BEVERLY HILLS, Ca. Kanye West, the rapper who became infamous for his emotional tirades after losing entertainment industry awards, today lashed out at The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for failing to name him as one of its 2025 Fellows, the $800,000 prizes that have come to be known as “genius grants.”
“Gimme that thang!”
“Take a look at some of the washed-up nobodies and has-beens they give them prizes to,” West said to reporters as his entourage stormed the stage at the award ceremony. “Lot of ‘em look like the kids that the onliest club they could get into in high school was National Honor Society.”
Godzilla–or Kanye?
In 2006 West won several Grammy awards, including Best Rap Album, but failed to win Album of the Year. He flew into a rage and set off on a six-state rampage, destroying hydroelectric dams and refusing to pay tolls on turnpikes.
“I’m gonna teach them suckers not to mess with me!”
Later that year, when his “Touch the Sky” failed to win Best Video at the MTV Europe Music Awards, West organized a squadron of mercenaries and invaded Poland, a violation of national sovereignty that some feared might touch off a world war or price increases at kielbasa stands in West’s hometown of Chicago.
In 2009 West, who has compared himself to Jesus Christ and Moses, stormed the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards during Taylor Swift’s Best Female Video acceptance speech, setting the stage for a nuclear showdown if he didn’t win a MacArthur Fellowship. When this year’s list of recipients was announced, West flew into one of his signature hissy fits, singling out Craig Taborn, an “improvising musician and composer creating singular soundscapes through a virtuosic command of yadda yadda yadda,” according to the MacArthur Foundation’s website.
“I don’t know why he gets one and I don’t,” West said angrily. “I sold way more records than him.”
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