Kanye's performance plagiarism

Kanye West has made a habit of sampling other artists' music, each time garnering himself a new hit song. He's got "Gold Digger," which features a sample of Ray Charles' "I Got A Woman" and there's also "Diamonds from Sierra Leone," which sampled Shirley Bassey's 1971 hit "Diamonds are Forever." These were both great songs and that's all well and good.

But if nothing else, West has always prided himself on having a unique star persona and stage show. That's why it was pretty shocking to see him take the stage at the Grammy's Wednesday with a performance that completely ripped off his fellow nominee, Gwen Stefani.

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You might have caught her music video (pictured above) or you might just know that she'd been performing her mega-hit "Hollaback Girl" all over the place since summer 2005 in full marching band garb with a full marching band behind her. She did it on SNL, she did it on MTV and other places too. It was clever and fitting because the song had a schoolyard feel to it.

So when West and Jamie Foxx performed "Gold Digger" at the Grammy's wearing marching band uniforms (and accompanied by marching bands), I had to wonder what made West steal her idea.

Maybe he saw that it worked for Stefani, or maybe he just didn't know he was committing performance plagiarism. But I, for one, wanted the cameras to pan over to Stefani's seat during West and Foxx's performance because honestly, anybody who's walked past a TV in the past few months was thinking the same thing.

You could argue that maybe the marching band thing isn't that original of an idea to begin with, or that I'm just trying to knock Kanye West down a peg. Well you'd be right on both counts, but especially the latter because there's only so much Kanye-cockiness I can take. The truth is, the conceited attitude is what turns Grammy voters and even fans off. I'm willing to be a bit more patient with it.

I have both of his CDs in my iPod and I think "Spaceship" is quite possibly my anthem. I just wish he'd tone down the cocky a tad and that he would've rocked the '06 Grammy's in a completely new way -- one that hadn't been done before.