Kanye West recently debuted his newest single "All Day" at the 2015 Brit Awards. The Awards ceremony, which was streamed live in the U.K. via ITV, was supposed to be censored for television. Censor Kanye West? Never a good idea.
Though reports say Kanye was told to perform a T.V.-friendly version of "All Day," he instead performed the song in its entirety, expletives and all. Though ITV attempted to selectively censor the performance, they ended up muting Kanye intermittently, while still allowing a few expletives to be heard.
Four-time Grammy Award-winning pop/soul artist Lionel Richie, who was a presenter at the Brit Awards, was not happy with the uncensored performance. His specific qualms had to do with Kanye's repeated use of the N-word. In an interview with Mirror, Richie stated: "Am I a fan of the N-word? Not coming from the 1960s and 70s. Whereas the new world has embraced it." He goes on: "I don't think it's OK for a black man to use the N-word. I don't like it--and I am a black man."
He also said today's music business is "more attention driven" than it was in his day and that Kanye's performance was driven by "shock value": "Kanye is giving us the generation shock value. How he carries on for the next 10 years we will see."
Though unsuccessful, do you think the attempts to censor Kanye were appropriate?
