Kanye West isn't just a narcissist. That would be boring. Instead he's a narcissist who takes his own narcissism as his main subject, which makes his music great. That distinction isn't always obvious in the press about him. When the public first heard his new song "New Slaves" — I don't know that you can call it a single since, as Kanye West made clear in his Sunday night performance at Governors Ball in New York City, it hasn't been released in the traditional way with radio airplay in mind — he was instantly called a hypocrite for criticizing anyone who spends money on "a Bentley, fur coat, a diamond chain." But of course Kanye was, has always been, part of that critique. The "we" in "we the new slaves" is significant. He's his own most frequent target.

That auto-critique was also the best part of Kanye's (predictably narcissism-loaded) set at Governors Ball, where he received the kind of adulation that wouldn't be out of place at a Las Vegas Celine Dion show. Yes, there were the very strange new songs, including "Black Skinhead" (accompanied by creepy video of three men in black KKK getups) and "I Am a God," which once again internalizes all the worst things people think about Kanye and shoves it back at them. (My worries that fatherhood might make his music more boring were clearly off the mark.) But most compelling and most revealing was how Kanye ended the show, with an extended version of "Runaway," off his last album. He took a break in the middle of the song to tell the audience that if they're with someone they love, they need to hold tight. He then called himself an asshole and asked the audience to repeat: "Assholes deserve to be alone."

Basically, Kanye was asking the audience to not be like him, which, in Kanye terms, may be the sweetest thing he's ever done.

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