Kanye West recently found Jesus.

We know this because he talked about it at length in the most boring ‘Carpool Karaoke’ (renamed ‘Airpool Karaoke’ because they were on a plane) ever to happen on James Corden’s show.

I think even Corden was hoping the plane would crash.

Anyway, it turns out that the choir that featured in that terribly dull PR stunt is also the choir from Kanye’s most recent project, a biblical opera titled Nebuchadnezzar.

So far the show hasn’t been very well received, but that isn’t surprising to anyone who got over the relentless idiocy that is Kanye a long time ago. The fact that he still has fans despite not producing anything even remotely interesting in the past decade is indicative of why we’re probably doomed as a species.

But you’re here to read about his ‘opera’, so I’ll hand things over to Cassie Da Costa from The Daily Beast who took a bus to the show, and then had to wait almost two hours for it to start.

Did the show deliver? Go on, Cassie:

The off-white choir began singing atop what resembled a large sand-colored design-y headband and a person in a glimmering purple robe began writhing and screaming on stage. At one-point, huge wooden tables were rolled out with provisions, à la the last supper.

Randomly, other choir members processed through the aisles silently, with smoke puffing up around them. Kanye read, positioned from somewhere I couldn’t see, passages directly from the Bible explaining the plot. It was less of an opera than a gospel performance with guided reading and elaborate stage fighting.

Da Costa describes a feeling of “numbing fascination” as she watched the show and more importantly, the people who came to see the show, none of whom “seemed invested in the event”.

The New York Times was also there to watch the spectacle unfold:

Being an operatic person doesn’t mean you’ll create a good opera. And “Nebuchadnezzar,” the passionate, puzzling work West billed as an opera — announced on Nov. 17 and performed at the Hollywood Bowl just seven days later, on Sunday — wasn’t really an opera, and it wasn’t really good.

What it was, more or less, was another of this year’s loud declarations of West’s born-again bona fides. Sitting off to the side of the stage and speaking with inflamed urgency, he read passages from the biblical Book of Daniel — the story of a mad king who finds God — as an enormous gospel choir milled around in pale gowns and wailed phrases in Latin.

Kanye has previously referred to himself like this, in case you’re wondering where he got the idea for the story:

“Jesus has won the victory because now the greatest artist that God has ever created is now working for him,” West said onstage at Joel Osteen’s Houston megachurch earlier this month.

Modest as always.

Let’s see some footage before we continue:

The production value looks almost nonexistent.

On to Rolling Stone who described the opera as follows:

It’s hard to overstate just how strange this will seem in the future: the most overexposed, overexamined musician of the century, who went broke clearing samples then got rich again selling shoes, booking a famous outdoor venue to stage an opera that is more or less a straight reading of the Old Testament, during which he never appears in the flesh. It was not, strictly speaking, effective art: too muddled and off-the-cuff to work as a narrative piece, too linear to read as a performance installation.

And finally, The Guardian:

It ended with West commanding the audience to stand and put their hands in the air to praise God. At risk of sounding cynical, this also guaranteed Nebuchadnezzar a standing ovation, with the audience already on their feet. West bounded on stage beaming and hugging the cast, as if he were responsible for a huge triumph, which in a weird way he was.

…If it didn’t work in artistic terms, as a bulwark against the argument that pop music is devoid of character and spectacle and crazed, foolhardy ambition, Nebuchadnezzar worked perfectly.

The grand finale, as it were:

Hell no.

This is one of those times when fame really is a monster.

Kanye, on behalf of all decent people, I beg you: please stop.

[sources:dailybeast&newyorktimes&guardian&rollingstone]