So, the Grammys... I was pretty happy about the fact that Kanye got a few big awards (best rap song, best rap album), but not too many, and for the latter, gave a really good acceptance speech. It was pretty clear that he'd had a lot of time to think about his fuckup at the AMA's and all the other shit people are holding against him. And his speech was pretty much the perfect response to all of that. On the Grammys thread on ILM, Michael Daddino described his speech as managing "total arrogance and near teary-eyed humility simultaneously." Which is actually a pretty good description of Kanye's entire career, and one of the reasons I've remained a Kanye booster while everyone else has become allergic to the hype; he was like that all along, and that was kind of what I liked about him to begin with. But most importantly, he thanked Rhymefest in his speech, which means hopefully that B*ron Cr*wford can finally shut the fuck up now.

On MTV's red carpet pre-show thing, they showed a pre-taped segment about Kanye working in the studio with John Mayer, and played a few snippets of their collaboration "Bittersweet", which will appear on Late Registration. It wasn't very good. They did another track together, "Go", which is going to be on the new Common album, I hope that one turns out better. Mostly I just want John Mayer to be a part of something really unexpected and undeniably good so that people have to be embarrassed to admit it's good. But aside from that, the segment was almost as funny as John Mayer Has A TV Show. John and Kanye openly pondered the question "why do black people like John Mayer?" and compared the price of their jewelry. After realizing that his watch cost twice as much as Kanye's Jesus piece, John smiled and said "go back and listen to 'Daughters', bitches". The only way that moment could have been more classic is if they had shown that clip in lieu of an acceptance speech when "Daughters" won the award for song of the year. (EDIT: here's the MTV.com link for the text of that Mayer/West segment)

Other Grammy thoughts, many of them self-plagiarized from posts to the ILM thread:

- do you think old guys like James Brown ever get tired of being called on to appear with current artists as a symbolic gesture of "passing the baton" onto them? He must think to himself, "what, Usher is the new me now? Didn’t I just proclaim that Hammer guy the new me a few years ago?"

- There were a lot of really odd combinations of presenters throughout the night, but the best was Tyra Banks and Hoobastank because it seems like they just got paired up because their names rhyme.

- Is it just me, or did Kevin Bacon look exactly like Stewart Copeland? Seriously, it looks like he's getting ready to shoot a Police biopic.

- my friend Joey made the excellent suggestion that during Green Day's performance they should've cut to a shot of Gretchen Wilson in the audience during the lyric "I'm not a part of the redneck agenda"

- What was with the all-star singalong for charity being "Across The Universe"? Are they just picking Beatles songs out of a hat for these things?

Labels: hip hop, ILM, Kanye West, R and B

This entry was posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 at 12:26 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.