Over the weekend, West showed up to perform twice on "Saturday Night Live" a somewhat surprising guest appearance given the "SNL"-bashing lyrics in his new single "Power," the first single off of the rapper's upcoming album. In "Power," West says after the second chorus: "F-ck SNL' and the whole cast/Tell 'em Yeezy said they can kiss my whole ass/More specifically, they can kiss my asshole./I'm an asshole? You n-ggas got jokes."
Most likely, West's lyrics refer to the slew of jokes directed his way following the infamous "mic snatch" incident that occurred at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
Swift hosted "SNL" in November 2009, just a few months after the incident. While on the show, Swift performed a musical opening monologue, ending the song with saying she was not going to say anything about West, she had security. As she said this, cast members ran up behind her with a sketch of West's face, impersonating secutiry guards.
Although the Oct. 2 episode of "SNL" was hosted by AMC's "Breaking Bad" star Bryan Cranston and even featured an appearance from Morgan Freeman, the whole episode seemed to be just killing time until West's anticipated performance began.
West came out in an all red outfit on a completely white stage, wearing gold jewelry including a crown reminiscent of Jesus. The stage seemed to depict heaven, with West starting center at the top of stairs, with white sheets moving below him to expose several dancers also dressed in white. The dancers looked like angels. Yet when West reached the "SNL" diss, he delivered a conspicuously modified set of lyrics: "The brown hero, live from Ground Zero/Machine gun flow, made her get a Ross Perot/And this is disestablishmentarianism/With my night goggles on, yeah got military vision."
The lyric change was West's unique way of indirectly apologizing to "SNL." This apology comes on the heels of West's public apology to Swift that he tweeted just days before the 2010 VMAs.
West's second and final number of the night his new single "Runaway" was similar to his performance at the 2010 VMAs. It featured West playing a drum machine before the dancers came out of their pose behind him and started dancing around the stage. The performance featured rapper Pusha T, who West just signed to his label, and ended with West auto-tuning the last verses.
West may have made history with these performances, as his appearance is assumed to be the first time in "SNL" history that the stage required alteration for a musical guest's performance. The fact that the stage had to be a certain way reiterates West's image of being a showman a bit egotistical, yet always entertaining and impressive.
West's album, which he announced yesterday via Twitter will be titled "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" is scheduled to be released on Monday, Nov. 22. His decision to release his album on a Monday rather than the standard Tuesday release is definitely a marketing strategy in order for him to be by himself, as opposed to going up against new releases on Tuesday by Ne-Yo, Nicki Minaj, My Chemical Romance and Flo Rida. It sounds like West is back with a vengeance, not only to prove his talents in the music industry, but also to prove that he is not such a bad guy.
