What Happened During Kanye’s BBMA Performance Last Night?

A lot happened during Kanye's performance at last night Billboard Music Awards. First, as Kendall and Kylie Jenner introduced their brother-in-law, they were booed. Then the rapper took the stage with Allan Kingdom and Theophilus London for a rendition of "All Day," easily one of the most explosive songs of the year. When he first unveiled the song at the Brit Awards in February, he was accompanied by a slew of English rapper and two flame throwers, a visual to match the song's furious energy. Last night he upped the ante so that it looked like he was dancing around in a bonfire.

So far, so good! But as soon as Kanye got to his first verse, the audio started cutting out, and it mostly stayed out for the rest of the track. Kingdom and London eventually left the stage to let Kanye perform the Yeezus track "Black Skinhead" by himself. The audio stayed out of commission for parts of this song as well.

Kanye's performance was like: 🔊🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔊🔊🔇🔇🔊🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔊🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇🔇
— Win Again (@StevenHansonTM) May 18, 2015

Initially, there were a few competing theories about what went on. The first and most obvious, recently confirmed by Billboard, is that the rapper was censored heavily. A second possibility is that his microphone didn't work.

Kanye wasn't censored his microphone didn't work. No one could hear him #BBMAs pic.twitter.com/UB4td0vV6C
— Casey Neistat (@CaseyNeistat) May 18, 2015

This never made much sense, because there was some sound during the performance, and more sound during "Black Skinhead," which, relative to "All Day," features fewer words that might attract the ire of a censor. Also, there were no sound troubles earlier in the night.

IF KANYE'S MIC WASN'T WORKING, WHY DID THE MUSIC CUT OUT TOO?
— Lauren Nostro (@laurennostro) May 18, 2015

NME took the theorizing one step further, suggesting that Kanye purposefully chose not to perform a clean version of "All Day" as a "a protest against the cosy culture nature of white-wash mainstream music awards and their persistent failure to recognise black artists." Radio personality Charlamagne Tha God saw the reverse: censorship as another example of mainstream music awards literally silencing black artists.

Why is the network that has Black Ish bleeping out Kanye so much??? Let the nigga say nigga!!!!
— Charlamagne Tha God (@cthagod) May 18, 2015

I think they bleeping out most of Kanye's performance because they didn't want it to look so obvious when they bleeped Farrakhan's name out.
— Charlamagne Tha God (@cthagod) May 18, 2015

Some white powerful executive is sitting back saying so all we had to do was mute this Kanye guy the whole time?
— Charlamagne Tha God (@cthagod) May 18, 2015

I don't think that's fair to Kanye. Only person should have been muted tonight at various points in their performance was Mariah.
— Charlamagne Tha God (@cthagod) May 18, 2015

According to TMZ, a source who worked at the event said that Kanye did not do a dress rehearsal. "He's Kanye," the source added. "What are we supposed to do?"

Thumbnail Image: Ethan Miller / Getty Images