By: Amanda Anderson-Niles
Kanye West is set to drop his controversially titled album “Yeezus” this summer, and already he’s managed to rub plenty the wrong way with the way he’s premiering his new music from the next studio album. The rapper decided to debut one of his new tracks “New Slaves” all across the country by projecting an image on random buildings and simultaneously playing the music for fans. To keep things exciting, he has been randomly announcing the next locations that he has selected to debut the new track on his website, and although plenty of Hip Hop heads love the idea, it hasn’t been so praised by residents of these selected locations. In fact, Texas residents are furious with Kanye because he decided to use the Alamo, a historical site of Texas, to project his image and play the new track for anxious fans but didn’t get a permit to do so. The event was shut down before the music and projection even came through, considering the protesting of Texas residents. My San Antonio reports:
About 500 people gathered at the Alamo on Sunday night to see Kanye West’s new video, “New Slaves,” projected on the Texas shrine.
But it never happened.
The publicity stunt was marketed on the rapper’s website and on social media, well enough to draw a crowd mostly of West fans, a few protesters and a lot of law enforcement.
San Antonio police officers said no permit for the projection had been issued, and that if someone attempted to set up a projector, it would quickly be put to a stop. But it never reached that point.
Instead, folks showed up before 11:30 p.m., the showtime according to West’s website, and the crowd began to thin around midnight.
“We were never asked, and we were never told what was going to happen,” said Mark Loeffler, spokesperson for the Texas General Land Office, the Alamo’s caretaker. “It’s sad that people have such little respect for the Alamo.”
A handful of members of the Texas National Movement gathered to protest the attempt to beam the video on the Alamo’s facade.
“It’s very disrespectful to the people who died here,” TNM member Angie Alexander said.
I’m sure they were just mad because it was Kanye. He’s annoying but all he wanted to do was project his face on a building and play a song. It’s not that serious.
Cosign.
Much ado about nothing. These same people were just calling him racist on the webiste. So yeah, this sounds about right.
But why would he need a permit to project an image and play a song? They are doing too much. Well Kanye is too tho. LOL.
Oh Kanye…
I can understand their frustration. Kanye could have at least gotten permission from these various places to do this. But that’s too much like right.
Kanye was wrong here. You get things like this cleared before you do this. But I’m sure the real issue here is they just don’t like Kanye. A lot of southern whites think he’s racist for stating the truth about George Bush several years ago.
These Southern whites are just mad he had the balls to do what he did. LOL.
It’s my belief it would of been disrespectful to the historical shrine which is the Alamo.