MTV Newsroom › Kanye West

FROM MTVNEWS.COM: How can we say this nicely? Kanye West can be a wee bit of a control freak. It's not really a secret, though; the producer and rapper has spoken out in the past about the lengths to which he goes to create his art -- whether it's mixing songs over and over again or tediously planning out his Glow in the Dark spectacular. The result of his passion, however, usually leads to universally amazing work.

Read more about Kanye's complicated Complex cover shoot, and the revealing interview, at MTVNews.com

By Angelique Smith

Sure, the Internet was abuzz after Kanye West first said that his latest album, 808s & Heartbreak, would feature him singing rather than rapping. But was his appearance at the Metropolitan Opera's 125th-anniversary gala in New York on Sunday night — with girlfriend Amber Rose in tow — an indication that he plans to take this whole singing thing even further? Guess we'll have to wait and see.

In other Kanye news, the MC-turned-singer took some time out to tell New York magazine about his hyperactive blog, which averages 15 posts a day about topics like fashion (of course), robots, architecture, puppetry and, er, women he finds appealing?

"It might [be] two hours in a day, it might be 15 minutes in a day," he said. "I have two people that I hired and I tell them exactly what I want — it's just like how a designer would work." And while we've often wondered how much of the blog is actually written by him, he continued to say, "Sometimes I'll have my own stuff where I'll just be in a cool place, like if I had my camera right now, I'd like photograph this stuff and go home and be really excited to blog it. You know, 'cause I'm in cool places all the time.

"So it's a great outlet," he concluded, "and I'm glad so many people are reacting to it. And it's another opportunity to present design and my opinion of the world and what I think is cool."

By Matt Elias

Our set visit for 88-Keys and Kanye West's "Stay Up (Viagra)" is the coolest video shoot we've been on a long time. There were no massive entourages, no nitpicking handlers and no clichéd hip-hop crutches, like cars and champagne bottles. Instead, the video was right out of the Spike Jonze playbook (à la the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage”).

I use the term "set" loosely, because director Jason Goldwatch — a self-professed fan of Spike Jonze — had 88 and 'Ye running all over Hollywood. It was a real run-'n-gun-style shoot. Actually, for the rappers, it was more of a limp or a hobble — they were dressed completely as two old men, with full prosthetic makeup. The makeup was so convincing that barely anyone recognized the guys out on the streets. That's thanks to the makeup team behind Tony Gardner, a guy whose work you'd recognize from "Jackass: The Movie" (in which Jonze himself gets done up like an old man) and the Geico Caveman commercials.

See photos and video of the dynamic duo in action after the jump! Read More...