Kanye West Intended to Perform at VMAs, Changed Plans Mid-Show

One of the highlights of this year’s MTV Video Music Awards was Kanye West‘s epic Video Vanguard Award acceptance speech. In an interview with Billboard, one of the show’s executive producers revealed that West was planning to perform a two-song medley. That plan changed multiple times during the show.

MTV executive Van Toffler said that the initial plan was for West to perform a medley, but then he decided to just talk. Then, during the show, it was determined that he would indeed perform. Just before West’s segment, producers learned that he might just do a speech. “We had to be prepared for both, so we had a track cued up,” Toffler said.

I think part of the magic and the unpredictability of the VMAs is that probably no other producers in TV would go into a show not knowing what their biggest award winner was going to do. We decided to be open to whatever Kanye wanted because he’s given us so many moments—unexpected ones. So we weren’t sure whether he would break into song or not. We had a track—he would have rapped to his biggest hits.

Toffler said the speech came as a surprise to both the show’s producers and West’s camp.

Read Martin Douglas’ op-ed “On Kanye West and Black Humility”.

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