Kanye West was the musical guest on last night’s Saturday Night Live season premiere, and as literally everyone on the planet could’ve predicted, he did some weird shit that seemed specifically designed to generate news stories like, oh, this one. As noted in our review of the episode, his first song involved him dressing as a bottle of Perrier alongside Lil Pump, who was dressed as a bottle of Fiji, as they performed “I Love It.”
It was the sort of predictably strange thing that West always does these days, and there was probably some deep metaphor behind it about… the changing generations of fancy bottled water? Luckily, the good thing about Kanye West is that never have to wonder what he’s thinking for long, because he has no problem coming right out and telling you. At the end of the night, during what’s normally the goodbye moment with the host (Adam Driver), West brought up 070 Shake, Kid Cudi, and Ty Dolla $ign for a performance of “Ghost Town” that included West putting on a MAGA hat and pointing toward it during the line “I’m not gonna please everybody.”
Then, after getting cut off by the live broadcast, West stayed on stage and gave a political speech that the home viewers didn’t get to see. As reported by Pitchfork, the studio audience (which included Chris Rock) began snapping some clips of West defending his choice to support Trump and complaining that someone at SNL “bullied” him for wanting to wear his stupid MAGA hat. He reiterated his promise to run for president in 2020 and said that a lot of white people don’t understand how he can support Trump because “he’s racist,” but he added, “if I was concerned about racism I would’ve moved out of America a long time ago.” He also complained about the “one-sided” nature of the “liberal” media, so even if it wasn’t strictly pro-Trump, he was hitting some of the pro-Trump highlights.
Anyway, SNL cast member Chris Redd succinctly offered his opinion of the way the show ended on Twitter: