Kanye West Falls Foul to Censorship of His Billboard Music Awards performance
Kanye West has voiced his annoyance over how much of his Billboard Music Awards performance was censored. The heavy censorship lead to over a minute’s worth of silence for the viewers who were watching at home.
A statement from West’s publicist says: "Kanye West was grossly over-censored at the Billboard Music Awards. Non-profane lyrics such as 'with my leather black jeans on' were muted for over 30-second intervals.
"As a result, his voice and performance were seriously misrepresented. 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 apologise to the television audience who were unable to enjoy the performance the way he envisioned."
West’s people have described the performance as being "grossly over-censored”. You can watch it
Looking at the lyrics of All Day West uses some very controversial language including the “n” word although he doesn’t actually use it at all during the performance. There is some bad language that is censored but everything around a curse word is blocked out as well. Essentially, it gives the impression that the censor was being incredibly lazy that day and couldn’t be bothered to isolate the actual swearing.
It may not seem like a huge issue in the context of this one performance. Yes, Kanye is annoyed that his performance didn’t turn out “the way he envisioned” and that may be true but the more important point is that much of what he was trying to say through the song was also lost. Granted, I personally couldn’t understand much of what he was trying to say but I am not the target audience for the hip hop genre.
If Kanye doesn’t want his songs to be censored in this way then maybe he shouldn’t have such a foul mouth. Maybe try using some other words from the dictionary... However, regardless of this no artists should have their material censored in such a hap-hazard way. It makes it seem as though it is much more contentious than it actually is and the result is little more than racial stereotyping.
