Kanye West Booed After Heavily Censored Billboard Music Awards Performance
Kanye West closed out this year’s Billboard’s Music Awards with a performance of his latest SWISH single “All Day” alongside Theophilus London and Allan Kingdom, followed by his Yeezus track “Black Skinhead.” He was introduced by family members Kendall and Kylie Jenner, who were booed before announcing him as “a doctor” for his recent honorary doctorate degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Unfortunately, the performance was plagued by some overzealous censoring, which took most of the punch out of his set, but you can watch the whole thing below. Billboard reports that, like the Jenners, West was booed, too … although you can’t tell in this clip.
Earlier in the show Taylor Swift won eight awards and debuted her action-packed “Bad Blood (Remix)” video featuring new Kendrick Lamar verses and cameos from many of her celebrity friends.
Van Halen and Simple Minds (!) performed as well.
UPDATE: TMZ reports that Kanye did not do a dress rehearsal, so his profanity-laden performance came as a surprise. According to TMZ’s source from the Billboard Awards production crew, skipping your rehearsal is common among A-List stars — Mariah Carey skipped hers, too, for instance — but for some reason the producers expected Kanye to be on his best behavior. “He knew it was national TV,” the source said, adding, “He’s Kanye. What are we supposed to do?”