Kanye West closed out the MTV VMA's with a solid performance of his first single from his new album called "Love Lockdown". MTV VMA's sucked. It showed how generic Pop mainstream music is going. Britney Spears 3 awards made it look like MTV is kissing her butt for the
embarrassing debacle of 2007.

I guess MTV realizes that Spears and K.West are going to have hype and interest no matter what MTV does. So they might as well start to become their media bitches. Mad respect for Kanye. Britney Spears is the "nastier" precursor to the Disney-Pop that has become the dominant look and sound of MTV. But, to her credit, Spears is looking mighty hot once again. Kanye is just... Kanye. He's doing what he wants when he wants... and MTV's decided they'd be stupid to not go along for the ride.

"Love Lockdown" is dope. Kanye singing?! Damn... that should suck... but I'm really feeling it. Also the Nihon-jin in me (that's Japanese dude... for you non-Japanese speakers/readers) was really feeling the Taiko drums on back up. When I'd see Taiko performances at my Japanese American community center I was baffled that no one integrated them into a hip-hop peformance. They look dope and they sound POWERFUL. Yet again, Kanye wisely borrows this element from Japanese culture and fashionably brings it to the Pop Mainstream.

More Pics can be found on K.Wests BLOG.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW A VIDEO OF THE PERFORMANCE ON MTV.COM.