It Was Cool, But There Was No Glowing

My Top 3

, very much like , have made my peace with the era, and practically discovered Kanye West made the decision to see him at MSG an even easier one.

Well, the joke was on me. There were no guests. Befitting a person who–and I write this without any kind of sneering or disappointed judgment–truly views himself as the biggest star on the planet, Kanye did 75 minutes of music by himself. At the end he and weed-carrier Lupe performed “Touch the Sky,” but that felt like an economies-of-scale thing, and not a celebration of collaboration. I mean, Lupe is getting paid to be on the tour, anyway; might as well have him put in the work.

The Kanye experience was extravagant. There was this colorful, talking video screen; there were aliens; there was someone’s annual salary’s worth of smoke from smoke machines; there were pyrotechnics. And there, of course, was Kanye, who got a sweat going quite briskly and spent his evening running through hits, doing those awkward dances of his, and working so hard.

The truest words Kanye’s ever said about himself might be, “Or use my arrogance as the steam to power my dreams.” That came through on Tuesday. If you hate him, there’s no shortage of material. If you love him, there’s no shortage of material. But regardless, what appears beyond dispute is that this is a person who works hard, refuses to hear “no,” and remains driven in a way that can only come from a certain sort of narcissism. Kanye outwardly projects the sense that he deserves his success, deserves your affection, and deserves to stand on an expansive stage by himself and stare out at 20,000 people looking on with rapt attention. As someone who lost his voice rapping along with song after song, who worked up a sweat dancing to so many favorite beats, I really wasn’t mad at that. It was fun. It was 75 minutes of closely orchestrated, well-rehearsed fun, during which the music, though great on its own, became a medium that connected the audience with Kanye in a personal way (). It transcended a mere performance, or the transactional nature of a concert (we pay, he performs), and was more about fans communing with a hero. That reads grandiose, and I don’t mean to equate Kanye with something greater than he is, but Tuesday night was more than just music.

All that said, a fitting bit of irony was that during the final opening act, Rihanna brought out Chris Brown to perform “Umbrella.” There was not a single ovation all night that was louder than the one Mr. Brown received when he quietly strode onto the stage in his understated cardigan to deliver a simple rendition of his verse. But, what else do you expect when surrounded by high-school girls?