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While Kanye West fans expected to get provocative musical performances during his Saint Pablo tour, audiences this weekend got a few surprises.
The hip-hop icon stunned crowds at his Thursday show in San Jose when he announced that if he had voted in the election, he would have voted for Trump. The man famous for saying President George W. Bush didn’t care about Black people was summarily booed for that remark. He then went on to tell his audience that "This world is racist, OK? Let's stop being distracted to focus on that so much. It's just a ... fact. We are a racist country, period. Do not allow people to make us talk about that so... long... It's a racist ... country. And not one or the other candidate was going to instantly be able to change that because of their views.” He went on in this vein for about 25 minutes, according to people who were at the show.
On Saturday, he decided he liked ranting more than performing his music. After about 30 minutes worth of songs, he went on a rambling diatribe about Jay-Z, Beyonce, his own career, and the Video Music Awards. He launched into some deeply paranoid-sounding tangents, saying “Jay Z, call me, you still ain’t called me … Jay Z, I know you got killers. Please don’t send them at my head. Just call me. Talk to me like a man.”
At the end of the rant, he literally dropped his mic and left the stage, leaving stunned fans to wonder what just happened.
While some fans are worried that this behavior indicated some issues plaguing the musician, fellow rapper Snoop Dog was less than impressed. A video posted to Twitter shows Snoop watching incredulously and saying, “I smoke weed. Weed don’t make you do that. What the fuck is he on?”
To make the whole situation even weirder, as of this morning, reps for Kanye have reportedly announced that the remainder of the Saint Pablo tour is being cancelled. An official explanation has yet to be released, though "exhaustion" has been mentioned several times. Regardless of any specific reasons for cancelling, hopefully Kanye will take the time to rest up and get some help.
