With the wallop of a rock’n’roll anthem, it sampled King Crimson’s prog rock relic ‘21st Century Schizoid Man,’ and over a tribal chant, his opening lines went like this: Atop a custom-built mountain stage, backlit by panoramic travelogues of snowcaps and clouds, he performed a new single called ‘Power,’ and each time he said the word, a geyser of red smoke would erupt behind him. ![]() ![]() This was the world premiere of his iconic bright red suit, sans shirt, plus life-size gold Pharaoh head necklace. In June 2010, still enduring peak backlash, West would put on one of his littlest-known TV performances ever at the BET Awards. No matter your opinion of the action, being told that one ten-second impulse has stripped you of the ability to tour is a heavy blow to a global superstar-heavy enough to make one think their career is over, and kill the morale to achieve greatness ever again. ![]() In the fallout, Lady Gaga dropped off his planned co-headline tour, and he was then held back from touring on his own due to plummeting sales predictions. Even in 2018, after brandishing support for Donald Trump and positing that American slavery was “a choice”, there still may not have been a more dangerous time for this artist’s career than after the VMA 2009 Taylor Swift incident. It doesn’t take a social scientist to predict the result of a black rapper in a leather dress shirt walking onstage at a global award show to tell a teenage white girl why she doesn’t deserve her award.
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