Spacebar celebrates Kanye West on the date of his canceled Orlando show

At 11 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 6, I was scheduled to be one of thousands reaching up to Kanye West as he performed atop a suspended platform, mere feet above our heads. This unfortunately did not come to fruition, as last month Kanye canceled the remainder of his “Saint Pablo Tour” due to exhaustion — days later he was checked into UCLA Medical Center for severe paranoia and psychosis, but he has since been released. Instead of staying in to mope, local Ye fans Jackie De Couto, Cesar Fernandez and Matthew Ventura teamed with Spacebar and Talk Yo Shit DJ FIONA to, as the Facebook event stated, “celebrate the artist and his vision with a themed listening party, while honoring the same date all of us have already set aside.”
The faithful arrived in droves, decked in Kanye merchandise new and old, for a bittersweet night celebrating their messiah’s career. Deep cuts (“We Don’t Care”) were met with the same enthusiasm as Kanye’s Top 40 hits (“Heartless”). If anything, those tracks were more celebrated on the dancefloor as they made the evening feel more legitimate (even the often dismissed skits from his early albums received praise). In between tracks spanning College Dropout to The Life Of Pablo, Kanye-produced tracks like Jay Z’s “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” gave the full scope of his sonic genius. The Spacebar itself was illuminated in the same orange glow as the “Saint Pablo Tour” set design, and a mock stage flashed above FIONA.

In a surreal turn of events, the night ended prematurely after a car accident occurred right outside Spacebar and sent party-goers spilling into the streets. Ending aside, We STILL Love Kanye proved to be exactly what Orlando Kanye supporters needed, a commemorative proxy that left all wishing a full recovery for the singular artist.

This article appears in Dec 7-13, 2016.