Kanye West

[wetflame]

Kanye had a great start, but as soon as those lights went up and the smoke cleared and you could see it was just a massive empty stage with him on it then the set took a massive downhill turn. Spent what felt like an hour on one of his really slow new songs to the bewilderment of all around us, kept stopping and starting his tracks, spent forever getting into that cherry picker trying to avoid showing us the other guy in there controlling it and then ended on some good tracks being played almost all the way through. Abandoning Gold Digger in the middle of a festival set is madness. There was a visceral reaction in the crowd to his insane claim to be the world's greatest living rockstar too, lots of boos from the crowd. Bit of a shambles really. Started out good but his ego got the better of him and really spoilt the set. I got the feeling he'd given instructions to the camera crew too as there was no shots of the crowd or sides of the stage, they were either showing Kanye or they were cutting the feed entirely for minutes on end without any explanation.

[budvar]

I was at the front and enjoyed it, despite not being especially familiar with his back catalogue.

Lighting rig looked impressive and I thought the cherry picker was a great stunt; looked good from underneath.

All fairly reminiscent of Jay-Z in 2008.

Seemed to attract a pretty young crowd to the Pyramid, though only fair to say that a fair few fought their way out past me before the end

[airwaves]

My son, watching at home, posted a photo to FB showing that the bbc subtitlers gave up and just captioned

"he raps"

[Ohinever]

Personally thought it pants but there you go. Got tent full of boos in the silent disco when name mentioned afterwards too.

Edited June 28, 2015 by mooro

[si_t]

Awful. Just awful..... And anyone on here saying otherwise is either taking the piss, or is a complete cretin.

[The 38 year old virgin]

Awful. Just awful..... And anyone on here saying otherwise is either taking the piss, or is a complete cretin.

or has a different opinion

[si_t]

As much as I like your sentiment, I'm not sure I can agree.

it was a man talking / shouting / gesturing over a recorded track.

His pitch needed auto tune, and he came in at the wrong time at least three times.

It would have been a poor , poor show on any stage, at any time.

An insult to actual real musicians working hard in the industry.

[jparx]

I love Kanye but the performance was completely devoid of energy. People were rushing for the exits after half an hour. I've never heard so many people talking and looking disinterested throughout a headliner. VERY disappointing.

The Watch the Throne gig was incredible a few years ago but this was nowhere near that standard. I just found it boring.

[ceetee]

The mood in the crowd was one of occasional highs but lengthy periods of bewilderment. It was all a bit jolting and was one of those sets I'd imagine comes across a lot better on the telly.

It didn't.

[Drunkgiraffe]

Is it available to watch? can't seem to find Kanye performance on I player

[stuartbert two hats]

It's under Glastonbury Day 2. There's two, it's the one with the evening times.

They've not broken good performance out as a separate episode because it's all in the evening show.

[Drunkgiraffe]

Thanks interested to see how it went

[**claire**]

I thought it showed early promise but we headed off after suffering 29 minutes of the dull auto tuning stuff. All the restarts & zero interaction with the crowd for the first half of the set didn't do it for me at all.

[DGrant261]

I thought it showed early promise but we headed off after suffering 29 minutes of the dull auto tuning stuff. All the restarts & zero interaction with the crowd for the first half of the set didn't do it for me at all.

Yeah I agree. The auto tuned to death vocals and absolute reliance on samples is something I can see past when it's a quick upbeat song. But songs like 'Only One' sounded very poor. Shame really as I thought it started off very well but lost literally all it's momentum pretty quickly. Being there I'd probably thought of it entirely differently mind.

[TomfromStroud]

Is it available to watch? can't seem to find Kanye performance on I player

 

It's in this section: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0615crn/glastonbury-2015-day-2-2130-0100#group=b007r6vx

[The Blackburn Rover]

For me, somebody performing to backing tracks when the're headlining the greatest festival in the world is unforgivable.

 

Having to rely on Autotune as well is just so wrong-If it was some failed X factor contestant in a crap nightclub in Grimsby on a wet Tuesday in November you could perhaps understand but this is Glastonbury.

[Chawk]

It's not like he's not capable of a big headline show- watch his 2011 performance at Coachella, 

 

I guess artistically he decided to do something different.

Edited June 28, 2015 by Chawk

[Mash011]

It's not like he's not capable of a big headline show- watch his 2011 performance at Coachella,

I guess artistically he decided to do something different.

Maybe if by 'do something different' you mean 'not rehearse'. I've seen videos of his past shows and it's obvious he's capable of so much more than that. I just feel like he's very quickly lost all the fire which was driving him for the last couple years and is now willing to just be mediocre. Huge let down for what should have been an unforgettable show.

[tweed1981]

Let's face it, it was terrible, no point pretending otherwise. Ironic that Florence (in my opinion of course) absolutely nailed it.

[Wooderson]

Brilliantly put Tony.

I was quite far back with the buggy, but some guy I've never met before came up and cheerfully opined "This is *really* shit isn't it?" As we chatted over the next couple minutes, 10 to 15 metres deep of crowd dispersed in their droves. I think it was considerably worse than that Oasis show in 2004. I wasn't at Rod, but this has to rival that fiasco.

[angelin]

As if Beyoncé would've turned up for that.

[fatyeti24]

I went as a neutral really hoping to be convinced. In reality I was bored. From not far behind the sounds desk the crowd was gorrilaz-esque in size and ambivalence. His show was one dimentional, the lights pretty much wasted unless your were close to the front.

'cherry picker' is the new 'jump the shark'.

Very disappointing .

[pjadnoo]

My sister asked someone if it had finished but was told, "no, he's awful ". Which prompted her to start a survey, asking people why they were leaving. Everyone (who was leaving) said the same. It was funny.

This is called 'selection bias'. Not saying that Kanye was good (I thought ok -amazing lights, but that lack of musicians, and tonnes of autotune was annoying), but it's not surprising that most of the people who left midway said it was shit.

Edited June 28, 2015 by pjadnoo

[she bangs the drums]

He started well but after the first 3/4 songs it needed a change of scenery with other musicians involved on the stage. I've seen Eminem before and he performs only parts of certain songs but the difference is there is a flow to his songs from one to another with no embarrassing pauses. I'm not a fan of live rap music but his actual rapping sounded good, it was just all of the pauses and auto tuned bollocks that spoilt it. Gorillaz were terrible, one of scariest crowd situations ive been with so many people trying to leave and I used to go an watch football matches in the 80s on terracing. Sounds like a lot of people left this performance too.

[Ed209]

Watching from the armchair this year but it was total shite. The musical equivalent of the incoherent ramblings of a madman. As an exhibition of narcissism it was world class, as an exhibition of musicianship and putting on a huge festival headline show it was pathetic