Kanye just couldn’t stay away

Andy Pemberton

• Last Updated: November 03. 2009 3:37PM UAE / November 3. 2009 11:37AM GMT

Kanye West is back.

Despite saying that he was going to take some time off, the controversial hip-hop star has returned with We Were Once a Fairytale, a 14-minute film that he made with Spike Jonze, the director of Where the Wild Things Are.

The film provoked a stir when it was posted online last week. Was West trying to tell us something?

In the movie, the rapper misbehaves in a nightclub, at one point vomiting rose petals into a toilet before carving open his stomach. An alien creature bursts out, takes a tiny knife from West, then stabs himself in the chest. The New York Times called it “a 14-minute phantasmagoria”. New York Magazine said of the film: “The metaphor is a little obvious, but this video was worth the wait.”

Scheduled for release on September 9, it was not until October 18 that the video was posted on West’s official website, www.kanyeuniverse city.com. But after two days and more than one million views, West removed it with no explanation, just a note that read: “Sorry, I had to take it down.” Fans were confused.

Jonze, who said he “loves” West, rushed to explain that their video had been posted by mistake. An incomplete copy of the film, which Jonze intended to sell on iTunes, leaked on to the internet days before West posted it on his blog.

“This is the first time it’s happened to me,” Jonze told The New York Times on October 22. “It is a weird feeling, like: ‘Wait a second – I wasn’t ready to put that out! That’s mine. Uh, no, I guess it’s not mine anymore.’”

But then the pair uploaded a follow-up clip titled RIP Kanye West. In the short film, West, 32, and Jonze, 40, are arguing on the set of We Were Once a Fairytale. Jonze tells West to stop texting and pay attention and then slaps him hard. The clip rose to top trend status on the micro-blogging platform Twitter.

Not content with an excursion into film, West has also extended his brand into the world of publishing. He has two books hitting the shelves: Glow in the Dark, a 288-page collection of self-penned notes to accompany his last tour, and Through the Wire, an illustrated book of lyrics.

This recent flurry of activity runs counter to the rap star’s recent public statements. He had promised to take some time off to “just analyse how I’m going to make it through the rest of this life, how I’m going to improve” after he was branded a “jackass” by the US President Barack Obama for snatching the microphone from the 19-year-old country singer Taylor Swift as she accepted an award at the MTV Video Music Awards show in September.

And West seemed to mean it too, explaining that his outlandish behaviour had been triggered by his failure to properly mourn his mother, Donda, who died in 2007 aged 58 following complications from plastic surgery that West paid for.

“I’ve never taken the time off to really – you know, just music after music and tour after tour,” he weepily told the chat show host Jay Leno.“I’m just ashamed that my hurt caused someone else’s hurt.”

Following the Swift incident, West refused to appear at the BET Hip Hop Awards and was rumoured to have travelled to India to “get his head together”. He abruptly pulled out of his Fame Kills tour with Lady Gaga and dumped plans to launch Pastelle, the clothing line he had been working on for a year. “He eventually created enough clothing to shoot what appeared to be a look book,” noted New York Magazine. “Why all of a sudden take it all back?”

Now West is asking himself the same question. Along with releasing the movies and books, he is currently posting on his blog five or six times a day. He clearly feels his mourning time is up. But is the world ready for the return of Kanye West? A post on his blog suggests not.

“Regroup, hit the lab, stay out of the limelight for a month and let others live,” it advised him. “You are not destined to have your hand in everything! No one is!”