Guest Post: Spencer Ackerman

My roommate felt the following anecdote wasn't TPM-appropriate, so Josh Marshall's loss is The Atlantic's gain as I bring to you the following guest post on Kanye West's take on blogging:

New milestones in internet celebrity: bloggers carry more cache with Kanye West than do label representatives or golddiggers. Proof came backstage at Power 99's marathon hip-hop showcase headlined by 'Ye (as his blogger friends can call him) at Philadelphia's Wachovia Center last night. After the show ended, a popped-collar fiftysomething herded 20 of his teenage daughter's closest friends to the artist's dressing room. But just as the girls were mid-squeal to whoever's in their Five that they're backstage RIGHT NOW, dad's juice ran dry: the tour assistant tactfully informed the unlucky fellow that Kanye was too tired to entertain visitors. But he wasn't too tired to parlay with Sommer Mathis, editrix of DCist, and myself.

"I'll introduce you as two D.C. bloggers," said Toby, a friend of Sommer's who's directing the tour video. "Kanye is fascinated with the whole blogging thing." Sure enough, Toby led us into the dressing room, where Kanye, after a bravura performance, soothed his throat with a bottle of Vitamin Water. (It wasn't, for the record, Formula 50.) "'Ye," Toby said, "these are the D.C. bloggers I told you about."

With admirable cheer despite palpable exhaustion, Kanye seemed taken aback. "Wow," he said. "You guys get paid to blog?" Sommer and I looked at each other: yes, our expression said, we're living the dream. "How much time a day do you spend blogging?" About twelve hours, I said, though Josh Marshall knows that's not typically true. Sommer nodded affirmatively, since that is in fact her typical workday. "That's crazy," said the man who came back from a near-fatal accident to beat-making and rapping. Outside, the would-be golddiggers slunk off in dissatisfaction, as blogging triumphed over more maculate ambitions.

Postscript: In what I think was his first post-feud performance, 50 Cent showed up for a quick set, and he couldn't resist taking onstage potshots at his co-performers. 50, befitting his well-nourished sense of self, chided the audience for desiring the saccharine tones of Ne-Yo and the internet-phenomenon dance moves of Soulja Boy over his bullet-scarred ghetto authenticity, even pantomiming the first few steps of Crank Dat before demanding, "Am I still Number One?" The audience might have played along, but the fact remained that 50 was, technically, opening for Soulja Boy. What up, gangsta? The internet triumphs again.

--Spencer Ackerman