Despite not being in attendance, the Grammy Awards turned out to be a pretty successful night for Kanye West.
Kanye was honored twice at Sunday night’s ceremony in Las Vegas, taking home awards for tracks from his 10th studio album, Donda.
“Hurricane,” Kanye’s song with The Weeknd, was crowned Best Melodic Rap Performance, and he and Jay-Z also went on to win Best Rap Song for their collaboration “Jail,” meaning that the two rappers are now tied for the most wins for a hip-hop artist ever, with a total of 24 Grammys each.
However, Kanye himself was not there to claim his record-breaking awards in person, having been caught up in a ton of controversy in recent months.
In case you missed it, on March 19, a representative for Ye confirmed that an unannounced performance had been scrapped from the ceremony due to his “concerning online behavior.” The spokesperson corroborated earlier reports that Kanye had received a phone call from the Recording Academy informing him that he would no longer be allowed to perform at the show.
This news hardly came as a surprise to many fans given that Kanye was facing intense criticism following a string of concerning and harassing Instagram posts shared throughout February and March — the majority of which were directed towards his ex-wife Kim Kardashian and her new partner, Pete Davidson.
And while the representative did not specify the exact details of the decision to pull Kanye’s performance, many have speculated that the final straw was his comments directed at The Daily Show anchor Trevor Noah, who also hosted last night’s Grammys ceremony.
