It’s been a while since Kanye West went on a big huge rant about nothing, which I guess is what happens when you get married to Kim Kardashian: You go quiet for a bit and try to make everyone forget that ever happened. Except here comes RadarOnline to report that Kanye went on a big, braggy rant at the Cannes Lions Festival, one of the biggest artistic movie festivals out there, about how great his and Kim’s Instagram wedding photo was.
“I’ll tell you a little story about the kiss photo that my girl put up,” he told the gathered crowd at the event. “We — and this was pissing my girl off during the honeymoon. She was exhausted because we worked on the photo so much because Annie Leibovitz pulled out of the wedding, because I think she was scared by the idea of celebrity.”
“But Annie pulled out,” he said of the Vogue shooter, who works almost exclusively with other celebrities and did the couple’s Vogue cover. “I was like, ‘I still want my wedding photos to look like Annie Leibovitz’s photos,’ and we sat there and worked on that photo for four days, because the flowers were off-color and stuff like that.”
“Can you imagine telling someone who wants to just Instagram a photo, who’s the number one person on Instagram, ‘We need to work on the color of the flower wall?’ Or the idea that it’s … How important Kim is to the internet,” he bragged. “And the fact the number one most-liked photo [on Instagram] has a kind of aesthetic was a win for what the mission is, which is raising the palette.”
“I’ve been brought up in this way,” he insisted, “ I think I can’t work with anyone that isn’t number one: Jay Z, Kim, Obama, Apple is one, Samsung isn’t.” Because, he explained, “Trends come and go, but cool is forever.”
And for anyone rolling their eyes at his rant, he had some choice words: “If people are saying you’re wrong, it’s probably a good sign you’re genius … Rome wasn’t built in a day; the Internet is our new Rome. Empower the best content creators or f**k you!”
Except here’s the thing: First, it’s a photo on the web. An INSTAGRAM picture. If you won the National Geographic Photo Contest, that would be impressive, but you’re celebrating the fact that you’re photo got the most likes in a sea of hipster nonsense and crappy memes. And secondly, let’s be honest here, the only reason it got that many likes was because of name recognition. It’s like being born on third base and pretending you hit a triple. If you want to empower content creators? Sure, absolutely, that I can get behind. But let’s not pretend that an Instagram picture of two celebrities getting married is a cultural milestone.