Rather than the flurry of boos and bottles of piss that one expected to be present at Kanye’s greeting party, celebratory fireworks are launched.
‘Harder Better Faster Stronger’ rings out, and Kanye is silhouetted by the somewhat avant garde lighting. There isn’t a flurry of folks brushing past us like the media promised, but rather a celebratory marching band as the hit parade walks by. Fireworks are launched into the sky from amongst the crowd as ‘Black Skinhead’ bounces. There’s more challenges in Kanye’s aperitifs than in the often-malignant sets we see on the Pyramid Stage.
The set is a medley and soundtrack of the turn of the century, with the likes of ‘Stronger’, ‘Jesus Walks’ and more from his breakthrough record College Dropout colouring the evening. He even takes us precariously back to the Eighties’ briefly too, with a vignette cover version of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’: did he just fuck up the lyrics? Nerves, surely, for one of music’s most divisive and acrimonious fixtures.
After dipping into his more experimental, challenging new material for the most entrancing chapter of the set, he dips into ‘FourFiveSeconds’, his 2015 collaboration with Paul McCartney and Rihanna.
Media egos and character curves seem so utterly ridiculous as he powers through the pertinent ‘All Day’ with his eyes clasped shut. He does, however, offer them the sound bite they wanted by screaming that he ‘is the greatest rockstar in the world’. If there’s ever a time you should maybe have an ego, this might be it. He launches into ‘Gold Digger’.
Kanye remains to be an embodiment of the challenging symbol that Glastonbury is, and why it will always stay relevant.
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