(Roc-A-Fella/MTV)

Kanye Sinatra entertains in his own way

Other musicians have come through the VH1 Storytellers format humanised by opening up in front of an audience, chattily explaining their inspirations between songs – Bruce Springsteen even joked about overusing a rhyming dictionary in his early days. We couldn’t expect the same of someone as egomaniacal as Kanye West, but even so, it’s surprising when he says things like, “My greatest pain in life is I will never be able to see me perform.” There aren’t many people as conscious of how special they are as West. That’s far from the weirdest of his banter, which also includes a break in the middle of Amazing to list amazing people like, no joke, O. J. Simpson. Wearing a pink shirt and black bow-tie, he stands in a neon tanning bed surrounded by an orchestra in black helmets who look like a bob-sled team from the nation of Daft Punk. The orchestral live versions sometimes work – Flashing Lights is unharmed – and sometimes don’t, as with a disappointing rendition of Touch The Sky. A lot of the tracks here are cuts from 808s And Heartbreaks, but it’s a sparse selection all-round. A three-hour concert has been trimmed down to an hour-long DVD/CD, excising a lot of songs and some of his insane blather. Even shortened, it’s not easy to watch. There’s a kind of fascination to it, like watching an autopsy video, but I wouldn’t call it pleasant. There’s a guy in the front row while West does his “You could be anywhere in the world tonight, but you wouldn’t be as happy as you are right now” spiel who looks dubious about that. He looks like he can think of a lot of places he would be happier right now.

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JODY MACGREGOR

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