People Were Baffled By Kanye West’s Strange Rolling Loud Performance, Where He Apparently Just Walked Around While Pre-Recorded Music Played

I know I said we at Uproxx do not engage in schadenfruede when I wrote about another Kanye West fail earlier this week, but the man is truly testing the limits of that policy this week.

Now, you’d think anyone who has followed the mercurial producer’s moves for the past, like, decade would understand the inherent risk involved in unskeptically engaging with anything he announces, but Roling Loud attendees were given the “Emperor’s New Clothes” treatment firsthand at his “special performance” last night in Inglewood, California.

Billed to perform a “headlining” performance ahead of the festival proper, Kanye instead pulled a Frank Ocean at Coachella, instead just sort of standing around onstage while a DJ played his last album, Vultures 1. Fans were… let’s just say “displeased.”

“I’m not gonna say the show sucked but I just thought going to a Kanye show would be different,” wrote one disgruntled fan on Twitter.

“So Kanye is lipping the whole performance tonight,” observed another, with pretty obvious disappointment.

And look — I said Uproxx wouldn’t engage in any schadenfruede, but fans on Twitter certainly did. “No way Kanye just dipped after playing vultures 😂 at rolling loud,” one joked. “At this rate he gonna stop showing up at all and tell his fans to imagine him performing, they’ll be like ‘I see him.'” Again… The Emperor’s New Clothes. (They’re already doing it, btw).

The disdain for Kanye’s latest anti-performance was palpable, but something tells me folks will keep coming back for more — sunk costs and all. It definitely sucks to see a first ballot hip-hop hall-of-famer turn into …. this, but the good news is, there are plenty of other artists out there to enjoy who haven’t become Nazi apologists. Check out some more reactions below.