Kanye’s Taylor Swift VMA incident is one of hip-hop’s most talked about and infamous moments. The incident caught the attention of former President Barack Obama, who called Ye a “jackass” for getting on stage and saying Beyoncé should have won. The backlash Kanye got from the incident was overwhelming, causing Ye to go into isolation for over a year while he crafted what he called his “apology” album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. While most people look back and laugh and even agree with Ye, it looked like Ye’s career might’ve never recovered at the time. According to Consequence, Ye even thought his career was over after the incident.
In an interview with HipHopDX, Consequence shared some insight into Kanye’s mindset after the incident and thought that his actions cost him his career after “Power” failed to garner the same attention as other singles like “Gold Digger,” “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” and “Stronger.”
“To be 100 percent honest, ‘Power’ is ‘Power’ now, but that was the first record off that cycle, and ‘Power’ was kinda the first time it didn’t go all the way,” Cons said. “It didn’t do what ‘Gold Digger’ did, it didn’t do what ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’ did, and it didn’t do what ‘Stronger’ did.
“So it was kinda like, ‘What we gonna do?’ We ain’t got no out-the-gates smash. We got a single and they playing it, but it wasn’t that one. That’s how G.O.O.D. Fridays come about.”
He added that this situation made Kanye change his rollout strategy and ended up creating G.O.O.D. Fridays, where he would release a new song every Friday until MBDTF released.
“It doesn’t eradicate the Taylor Swift incident. It’s not big enough to K.O. that. Brands ain’t gonna forget that, touring ain’t gonna forget that, so forth and so on. So which put Kanye in a corner, and he came out flying with G.O.O.D. Fridays.”
