How can one man have all that power? Kanye West came through the Pan Am Games and seemingly annoyed and invigorated spectators simultaneously. The brashness of Kanye was a perfect end to the Games where Canada, and more specifically Toronto, stated its claim that they are playing for keeps.
It didn’t matter that his mic cut out due to "technical difficulties," causing Yeezy to throw it up in the air and walk off stage. It will be remembered as a footnote akin to the men’s 4×100 metre team not winning the gold because of a lane violation but smashing competitors in the process. It’s almost fitting Kanye’s performance ended in controversy as his announcement started with controversy.
I never understood the 50,000-person petition from the anti-Kanye crowd, who felt only Can-Con acts were appropriate. Is he still being publicly tried for interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech in 2009? He may have had some public missteps but they centre around being too honest without a filter. There is nothing morally troubling such as criminal acts to seriously protest.
You may not like his music but they have yet to find a Super Bowl halftime act that everyone in the viewing audience enjoys. But when you hear Kanye is performing, you think Super Bowl, you don’t think Pan Am Games in Canada. His inclusion was affirmation that we were taking hosting seriously and one of the world’s biggest artists viewed the Games as a worthy platform. It did its job as ticket sales increased after he was announced as the closer.
In many ways that was the tenure of the balance of the Games. Before the festivities were over there was real talk that the 2024 Olympics wouldn’t be the nuisance that everyone wanted to avoid, but a chance for North America’s fourth largest city to flex its muscles. With the majority of the free shows in conjunction of the Games being standing-room only and the majority of the gold medal matches being sold out, the Pan Ams in Toronto wasn’t a city thinking "it’s too cool for amateur sport," as it was a city that decided "playing host is cool even if only to show off how much you like your home."
Canadian athletes were in many ways Kanye-sian in their defiant confidence. That’s what Andre De Grasse was, undeterred with slow starts using his drive and acceleration phase to take gold medals. Jamal Murray is humble but didn’t shy from the moment playing against pros and stealing the spotlight even though he just finished high school. That’s what Kia Nurse was with the audacity to dare to be great and finish the same way she proudly strut through the closing ceremony as the flag-bearer most Canadians didn’t know two weeks ago. No coincidence all three of those Canadian athletes are Kanye fans and had a bit of his bravado in their own oncourt exploits; they truly were "monsters."
Seeing our athletes in all types of disciplines celebrate with gusto seemed "so Kanye." Nice to detour from the narrative of Canadians as the "aww shucks," docile hosts; we can still be polite and powerful.
That’s what our closing ceremony showed. It wasn’t Wayne Gretzky in a pickup truck in the rain, or the Olympic Cauldron failing to light up like we saw in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Games. It was pyrotechnics off the side of the CN Tower so beautiful there was no need to ruin it with an Instagram filter. It was a spot on production where 510 volunteers in costume and 3,235 athletes put on a show worthy of a Tony Award. No different than the record 217 medals Canada won during the two weeks was an exhibition of the fact that when we care, we can put on a show with the best in the world.
Kanye didn’t mail it in; he put on a 13-minute set where he miraculously remembered to filter most of his expletives. It didn’t matter that the lights weren’t off for most of the performance as he asked for them to be brought up to illuminate the fact that the athletes were enjoying every moment of it on the floor in plain sight.
He was a symbol that the Pan Am Games aren’t just an afterthought where the conversation is just about congested traffic. The conversation online was about if Hova would join him on stage, not the HOV lane. On Sunday night Kanye West, Pan Am 2015 and Toronto were all trending on Twitter and Google. Going head to head with prime-time Sunday TV and a CFL game, the tweets online weren’t about Big Brother, but about the big performance.
It was evident before he walked on stage with his Adidas Yeezy Boosts, but his inclusion did give a force multiplier-like boost to the perception that when Canada decides to put on a show, both on and off the playing fields, we can do it with equal parts swag and success. The 40,000 spectators chanted “Kanye” well into the night as he walked off stage. They’ve chanted "Go Canada Go" for the better part of two weeks.