14 DAY TRIAL // Kanye West closed the 2015 edition of the Billboard Music Awards, which took place over the weekend at the MGM Arena in Las Vegas and aired live on ABC. His performance was supposed to be the highlight of the evening, but instead, it turned out to be a mess, with viewers tuning in for it at home not being able to see the rapper - or hear him for over 1 minute in total.
You can see the performance below in full: Kanye did a 2-song medley of “All Day” and “Black Skinhead.” ABC censors had to bleep out all the curse words and offensive slang, which amounted to 1.02 minutes in total of the 5.18-minute-long performance.
To boot, the pyrotechnics and the smoke made Kanye not visible throughout. It was all producers’ fault.
Kanye West complains of being over-censored
The other day, sources from ABC claiming to be close to the producers of the awards gala told the press that they had no say in the performance, so whatever was wrong with it was only Kanye’s fault.
The rapper knew he would be on live TV and he chose not to do a clean version of his songs; he also knew that such a firey display would cause issues with visibility, but he went ahead with it either way.
ABC did not take a formal stand on this, but these “insiders” aimed to do that for them, throwing all the blame at Kanye’s door.
Well, Kanye isn’t having it. In a statement to The Guardian, the rapper blames ABC for being trigger happy with the bleeper button, because they also censored bits of his performance that had nothing offensive about them, like the lyrics “with my leather black jeans on” and “Middle America.”
“It is ridiculous that in 2015, unwarranted censorship is something that artists still have to fight against. Although West was clearly set up to face elements beyond his control during the live broadcast, he would like to apologize to the television audience who were unable to enjoy the performance the way he envisioned,” the statement continues.
Pyrotechnics came with specific instructions
Moreover, sources close to Kanye tell TMZ, producers knew exactly what to do for his performance to look as he wanted it to.
In other words, Kanye had informed them that they would have to change the lighting and the angles of the cameras for him (and collaborators Theophilus London and Allan Kingdom) to be visible on stage for the people watching the broadcast.
Apparently, they chose to ignore his instructions, so this mess of a performance took place. Kanye feels like producers “screwed him,” the report adds.