated “live comeback” at Coachella in 2022 with less than two weeks notice, reportedly because he was upset about sharing a bill with Billie Eilish after she slighted Travis Scott. He’s impossible and unreliable to work with, and that was before all pro-Nazi bullshit.
Despite this, West was booked by Rolling Loud to headline the California version of its festival on Thursday night. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t go well.
According to the Los Angeles Times, West’s performance with Ty Dolla $ign, billed as ¥$, wasn’t really a performance at all — despite being billed as one by Rolling Loud. Instead, for about an hour, West “roamed around in a black jacket and a face mask as [the duo’s] songs played over the festival’s sound system on a huge circular stage planted in the parking lot of Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium. If he was rapping, you couldn’t hear it; if he was holding a microphone, you couldn’t see it.”
Attendees of Rolling Loud California were understandably pissed. On reddit, you’ll find threads calling West a “scammer” and a “scumbag.” In one thread, attendees advised others to call their credit card company to report fraud in hopes of getting a refund. (Existing 3-day ticket-holders were able to attend West’s performance for free, but 1-day ticket-holders had to upgrade their passes in order to attend Thursday’s set.)
In the lead up to his appearance at Rolling Loud, Billboard ran an article about the prospects of West successfully staging a live comeback. “While West’s history is well known, I wouldn’t say the curtain has closed on his career quite yet,” one unnamed promoter told Billboard. “I’m going to reserve judgment until after his Rolling Loud appearance. If he pulls off a big show and people view it as successful, that will buy him a lot of goodwill and time. Perhaps some of [his] former partners can be persuaded to work out an agreement with him. Or maybe he will blow the whole thing up again.”
On Thursday, we got our answer. So can we stop with this faux redemption tour bullshit now?
