Kanye West Clarifies His Remarks, Says Beck Respects Artistry After All
After almost interrupting Beck’s acceptance speech for Album of the Year at this past weekend’s Grammys, Kanye West delivered some harsh words for the ‘Morning Phase’ singer-songwriter, saying he didn’t “respect artistry” and should relinquish his award to Beyonce, who was also nominated. After some blowback for the comments, West has attempted to clarify the matter, saying that Beck does in fact “respect artistry” and even suggesting the two should play a pick-up game of basketball (now that’s something we would like to see).
“Obviously Beck is one of the most respected artists and he respects artistry,” he said in an interview with Ryan Seacrest (via Mashable). “But I felt – and this is my opinion and he’s his own man and he’s not wrong and we’ll still go play basketball and stuff [unless] he doesn’t want to do it – but I felt that even though the Grammys sometimes gives awards to people who you wouldn’t think should win in the category, as a respect to artists, we mention the other artist’s name in our speech.”
“Beck is one of the nicest guys and one of the most respected musicians in the game,” West added. “So, there’s nothing that I want to do as a fellow musician to disrespect him in any way.”
Afterward, he went on to explain that his rant after the show was merely his “jolt of truth” – he just had to get it out there, admitting that “Kanye just goes on being an a--hole to everyone.”
West also revealed that almost stage crashing Beck's speech was originally intended to be a joke regarding the time he interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV VMAs.
“You know, what I really wanted to do is just joke around about what had happened before, but I just really didn’t want to take away from Beck’s moment or the time he’s having to talk,” he explained. “So I just walked back down because you know, it was kind of a joke like the Grammys themselves.”
In the interview, West also revealed that he and the subject of his first-ever award show stage crash, Taylor Swift, have made amends – enough so that they may be heading into the studio together for a collaboration. Does this mean in another five years we can expect a Beck-Kanye collab? On a scale of one to Beck and Kanye West playing basketball, we would really, really like to hear what that would sound like.