Beck’s win over Beyonce, Pharrell and some other worthies brought a typical response from faux anarchist Kanye West. Well, almost typical. This time Kanye only faked as if he were going to take the stage in protest. Yeesus quickly smiled and backed away, giving Beck back the stage. (Kanye was less gracious when he usurped the mic from Taylor Swift at the VMAs back in 2009.) Maybe it was the lordly presence of Prince, the greatest pop musician of the age, that humbled Kanye. (The humbling of Kanye West itself is a feat of staggering proportion–perhaps only the incomparable Prince could have chastised Kanye without a word.) Prince had just presented the award, seemingly without a bit of reluctance or disappointment in its winner.
Instead of being angry, the elfin Beck immediately asked Kanye to come back to the stage. “I need some help up here,” Beck implored the hip hop star. Kanye let it be. US Weekly reports that later Beck said, “I was just so excited he was coming up. He deserves to be on stage as much as anybody. How many great records has he put out in the last five years right?” Prince stood to the side, but his sunglassed eye on the events–in a celebrity version of the Heisenberg principle–certainly influenced the proceedings. No one, not even Kanye, feels comfortable disrupting something Prince is involved in.
