Kanye West at Glastonbury 2015: this generation's pop provocateur won't be boring

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/16/kanye-west-glastonbury-our-generation-pop-provocateur

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Given the choice between these two spectacles for a festival headline set, which would you prefer? On the one hand, a perfectly likeable big rock band, with their plaid shirts, rolling out the same set they’ve been squelching round the world for ages, full of songs you know, though not necessarily that many you love, unless you’re a hardcore fan. Or, on the other, the world’s most mercurial and unpredictable pop star, a man convinced of his own genius and prone to gestures so grand they rather take the breath away.

Related: Kanye West to headline Glastonbury 2015

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Foo Fighters – they’re a perfectly sensible, safe, belt-and-braces choice of festival headliner. You know what you’ll be getting, and they know how to deliver with the utmost professionalism. But Kanye West is a whole other level of pop star: he’s the nearest this generation has to the great provocateurs of the 1970s – he’s our Bowie or Bolan, our Iggy or Lydon. He absolutely does not care about what you or I think; he is not doing this to be liked, he is doing this to unravel his own psyche, to test the limits of what pop will tolerate. He understands that pop, at its best, is the grandest spectacle of all, that it’s a vehicle for ideas. It doesn’t matter if the ideas are half-baked – anyone who goes to a pop record expecting a thorough dissection of Isaiah Berlin’s theories of liberty is a fool – it’s that they are idea at all. And West is full of them, some good, some bad, none of them boring.

Even at his absolute worst, West appears to be aware of his own fabulous preposterousness: Awesome, his love song to Kim Kardashian, which leaked last week, was a pretty terrible piece of work, but then, two-thirds of the way through Kanye signalled, with the straightest of faces, that he was in on the joke, too. “I’m also awesome,” he crooned, through the Auto-Tune, a nod to all the people who think he’s nothing more than a giant ego, bouncing around the stratosphere of self-aggrandisement.

And, yes, he is a giant ego. But it’s that giant ego that makes him such a fascinating figure: someone about whom even those who disdain his music have opinions. His gift is for making conversations happen, even if the way he does so is sometimes just as jaw dropping as the things he wants discussed – but the conversations he starts usually matter, because he’s engaged with the world. The fashion industry is racist he asserts, offering its rejection of his ideas as proof. Well, mate, they might just have thought leather jogging bottoms were a spectacularly bad idea, but you’re right – it’s hard not to look at the fact that the industry is dominated by white people, often appropriating street fashions from the black community without thinking he’s got a point. So Black Jesus was his way of confronting the demand of the music industry for young black artists to portray themselves as thugs and hustlers, and offer them something different to aspire to? Well, pal, white singers who suggest they are the son of God are likely to get a few raised eyebrows, too – but, yes, you’re right, the music industry does seem to have a particular favoured role for the young, black man.

Glastonbury often gets accused these days of playing it safe, from those nostalgic for the risk taking days of the past (presumably they mean years such as 1985, when Level 42 – the epitome of danger – headlined on the Sunday night). Booking Kanye West to headline is not the safe option. Will he interrupt his set to bring the world a lengthy diatribe on his views about any of the great range of topics upon which he has opinions, as he did at the Wireless festival last year? Will he choose to play one song over and over again, as he and Jay Z did with Niggas in Paris during the Watch the Throne tour? Will he engage in some ludicrous and borderline offensive piece of staging, as he did with the Yeezus tour, which featured both the confederate flag and an appearance by Jesus, attracted the opprobrium of both the liberal left and the religious right?

Kanye West isn’t just a pop star. He’s an event. Having him headline Glastonbury – in front of huge live crowd and a massive TV audience – makes Saturday night at Glastonbury the pop event of the year. This will be a spectacle. And who doesn’t want spectacle at a festival?