Friday Floetry X 2/15/08

This week for Friday Floetry I’m gonna skip the written word and simply post the spoken word via YouTube. I’m going with Kanye West’s performance at the 2008 Grammys this past Sunday night. Yesterday, I posted one of his acceptance speeches from the same event. Kanye performed his hit Stronger and Daft Punk (the group he “sampled” from, but has given credit to over and over again) made a special appearance. Mr. West then went into Hey Mama from his previous album, Late Registration. Hey Mama was basically written as a tribute to his mother a couple of years ago. She passed away very recently. Kanye added some new lyrics to the beginning and ending of the song. These new lyrics talk about how since he sees her in his dreams now, he can’t wait to fall asleep. With all that background knowledge, and seeing what appeared to be tears from the performer, I personally thought the latter performance was quite a poignant scene.

Anyway, a little different look and feel in terms of our weekly Floetry:




Taken from the 2008 Grammys version of Stronger and Hey Mama by Kanye West

Kanye West Grammys Speech

I was in a brown motherland, but not THE brown motherland this past Sunday, so I missed the Grammys. I had wanted to watch it since Kanye West had been nominated for a bunch of awards (I think second most nominations while Amy Winehouse had the most). Anyway, Kanye won 4 Grammys, bringing his total to 10 during his “career”. He also did a pretty amazing performance of Stronger with Daft Punk. From there he performed Hey Mama to which he added some new lyrics (his mother passed away recently).

I thought I would post his acceptance speech for Best Rap Album (Graduation). The speech was pretty interesting as he talked about how hip-hop is not dead, and then he spoke about his mother. The “music” (to get winners off the stage) started playing half way through his speech. When he started speaking about his mother, he said, “It would be in good taste to stop the music then”. Amazingly, they stopped the music. Then, people cheered, Kanye continued talking about his mother, then he spoke about how he would make her proud, and ended with “we run this”….

Enjoy…

Clemens v. Congress

The only thing I will say about the hearings from yesterday is that both Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee looked awful and that although Clemens takes a huge hit in the court of public opinion, he will probably skate on any charges in a court of law.