Confirmed: Kanye Was Being a Jerk at the Grammys

So it turns out that Kanye West jumping onstage last night at the Grammy’s wasn’t just a tongue-in-cheek reference to his 2009 hijacking of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards. He thought Beyonce should have won then, and he thinks Beyonce should have won Album of the Year last night.

Instead, the Grammy went to Beck for Morning Phase, his 12th studio album.

Kanye jumped onto the stage with a rather horrified Beyonce and Jay-Z looking on, was close to the microphone and then walked off as Beck beckoned the stage-crasher to come back and join him.

Kanye’s rant after the show:

The Grammys, if they want real artists to come back, they need to stop playing with us. We ain’t gonna play with them no more. Flawless, Beyoncé video, and Beck needs to respect artistry and he should have given his award to Beyoncé.

And at this point, we tired of it because what happens is, when you keep on diminishing art, and not respecting the craft, and smacking people in the face after they deliver monumental feats of music, you’re disrespectful to inspiration. And we as musicians have to inspire people who go to work every day and they listen to that Beyoncé album, they feel like it takes them to another place, then they do this whole promotional event that, they’ll run the music over somebody’s speech, the artist, because they wanted commercial advertising.

And by the way, I got my wife, I got my daughter, and I got my clothing line, so I’m not gonna do nothing to put my daughter at risk, but I am here to fight for creativity. That’s the reason I didn’t say anything tonight. But y’all know what it meant when ‘Ye walks on that stage.

Kanye was nominated for, but didn’t win, Album of the Year in 2005, 2006 and 2008.

Beck, who said after the show that he thought Beyonce was going to win, has absolutely no hard feelings toward Kanye.

“I was so excited he was coming up! He deserves to be on that stage,” the singer-songwriter told reporters about Kanye West rushing the stage before his acceptance speech Sunday.

… “You can’t please everybody. I still love him and think he’s genius,” he said. “I aspire to what he does. How many great records has he put out in the last five years, right?”

And Beck’s album is good. I was working at Tower Records back in the day when 1996’s Odelay, which was nominated then for Album of the Year, was released. It’s fascinating to watch an artist capable of moving his music in so many directions evolve.