On the first night of Passover, Ye \u2014 the superstar rapper, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, the man who once threatened in a tweet to go \u201cdeath con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE\u201d \u2014 performed for what looked like a full house at Inglewood\u2019s SoFi Stadium.<\/p>\n
The first of a pair of Ye concerts this week at the gigantic NFL palace, Wednesday\u2019s show came two months after the 48-year-old musician apologized for his past antisemitic comments, attributing his behavior to injuries he sustained in a 2002 car crash.<\/p>\n
More to the point, perhaps, the gig came on the heels of last week\u2019s release of \u201cBully,\u201d Ye\u2019s first solo LP since 2022\u2019s \u201cDonda 2,\u201d which the trade journal Hits predicts<\/a> will enter the album chart at No. 2, right behind the latest from BTS.<\/p>\n In other words, Ye\u2019s trying to get a comeback going \u2014 and, to judge by the very warm reception he got at SoFi, he might prove successful.<\/p>\n Wednesday\u2019s concert \u2014 Ye\u2019s first full live performance in Los Angeles since a 2021 gig<\/a> at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum \u2014 lasted about two hours and featured guest appearances by Don Toliver and Ye\u2019s 12-year-old daughter, North.<\/p>\n The rapper performed atop an enormous dome set up on the stadium\u2019s floor; for much of the night, a spinning globe was projected onto the dome so that Ye looked to be \u2014 well, on top of the world is how he might\u2019ve put it.<\/p>\n Early in the set, Ye asked his technical crew to \u201cmake the earth move slower,\u201d which somebody made happen.<\/p>\n Accompanied by what sounded like prerecorded backing tracks, Ye opened with a handful of songs from \u201cBully,\u201d which seeks a middle ground between the soulful, sample-heavy sound of his early work and the gloomier, synthed-up vibe of more recent records like \u201cDonda<\/a>\u201d and his and Ty Dolla Sign\u2019s \u201cVultures 1\u201d and \u201cVultures 2.\u201d<\/p>\n After an extended version of the new album\u2019s \u201cAll the Love,\u201d he reached back for an assortment of oldies, including all-timers like \u201cFather, Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1,\u201d \u201cMercy,\u201d \u201cBlack Skinhead\u201d and \u201cCan\u2019t Tell Me Nothing,\u201d which he stopped and restarted after telling the crew to mute the music during the song\u2019s line about getting his money right so that he could hear the crowd join in.<\/p>\n He also did his and Jay-Z\u2019s collaborative 2011 hit \u2014 the one whose title contains the N-word \u2014 which made you think about how he and his old frenemy are both mounting comebacks at the same time, Jay-Z as a kind of retiree\u2019s victory lap and Ye in hopes of moving past a mess of his own making.<\/p>\n Other classics Ye performed included \u201cBound 2\u201d and \u201cHeartless,\u201d to name two of his most emotionally potent songs, though thick smoke in the stadium made it hard to feel a sense of connection with him as he moved back and forth atop the dome.<\/p>\n