This followed his mentor Jay-Z having appeared for the program a year and a half prior, and West gave away around 80 tickets to his fans through a contest on his website.
[2] The episode was taped at Los Angeles' Sony Stages on the scheduled date and lasted for three hours, although it was cut to 90 minutes for the premiere via VH1 on February 28, 2009.
[3][4][5] In an interview with Reuters, executive producer Bill Flanagan said that some of West's stories were cut down due to time constraints and he "tried to get the essence of his comments".
He also asked the audience to give Chris Brown "a break" after the singer's assault on Rihanna, although there was a lack of detail available regarding the incident at the time.
[10] He was backed by the theatrics of an elaborate light show,[8][12] featuring visual projections on the background screen and illumination from a floating square overhead.
[10][16] His performance of "Amazing" relied on a piano figure and he complained about media coverage in the middle of the song, apologizing for his behaviour at award shows.
[10][13] West followed with a medley of "Heartless and "Pinocchio Story", pretending to look for his heart on the floor and calling out fellow rapper 50 Cent as he sang.
[20] In a highly positive review, Leah Greenblatt from Entertainment Weekly found West to be someone who is rarely boring and wrote that rather than telling stories, he lets out "his id onto the stage in rambling, free-form fragments".
[12] Rabin expressed the viewpoint of the stories being rambled to incompletion and ultimately dull, while he praised West for sounding "tight, accomplished, and polished to a blinding sheen" at certain points.
[12] Similarly, Scott Plagenhoef from Pitchfork observed "less storytelling and more golden age of entertainment-type stuff" from West, feeling that he "should have had a highball in his hand".
[8] Zoladz felt that the album focuses on West's antics and shows his "crazy at its most potent", although was impressed by the lighting and "tremendous backing band".