Rapper Kanye West premiered his space opera-themed Glow In The Dark tour last night in Seattle, and he may have single-handedly reinvented hip hop performance for a science fictional era. Rapping alone, in front of screens that showed whirling backgrounds of space porn, he navigated through the story of an "astronaut on a mission to bring creativity back to Earth," says the L.A. Times.
io9 reader Garrison Dean was there, and here's how he summarizes Kanye's science fiction epic:
Basically his set of the night, by far the biggest part, was the story of him in his spaceship, crashlanding on a strange planet and trying to get off and get home. His only companion was his ship's onboard female computer Jayne, which sounded delightfully like the voice in Portal. She comforts him, tells him it will be ok and at one point offers her "services" to him during "Gold Digger" [becoming] two sexy golden painted ladies on his view screen. The set was nothing more than him on a minimal landscape with a moving video platform. Behind him was a massive screen that showed theme-centric videos of space, alien landscapes and fancy jeffries tube type thingies, and a smaller screen that had a computer interface that looked very much like the old Tron game cabinet (awesome). He never broke the central concept of the show, there were never any guests, he never showed clips from his videos (to my dismay, I was hoping he would show the Murakami Good Morning video) it was just him and his stage. The only mistep of the night seemed to be an naked anime female robot that flew down from the ceiling. It looked way cool yet hung there lifeless, it wasn't until later that I realized it was probably supposed to move when she talked as I had remembered that Henson Studios had built something for the show. Oh well, first night jitters I guess.
All in all, a very cool show and don't worry Kanye makes it back to earth after he is reminded by Jayne that he can guide his self through the darkness because he is the brightest star in the universe and he Glows in The Dark.
Here are Kanye's tour dates for the spring. Images by Garrison Dean.