Kirk A. Bado

kbado@tennessean.com

The tweet went out 9:52 p.m. Sunday telling the world that in less than an hour, Kanye West would have a showing of the notorious music video for his song "Famous" in downtown Nashville.

And like most things produced by the eccentric West, the fans that crowded the street at the corner of Broadway and South 2nd Avenue were there not for the substance of the video, but to say they were there for the spectacle of it.

West put on several public showings of his latest controversial music video over the weekend in several cities around the world , including Dallas, London, Baltimore, Berlin and Detroit. The video premiered on June 24 and features several lifelike figures of celebrities, including Tennessee native Taylor Swift, naked and sleeping under the same white bed sheet.

Layered under the din of Lower Broadway and with country music leaking from the honky-tonks, a plain white Enterprise van pulled into the parking lot of Bootleggers Inn off Second Avenue behind a hot dog stand around 10:30 p.m. Three workers began setting up a projector from the back of the van, with giant speakers flanking its sides. There was no sign, no indication that these men were doing anything other than setting up for the Fourth of July celebration the next day.

Already a few eager fans began crowding around the van, all looking at their phones to double check the tweet West had sent, assuring themselves that they indeed were in the right place.

“Is this supposed to be it?” one fan said as he looked up from his phone.

The crowds eventually started to draw a few curious onlookers. An older man walked up to a college-age fan standing by the van and asked what they were setting up.

“It’s going to be a big Kanye show!” the fan said.

The projector sprang to life around 10:56 p.m. and the logo for TIDAL, the exclusive music streaming service that West partially owns, appeared on the wall of the Cotton Eyed Joe gift store across the street from the van. Patrons started leaving bars and joining the growing crowd on the street and sidewalk in front of the projector. The crowd eventually swelled to around 100 people.

Once the video started, the crowd fell silent as they strained their necks to the second floor of the gift store as images of the famous naked bodies took up a whole wall. The video depicts incredibly lifelike figures of West, his wife Kim Kardashian West, George W. Bush, Anna Wintour, Donald Trump, Amber Rose, Ray-J, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Bill Cosby, Caitlyn Jenner and Taylor Swift all naked under the same white bedsheet. Shot like a found footage tape, the video is supposed to be Kanye’s meditation on our obsession with fame. The curious and confused alike stood in silence.

While some showings had reports of loud boos when Bush or Trump on screen, the Nashville audience stood in silence. The passive audience stared and took pictures and videos of the production, with some asking aloud, “When would Kanye come out?”

West would not be there in person, but that would not be the only disappointment the fans would experience. The sound kept cutting in and out of the video, and at one point a shaved ice banner blocked the projector. There was a point in the 10-minute video when the music cuts for a solid five minutes, replaced with the sound of snoring. Thinking that the video had experienced an irreversible technical error, some in the crowd left.

Those who stayed experienced the chorus one last time and watched a slow pan, wide-angle shot of all the “stars” of the video in the same bed. When the video ended, there was no clapping or cheering. While the assembled crowd was left asking if there was more, the workers quickly packed the van and moved on to the next site. The entire production lasted less than 50 minutes.

There was no big fanfare. The crowd gradually dispersed, going either home or to the bars wondering what they just saw.