This past week, Kanye West, dressed in a sharp three-piece suit, performed a few tracks from his forthcoming album for small crowds of office workers at both Facebook and Twitter headquarters, bringing a little self-described poetry to white collar Palo Alto. Weird? Absolutely. But this is Kanye West we're talking about.
The performances were part of West's promotional tour of Silicon Valley. It's unclear what the tour was supposed to accomplish, except to further prove that no one ever tells West that something is a bad idea.
Performing at Facebook, West stands on top of a table in a strangely undecorated room. He describes his first rap as "more like a poem." Here's my best effort at a transcription:
You're my devil
You're my angel
You're my heaven
You're my hell
You're my now
You're my forever
You're my freedom
You're my jail
You're my lies
You're my truth
You're my war
You're my truce
You're my questions
You're my proof
You're my stress
And you're my masseuse
ma ma se, ma ma se, ma ma ku sa (!?)
Lost in this plastic life
Let's break out of this fake-ass party
turn this into a classic night
If we die in each other's arms
Still get laid in the afterlife
If we die in each other's arms
Still get laid, yeah
Kanye has a great sense of rhythm, of course. The poem is, at it's best, catchy and clever (I like the rhyme of "hell" and "jail") and at its worst it's ... well ... awkwardly borrowing from Michael Jackson. It's unclear from the video whether the Facebook employees in the audience ended up breaking out of their fake-ass party or if they returned to their desks to quietly continue programming.
West, for his part, looked a little nervous during the performance (it was the first time he'd performed new material in front of an audience in a long time). He was cheered on by a crowd that seemed generally charmed by him, or at least happy to be freed from staring into a computer screen to watch a rap icon spout gems like this one:
They try to tell me that aliens built the pyramids
I swear, life's a b*tch on her period
I'm pretty sure that's an HR violation.
The songs will reportedly be released on West's new album, "Good Ass Job." No word yet if he also plans to publish a book of "Good Ass Poems." But let's hope not.
WATCH Kanye West Perform at Facebook: