Kanye West celebrated the fourth of July on Friday with the first of two headline gigs at Wireless, and he wasn't holding back. On both nights, he launched into expletive-filled rants that totalled 15 minutes each and prompted boos from the London crowd.
"I'm not going to call no names, I’m not going to say Nike or anything," West said, pausing his rendition of "Runaway". "I'm not dissing Louis Vuitton, I'm not dissing the Gucci group and shit. I'm just saying, don't discriminate against me because I'm a black man, or because I'm a celebrity, to determine that I can't create. You know, no black guy or celebrity's making no Louis Vuitton nothing."
You can watch the full rant here. The part about the fashion industry starts at the 9:30 mark:
Kanye's beef with the fashion industry goes back to his 2013 interview with Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe, in which he famously claimed that he and his creative director Virgil Abloh presented Fendi with a design for leather jogging pants, only to be shot down by the label. In later interviews, he pointed the finger at classism and racism in the industry as the reasons why he has yet to successfully cross over into designing à la Victoria Beckham and The Row's Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.
The Wireless crowd weren't too impressed by any socio-political critique of entrenched fashion institutions, no matter how Autotuned they were. Yeezy's rants were met with boos and heckles, with hundreds of people upping and leaving on the first night alone. But booing Kanye ranting at a Kanye concert is like booing Prince for launching into a 15-minute guitar solo. Kanye's ego has always been his life's greatest work; and what better way to honour that than a trademark rant?
