Eileen Zhao
SOCIOL 167
Assignment 5: “Imma Let You Finish”
(Kanye West) Meme
The
meme, “Imma Let You Finish,” became popular in 2009 after Kanye West
interrupted Taylor Swift’s VMA award acceptance speech for Best Female Video at
the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. When Taylor Swift stepped up to the podium to
accept her award, Kanye West also came up on stage and took the microphone from
her to say:
“Yo
Taylor, I’m really happy for you, Imma let you finish but Beyonce had one of
the best videos of all time…one of the best videos of all time!”
He then handed
her back the mike and stepped off the stage where he was shortly thereafter,
asked to leave the event. The next morning, Kanye West’s interruption was
covered on every news outlet and was covered heavily in the press. Not only
that, but his interruption was also parodied on SNL and also on YouTube as
well. Tumblr accounts such as kanyegate.tumblr.com, which features
user-generated memes with Kanye and his “Imma let you finish” caption, started
popping up and developed a strong following.
The meme itself
because popular because of how shocking the event was. In my opinion, people couldn’t really process
that Kanye West had interrupted Taylor Swift, pop country idol and America’s
sweetheart, in the middle of her acceptance speech to basically tell everyone
that she didn’t deserve it and that the award was supposed to go to Beyonce for
her “Single Ladies” video. The shock value played into the hype of this meme
and because of how inappropriate it was, it became very popular to use over the
Internet.
The meme was
popular primarily in late 2009 when the event happened but it continued well into
January 2010 before the interested died down in the 2011s. Below is a graph
from Google Insights on the Interest over Time for ‘Kanye West Imma Let You
Finish” searches:
Sources:
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